How does a book climb to the top of Amazon charts? Many seek the secrets of the big river algorithm: authors, artists, entrepreneurs, scammers, publishers, used booksellers, scholars of literature, and me, nucky of nickywebsite.com.
Discussing proprietary algorithms is cyber-divination, trying to figure out the future from hints, spreadsheets, the stars, shadows on a cave’s wall. The code exists, but none of us will ever see it even though it controls us like God.
In this post, I consider the complex calculation of Amazon Sales Ranking, a.k.a. Amazon Best Seller Rank, a.k.a. the most popular products and numbers, featuring classic books and numbers from 1 to 100.
Amazon data isn’t good for making business decisions. It is suitable for seeing what’s on the minds of a large group of people. They are sad. They want to color.
Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Best Seller?
The impetus for writing this piece was a Google data class that suggested students analyze a Kaggle dataset of Amazon’s Top 50 Bestselling Books 2009 – 2019, then imagine a business owner and offer them advice with this data.
Thousands of Kaggle projects used this dataset and presented this list of books as if they were the most popular of the decade. The analysts seem to have no idea what they’re looking at: a theme of the 21st century.
I offer all business owners the free advice: you are not Amazon and never will be. Amazon can use this data to make decisions, but your puny business cannot. Amazon can buy in massive quantities, getting products literally for a dime a dozen. Your little baby business probably pays wholesale costs like a chump.
You’re not Amazon!
Caveat: on the off chance someone at Amazon is reading this, you are Amazon, and you alone have permission to use sales rank to make business decisions. But guess what you already do.
I chuckle, imagining the hubris of taking this spreadsheet to a bookstore and suggesting they “implement” this data. This dataset is six years old, incomplete, and poorly documented.
It lacks key identifying information about the books (ISBN); there’s no column denoting the book’s ranking within the yearly Top 50 (Sales Rank). Unlabeled, duplicate records could correspond to format (hardcover/paperback, not listed), or records might have been best sellers in multiple years or just be mistakes. Price data was pulled at the book’s lowest ever Amazon price, including sales and $0 promotions, so it’s ineffective for price analysis; there’s no standard for handling series books, and some are counted twice with collections (ex. Divergent/Insurgent is counted as one record, Divergent as another). I could go on!
Ironically, best sellers like these are some of the worst books to sell because you’re competing with Amazon. There are tons of copies; sometimes, you can find them for free in the little free libraries, and even when priced at $5 or $6, most people would prefer to get a new copy from Amazon for $8 or $10. It would be foolish for any small business to compete for the same buyers.
Things get much more interesting if the data is framed solely as a story about what books people bought and read between 2009 and 2019.
Desires, Books and Machines
This data hints at the way Amazon sells books.
Judging by the book type classification, Amazon buyers prefer non-fiction.
What if a book was defined as a solution to a problem? Not a thing you read for fun, but something you read to fix something else.
Try a visualization with me.
Imagine you’re buying stuff on Amazon. Replenishing essentials, paper towels, smoothie powder, a bulk package of “knockoff” Mr. Clean Magic Erasers that work just like the real ones from a reseller in Montana who buys them from China. You meant to order this earlier. You’re almost out.
And as you do this, you feel an inescapable feeling. A profound dread for the future and a certainty about life’s meaninglessness: something is wrong with the world and you’re not entirely sure why you’re still in it.
One-day shipping is too fast. How is that sustainable?
Why are people going out at 3 AM to deliver smoothie powder?
Why are melamine foam sponges $4 at the store when you can buy them directly from the manufacturer for $0.10 each? And no way do I believe it’s because of the extraordinary product-pitching abilities of that weird, silent, bald man, Mr Clean.
And why do I always have to clean up so much shit? Why are the messes so much worse that we need magic to clean them?
And why does it seem like I’m always broke despite all my money-saving strategies? Why does going to a job five days a week, scrimping and saving, still not make enough money?
Why doesn’t the government do something?
How much longer will any of this last?
Why am I lonely?
Why am I even alive?
Is there a God?
What is the point of any of this?
Then you happen to see a book that addresses one or multiple of these concerns that you were just ambiently ruminating about, and it promises to solve your problem. Wow! It’s like magic. This is the self-help genre.
Amazon continues to be the most profitable company in the world because it has identified that self-help books are a low-cost product that can be subtly advertised to people who don’t typically buy books. This will increase cart totals by a few percentage points on a mass scale because most cart totals are less than $100.
Classics of the genre are still on the best-seller list. How to Win Friends & Influence People (1912) hit its 100th anniversary in the period surveyed. It was written in a halcyon time before cars or air travel when Americans believed you could go out, make friends, and influence people. Now consider the stark difference in the optimism of that title and the outlooks expressed in popular self-help titles from the 2010s.
Things seem bleak.
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
- Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government
- Calm the F*ck Down: An Irreverent Adult Coloring Book
- Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
- Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
- Divine Soul Mind Body Healing and Transmission System: The Divine Way to Heal You, Humanity, Mother Earth, and All…
- Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution
- Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be
- It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered
- Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World
- One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
- Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
- Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
- Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution
- Soul Healing Miracles: Ancient and New Sacred Wisdom, Knowledge, and Practical Techniques for Healing the Spiritual…
- The 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
- The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
- Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
- What Happened
- You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
Read these titles as imperatives. Liminal, direct messaging telling you what to do, how you feel, why everything is wrong, and even offering an actionable antidote to all of life’s problems.
People need help making the bed, washing their face, surviving the chaos, responding to impossible changes, comprehending the heinous greed of the ruling class, accepting their position in life, and both simultaneously caring enough to make things better and subtly not giving a f*ck because you need to focus on yourself. You are a badass. You can use the tools of titans to make yourself happy and profit!
One needn’t be a certified Schizoanalyst to notice a pattern in these titles. In aggregate, these books seem like they’re written for people with intense feelings and disordered minds. A pervasive sense of dread permeates throughout our culture. Then, these feelings are commodified as add-ons to our carts.
The practical purpose of a metric tracking the best-selling products is to sell more products.
Coloring Reality
Amazon categorizes coloring books as non-fiction. I disagree. Consider this book.
Unicorn Coloring Book: For Kids Ages 4-8 (US Edition) (Silly Bear Coloring Books)
What is non-fiction about this? Unicorns? Silly bears making coloring books? Indeed, that’s fun, fantastic fiction!
But perhaps because the act of coloring is an act that exists in reality. Coloring is a non-fictional act. The book’s purpose is to color it, so its content is ancillary. That’s true.
Out of 190 non-fiction books, 13 are coloring books, and 8 are marked for adults. Perhaps because the designs are complex, maybe because they have swears in them (specifically, Calm the F*ck Down: An Irreverent Adult Coloring Book).
I recall the “adult coloring” book trend of the 2010s; even Chuck Palahniuk tried to capitalize on it. I always found it sad that people needed the “Adult” labeling to permit them to color. To rephrase a Mitch Hedberg joke, “Any book is an adult coloring book if an adult colors the pages.”
Some coloring books are marked as “adult” but feature topics that seem fun for a child to color. Owls and cats are great images to color in for all ages.
Thankfully, most children will ignore this label.
In a few instances, the coloring books were about topics that seemed overly complex for a child but presented too simply for an adult to understand.
Issues like anxiety, feminism, and meditative practices of East Asia are essential topics, and introducing them with a coloring book seems like an excellent idea for a young reader. One would hope an adult might consider a book on the topics with more words.
Personally, I’d pick the coloring book about the owls.
There’s a motivational journal on the list too. And while it’s not classified this way, this is the true adult’s coloring book. A book that teaches you cantrips to complete tasks and projects you don’t want to finish.
What if one wants to draw in one’s motivation journal? And what if they’re going to color it in, too?
These labels imply that coloring is an act only some people are allowed to do, only sometimes. If you’re an adult, you can color a little bit after a long day of stressful work. But only if there’s a purpose to it, like relieving stress or considering a complex and nuanced ideological framing.
But I’m an adult, and you’re probably an adult, and I wish we all knew that this is untrue. You can color for any reason you want.
Color the cats. Color the owls. Color code your annotations of Gender Trouble. Draw in your notebook and color in the drawings to motivate yourself.
As I write this on January 25th, 2025, four adult coloring books are on the Top 50 Amazon Best Sellers list. All four of them look fun for everyone.
Scratching the Surface
What is the true scope of this data? We know “a lot” of people bought these books, but how many? A question that’s easy to articulate but difficult to answer “How many copies of 1984 have been sold?” This might remain forever unknown.
There’s more to consider about Amazon’s Sales Rank and its effect on books in the 21st century. I hope to consider topics like the downward price pressure on books, the trending increase in product reviews over time, how tastes have changed in the last six years, and more in future posts.
But 2000 words is enough for now because, honestly, I convinced myself to color some pictures I drew in my journal with some fine-tipped markers I bought on Amazon!