Amazon Sales Ranking???

[GaribaldisHair]

I have just been having a look at the B5 DVD entry over at Amazon.com and it was quoted as being #66 in the sales ranking.

That sounds pretty impressive to me, but does anyone know exactly what it is #66 of??

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DaveC
"Want to talk socks?"

[This message has been edited by GaribaldisHair (edited January 10, 2002).]

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Firstly I believe that sales ranks are calculated within a certain product category (such as DVD movies).

Secondly, the sales rank of Babylon 5 has varied within the borders of 11 (at the start of pre-ordering) and 110 (reported recently).

The good question is: how is it calculated? Unfortunately a too good question for me. I simply don't know.

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"We are the universe, trying to figure itself out.
Unfortunately we as software lack any coherent documentation."
-- Delenn

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

From the Amazon.com Help File:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>As an added service for customers, authors, publishers, artists, labels, and studios, we show how items in our catalog are selling. This bestseller list is much like The New York Times Bestsellers List, except it lists millions of items! The lower the number, the higher the sales for that particular title.

The calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated regularly. The top 10,000 best sellers are updated each hour to reflect sales in the preceding 24 hours. The next 100,000 are updated daily. The rest of the list is updated monthly, based on several different factors.

We hope you find the Amazon.com Sales Rank interesting!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So the number is constantly changing and at any given moment represents a "snap shot" of how it was doing 24 hours ago in relation to other titles. According to periodic checks I've done, the B5 disc has dropped at least as low as the 500s, possible lower, since it was initially offered in August. But even that is pretty good, given the number of titles in different categories that Amazon.com offers.

I was curious to see if they really track the top 10,000 items, so I checked a book I was sure was still in print, but which I wouldn't expect to be a huge seller at the moment, Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. Sure enough, it has a sales rank of 5,467 at the moment - actually higher than I'd expect for a book this old, even from a perennial best-seller like Clancy. (Stepehn King's first published novel, Carrie is at 32,608, for those of you keeping score at home.)

I'd say for B5 to even be in the top five months after it went out for pre-order and more than a month after the street date is pretty good - but Amazon is only one outlet, so this doesn't tell us how the disc is doing elsewhere.

While this is encouraging, it isn't enough for us to declare victory, or assume that the disc must have reached or exceeded Warner Home Video's mysterious target. We'll still have to wait for some kind of word from WHV before we'll know for sure what will happen next. Although you'd think more than a month after the release they'd know whether or not they were going to continue with the episodes. Bastards!

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Technomage:3 seems to be doing well. Amazon.com had it at 8,000 sales. Of course the figure deviates dramiticaly from day to day but I hope it does well.

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* "That hardly seems likely, does it?" >>>^<<<