Amazon.com can be addictive for writers. Not just in the sense that it's a never-ending carousel of wonders for things to read and tools to write with, either. No, the real addiction is when your book is on their virtual shelves and you discover that thing called Amazon Best Sellers Rank. (Cue brassy fanfare here.)
With Amazon Best Sellers Rank, you can tell in a glance exactly where your book falls in the lineup of books that sell the most copies. On the one hand, this is wonderful... your book, just off the presses, is already 134th in of all Books > Children's Books > Literature & Fiction > Religious Fiction > Christian > Animals!
On the other hand, you don't know exactly how many books are in that subcategory of fiction... so for all you know, 134 is dead last. Which still isn't bad, considering that it was just published - after all, even J.K. Rowling had to start from somewhere, right?
By clicking on that last subcategory, you can launch yourself into the list of books that your book is shelved among... who's number one? Easy enough to check. (For me, the Berenstain Bears are tops in Holidays and Celebrations, while Pete the Cat rules over children's books featuring cats.) This is handy for market research, since at a glance you can see what's selling in any particular category.
It can also be profoundly depressing, if you find your precious published baby lagging behind books you personally think aren't as good as yours.
And then there's the fact that the rankings change by the hour. My husband e-mailed me the other day to cheer that The Stable Cat's Christmas had broken the 50 top books mark... but by the time I got on, it had dropped to 74. Ah, the fleeting fickleness of popularity!
Still, it's a handy tool for an author to know about, if you don't let the details drive you crazy.
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