Amazon Sales Rankings

My Corporate Derivatives book recently sold three extra copies on Amazon in the space of a few days. This took it from a rank of around 1,200,000 to a more dignified 50,000(Amazon ranks roughly 4,000,000 books). The last copy sold (which rendered the tome out of stock) took me from 750,000 to 50,000

Now, if a single extra unit can take a book that has yet to sell 1,000 copies total (hey, this is a highly specialized tome going for $160; some may say I did quite well in fact!) up 700,000 places the conclusion is obviously inevitable: there are hundreds of thousands (millions) of books out of there that may not sell a single copy for months and months (maybe years and years). In other words, a very blunt confirmation of what we have always known: it´s tough to make money selling books (though not impossible, certainly)

Lots of controversy has gone into reading Amazon´s rankings. After my recent experience I have no doubt that any book not making it into the, say, top 10,000 is not selling explosively (maybe just 5-10 copies every month). Of course, at some historical point that book may have sold quite well, but not currently (particularly given that Amazon seems to afford weighty weight to past performance)

If you make into the top 1,000 and stay there for a while (1-2 years following publication) then you would be considered an utter winner among publishers, someone able to sell many tens of thousands of copies. Notice that being this kind of winner would not imply tremendous monetary rewards either ($100,000 annual maybe).

If you achieve top-100 status for a while, then congrats, you are a literary big swinging dick. You will have no problem getting the next contract, sizeable advance, can make very good living out of writing (seven figures maybe plus flexible dreamy lifestyle)

That´s my half-informed take, at least. Would love to hear from more knowledgeable folks.