Now that Amazon.com has had sales rankings up on their site for about seven years, is there honestly anybody left who needs “expert author” (I swear, that’s what he calls himself) Brent Sampson to explain how those ranking numbers work. “You’re not supposed to find the sales rankings informative or helpful,” he divulges. “You’re supposed to find them interesting.” Well, yeah, that’s always been a poorly guarded secret—as, for that matter, are the technical details of the ranking algorithm he also reveals. Heck, all anybody ever had to do was ask one of the book review editors (back when the site had a full complement of book review editors) and we’d have been happy to explain the whole thing…and after I left the company, if I was feeling especially expansive, you wouldn’t even have to buy me a drink first!
