Reading tea leaves in the bottom of the cup

I know that many, many authors check the Amazon rankings of their books at least once a day. Believe me, I understand. Because, excepting royalty statements, most authors find it almost impossible to get on-the-ground information about sales. Since Aqueduct Press opened an account with Amazon back in 2004, I've been able to check the sales-- daily-- of all the books we have on Amazon. And I soon discovered a disparity between sales ranking and actual sales. To give you an example (though not using the titles of the books involved), today I noticed that three books had sales rankings in the 800,000s. One of these was a title that had sold 15 copies in the first ten days of August, another one that had sold 3 copies in the first ten days of August, and the third a title that had sold all of 1 copy during that same period.

I'm just saying. 

If you can't find the Tor books you want on Amazon...

Anent Amazon's war against Macmillan (and all its subsidiaries, including Tor Books), about which Cory Doctorow writes here: just a little reminder, there are other places online to buy books, including the books by sf writers that Amazon no longer carries. Powells sells online, and lots of smaller independents do as well, such as University Bookstore, A Room of One's Own, Borderlands, Wrigley-Cross Books, Ziesing Books, and many, many others.