Cost of Books to the Author and the Effect on Sales Rank

Hearing conflicting opinions about how my discounted purchase of Azriel Dancer would effect my Amazon.com sales ranking, I put the question to CreateSpace, the Amazon subsidiary that actually prints the books.

Here’s my question:

Hello CreateSpace,  Newbie here with two related questions about costs and sales rank.  1.  What is my cost for “author books?”  My book, Azriel Dancer, will be priced at $12.99.  2.  Let’s say I order 50 books at my “author price” to be used at a book signing. Will those fifty books be credited as sales and count toward my sales ranking?

Here’s the speedy reply from CreateSpace:

“Greetings from CreateSpace, I hope that this e-mail finds you well.

When you order your book through your CreateSpace account, you would pay the member price for it, which is $5.72.

Bare in mind that although CreateSpace falls under the Amazon umbrella, we are ultimately separate entities, and additionally the Amazon sales ranks are updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on each of the Amazon sites, which would be Amazon.com and Amazon Europe for example, i.e purchased on Amazon directly.

This means that when you purchase your books through CreateSpace, they are purchased on CreateSpace and do not affect the sales ranking on Amazon.

The only time your sales ranking increases is when books are purchased directly off of Amazon. That would mean if you purchase those 50 books from Amazon, your sales ranking will increase, however bare in mind that it would then be purchased at full price not the member price because it’s not purchased from your CreateSpace account.

I trust that this information will be of help to you Bob, and I wish you all of the best.”

Not the answer I hoped for, but I appreciate the celerity and clarity of the response.