Amazon Book Sales Calculator for KDP: How Much Does a Best Seller Make?


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less than a book a day

Click here to learn how to INCREASE your Amazon Best Seller Rank!

Want to increase your Book's rankings on Amazon? Download my personal guide on increasing your book's rankings and discoverability on Amazon so you get more sales continuously!
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See also my Audiobook Sales Calculator, which is just like this one, but for audiobooks.

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This Kindle Sales Rank Calculator has been created as a free tool for you to use and even put on your own author website. Its intentions are not to undermine Amazon in any way, but to instead help authors understand the connection between Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank number and Kindle ebooks sold per day. This course will help you maximize that relationship and find more keywords to help you advertise and sell your books.

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  • Gives a score from 1-99 telling you how competitive a kindle keyword is
  • Tells you how much money other books are making with a royalty calculator
  • Gives you key data so as to beat those books and rank better

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How to Use the Amazon Sales Rank Calculator

First, I'd recommend you insert the Amazon Bestselling rank number into the plugin above. Once you've done that, all you need to do is hit the button labeled “Click Here.” I'm always amazed at how quickly it works. Within milliseconds, you'll see a “Kindle Sales Per Day” number, neatly calculated for you.

Let me show you an example that I've come across:

Consider “Battlefield Earth”, a classic in the realm of science fiction books. When I see this book, with its impressive tally of over 4000 reviews, multiple reading formats, and a captivating cover, I can't help but think it's quite successful. And I'm right! It's been a bestseller for ages. But I often wonder, how many copies is it selling today? What do its monthly sales look like? That's what the BSR calculator can tell me.

Battlefield Earth Amazon Page

Step 1: Make sure you have either the Kindle Version or the Hardcover/Paperback selected.

Step 2: Scroll down until you find the Product Details section. Here with Battlefield Earth, we find that the book sales rank (as of this writing) is 181,698.

Battlefield Earth ABSR

Step 3: Input that number into the Amazon Book Sales Calculator to get the daily sales volume. For Battlefield Earth, it looks like that Amazon Kindle bestsellers rank means that, at the time of this writing, that book is averaging less than 1 sale per day.

Battlefield Earth ABSR Number of Book Sales

Step 4: Repeat for any Amazon product listing that you want, as long as it is a book.

Does this mean that Battlefield Earth isn't a bestselling book? Well, not necessarily. All this means is that, at this point in time, it's only making 1 sale per day (or less) on Amazon for the Kindle format only. You can repeat this process for the print book (paperback or hardcover books), just remember to use “Books” instead of “Kindle Books” when you enter the number into the Amazon sales estimator.

Plus, there's Audible, other retailers, and much more to consider. This is why it's important not to put all of your eggs in one Amazon KDP basket, at least not for the long term.

What is Best Sellers Rank on Amazon?

BSR stands for Best Sellers Rank (it is also sometimes referred to Book Sales Rank), and refers to the ranking that you will find under the Product Details section of a book sales landing page on Amazon. The closer to 1 you get, the more sales you are making.

How does the Amazon Book Sales Calculator use the BSR to calculate?

BSR is calculated based on the number of sales you are making when compared to other authors. It is a complex algorithm that also takes steady sales vs spiked sales into account. Basically, if you show steady sales over a month, your sale rank will be higher than if you got all those sales at once.

How can I improve my Amazon BSR?

The best way to improve your Amazon BSR is to develop steady sales of your book over time. This will lead to the Amazon Popularity Effect, which will increase the amount of promotion that Amazon is willing to give you. Over time, this will lead to an increased royalty.

How do I find the Amazon Best Sellers Rank for my book?

Amazon Best Seller Number on an Amazon Page

You can find a particular ebook’s ranking number under the “Product Details” on any Kindle ebook’s product page:

However, keep in mind that the above screenshot shows you the rank for “Paid in Kindle Store”. If, instead, you see “Free in Kindle Store” that means that the Kindle version of that book is actually free, which means it has a separate Amazon sales ranking system. Understand that the data on each free book sale is different, and won't be accurately reflected in this Amazon Best Seller rankings calculator.

Additionally, if you are looking at the Paperback or Hardcover print or book format, it will say “in Books” instead of “in Kindle”.

But What About Kindle Unlimited? Do Those Count as Sales?

Yes, Kindle Unlimited “borrows” count exactly the same as book sales when calculating the best seller rank. That is why it is difficult to use a royalty estimator to calculate sales and how much money you're making. Because sales can also mean borrows, and the amount of royalties you'll get from either one will be different.

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How is the Amazon Best Sellers Rank is Calculated

Amazon's best seller ranking system is essentially a complex algorithm that Amazon uses to rank books based on sales volume.

While Amazon does not reveal the exact numbers for their algorithm, they are pretty easy to guess, which is why we are able to use this calculator.

Here are a few things to know about Amazon's BSR algorithm:

  • It is updated on an hourly basis
  • It only goes into effect after a book has had at least one sale (if you've had no sales, you won't be ranked)
  • Books with steady sales are weighted higher than books with sales spikes
  • Books have separate ABSRs for each category they are in
  • The less competitive the category, the more likely you are to rank highly in that category (Side note: learn more about selecting the best categories to rank in here).

Kindle Unlimited Borrows Can Boost Your Amazon Sales Ranking

If your eBook is in the KDP Select program, which enrolls your book in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and getting many borrows, you may think the sales calculator overestimates your actual sales amount. But something else is going on.

How KU Borrows Are Counted as Sales

When Amazon customers borrow your eBook through KU or Kindle Owner's Lending Library (KOLL), Amazon counts that borrow as a sale, even though you won't see the sale on your KDP royalty estimator, or on your book sales tracker of choice.

But the good news is that every borrow is counted as sales by Amazon to calculate your Kindle Best Seller Ranking.

This means that a lot of KU/KOLL borrows can dramatically boost your Amazon sales ranking, which is why many choose to enroll their book in KU for this reason alone.

FAQ About Amazon Rankings

In addition to the Amazon book sales calculator and everything mentioned above, you might have more questions about how Amazon calculates its Amazon best seller ranking for each book sold. Read on for a few frequently asked questions:

Can you tell how many copies of a book have sold on Amazon?

Yes, using the BSR to sales calculator on this page, you can see how many estimated copies of any book are being sold today. Using a program like Publisher Rocket will give you further insights into just how many sales and royalties they are making, along with how competitive their keywords and categories are.

How do you calculate book sales?

Using a sales predictor like the above Kindle Sales Rank Calculator, or a tool like Publisher Rocket, you can get an accurate idea of how many books it is selling each day. From there, you can make an educated guess at how many royalties the book is making based on its price and how much Amazon takes out.

How does Amazon calculate best selling books?

Amazon calculates the best selling rank based on the number of books that are selling, both in a single day and steady sales over time, and compares that with other top books sold in its store. The BSR is updated hourly by Amazon so it is very up to date.

How many books do you need to sell on Amazon to be a bestseller?

This depends on your definition of success. For a traditional publisher, you'd need to sell approximately 10,000 copies over it's entire lifetime. For indie publishers, breaking into the top 1000 in Amazon's sales rank is a pretty successful book. However, you want to make sure those sales are steady.

What is a good Amazon sales rank?

Obviously, the best Amazon sales rank is #1. But generally speaking, a good sales rank is anything under 1000. If you can get into the top 1000 ranking books, you will be selling over 100 copies of your book each day, which adds up if you can keep it there. That is why steady sales are so important.

However, this is a tricky question because ultimately you have to define what success looks like for you. And other factors can make a big difference, like pricing, for example. 100 sales at $9.99 will result in much higher profit for you than 100 sales of a $.99 book. You can check out our KDP royalty calculator for more insights into how much money you make from your number of sales.

Are Kindle and Amazon Books ranked differently?

Books come in different formats like paperback and hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. Each format has its own Best Seller Rank (BSR) showing sales velocity compared to other books in that format. During an ebook promotion, the ebook BSR may hit #1 while the paperback BSR is unchanged at #1,000,000, since the ebook is selling faster temporarily. BSR tracks real-time sales by format.

Can the Calculator Help Me Identify Inaccurate Publisher Statements?

The Amazon book sales calculator can provide authors a general guideline to help verify publisher royalty statements, but has significant limitations, as it only estimates Amazon.com sales and does not account for international Amazon stores or a publisher's broader distribution.

Given these limitations, the calculator should only be used as a rough check, while detailed royalty statements from publishers and verification using multiple data sources is recommended to get a more complete sales picture.

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How to Improve Your Amazon Bestsellers Rank?

You have several options to improve your Amazon Best Seller Rank, but ultimately it all comes down to getting more, steady sales. There are several ways you can do this, and the following are a long list of options, with links to learn more about them.

Set Up a Book Promotion – Would you like a list of the top ebook promotion sites, both free and paid.  Well, we did the research and found some top-notch sites out there that are waiting to submit your book to their fans. This will help your book get a nice boost in sales, leading to improved BSR.

Get a Copyright – While not a direct influence on your book's sales now, not having a copyright can lead to a lot of problems further down the line. Funny how your copyright page might be the most important page you could have in your book.  Is your copyright page setup the right way and is protecting your rights? Or is it useless because you don't have the necessary legal jargon that will save your hide?

Use a Proofreading Software: I used to use Grammarly, but now, I'm a ProWritingAid fan.  It's just as powerful as Grammarly for doing grammar checks and helping to improve your writing through thorough analysis, however, the price is where I fell in love.  You can even get a huge 20% ProWritingAid discount. But Grammarly will also work well for you. See my Grammarly review here.

Craft the Perfect Title – Coming up with the perfect book title can be maddening. Yet having a catchy title is crucial to getting noticed (and remembered). Thankfully, there are awesome tools called Book Title Generators that help you find the right title for your book.

Treat Your Book Selling Like a Business – Learn how to set up your Limited Liability Corporations for your books so that your personal assets aren't liable and your self-publishing becomes more stable…not to mention the tax incentives. This will also help you psychologically, putting you in the right mindset to do whatever it takes to improve your ABSR.

Invest in Professional Formatting – Learn about my favorite formatting software and how I like to use it.  Atticus will not only help you write, but will make your books look professional, which is essential to forming a book-selling business and increasing those ABSRs. See how it compares to Vellum, as well.

Find the Best Software for Writing – Check out the best book writing software out there to include Atticus, Scrivener, Word, Ulysses, and more.  See them side by side and check out how they are different from them and which will help you to write your book.

Disclaimer: The KDP sales numbers are an estimate based on research and other authors recorded numbers. Amazon does not directly release this information. And as any Kindlepreneur product, we are not affiliated with Amazon or Kindle.