Update: The percentage change is changing – however, the sales ranks aren’t.
Also, do check out this week’s Kindle Chronicles podcast as Len Edgerly interviews both Ian Freed, VP of Kindle at Amazon, and the student suing Amazon.
If you take a look at the Kindle Store’s Movers & Shakers section you’ll see that we have a bunch of skyrocketing newspapers -
How Kindle Newspaper sales are counted just changed
Yes, that really is the New York Times seeing an 11,895% increase. Its sales rank just went from 4,798 to 40. Rather interestingly, in the overall bestseller list, it says -
555 days in the top 100.
Well, having never seen it there before (it definitely wasn’t there a week ago) it means the change is retroactive.
And it’s not the only one -
- USA Today sees an even bigger change from 14,731 to 120 – a change of 12,175%.
- The New Yorker magazine sees a 9,258% increase to go from 6,551 to 70.
- The Amazon Daily Blog sees a 4,696% increase to go from 15,540 to 324.
The complete list of newspapers, magazines and blogs that saw this change also includes Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Financial Times, Time, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Why are we seeing kindle store sales ranking changes for newspapers, magazines, and blogs?
It seems that Amazon changed how they rank periodicals by counting either number of sales per quarter or number of sales per month (probably the former given the huge inceases).
The Possible Motivations?
- Perhaps to be more fair to newspapers since a subscription should be valued more than a one-off purchase.
- Give newspapers and magazines more visibility.
- Increase sales of periodicals and get more newspapers and magazines on board.
- People were overly dependent on the bestsellers list (we’ve discussed this effect in the iPhone App Store just recently).
While this is more fair to periodicals it does introduce a few negatives -
- It could potentially clutter up the bestsellers list.
- Its obviously an attempt to pump up periodical sales.
Overall, it’s interesting to see Amazon tweak the sales rankings, and it really does hint at the importance of sales rankings and bestseller lists.
Filed under: news Tagged: | kindle store, kindle store numbers
