Mythbusting The Amazon Algorithm Part VI: Updates Fever!

In the last months there have been claims that Amazon’s A10 algorithm has been updated to negative effect for indie authors. This has seen many freakouts on forums as to what this means for selling books on Amazon. Here, indie book marketing expert Cate Baum clears up a few common misunderstandings, and how you can help your sales on Amazon with the changes seen.

MYTH 1. Amazon has weighted all indie books down in ranking since the algorithm update.

TRUTH: Yes and no.

The previous search engine made sure that clicks to books counted as part of the popularity “soup” for being shown in customer searches. Internal clicks from Amazon ads onsite, for example, will no longer hold as much weight for book popularity in the new algorithm, as Amazon is trying to lean towards what people are looking for without prompting to get a more “organic” picture of buyer behavior. I’m not sure if this means Amazon Ads are useless now, as surely they can still lead to sales, which in turn would give the book the ultimate algorithm Brownie Point — a sale. It now may be better to invest less money in PPC Ads on Amazon and more on other methods of marketing that will lead to organic sales instead, i.e. offsite driving to Amazon Book Pages.

It’s also true that in September 2019 The Wall Street Journal claimed that engineers working on the A10 algorithm had leaked information that said that Amazon had “optimized its algorithm that ranks listings so that instead of showing customers mainly the most-relevant (sic) and best-selling list items when they search — as it had been for more than a decade — the site also gives a boost to items that are more profitable.” But this has always been the case. If you sell a lot of books, Amazon will promote your book harder than if you sell a handful.  This ends up being the same as always: promote your book to sell books, then Amazon will help you out and show your book in more searches.

Therefore, it is probably true that books that do not sell consistently over a period of time will now not rank higher for longer, as products with track history will be promoted more often, but that just means what we have always known: On Amazon, the only way to sell books is to sell books.

MYTH 2: The new algorithm misleads customers to prefer traditionally-published books that make more money for Amazon.

TRUTH: Amazon has always given preferential treatment to trad books for one reason: They sell more copies on average anyway.

However, if an indie or self-published book can sell as many or more copies than a trad book, then it will be treated as a “profitable product” for Amazon, and you will see the book being promoted naturally in the search engine, as more sales means more popularity for that title, i.e. more people like that book, so it follows that it is more likely other people might like it. This again comes down to ensuring you sell steadily and have Verified Reviews to prove that people like your book and will buy and review it.

MYTH 3: The way the algorithm ranks products has changed completely, to the detriment of indie books.

TRUTH: There have been changes in how a product is ranked on Amazon. 

But not to the detriment of indie authors. In fact, here you have a great chance to GAIN RANK.

Here you can see how variables were prioritized by Amazon previously, and how they are now: