A tiny window into my mind...

In its smallest, most nervous recesses...
What Amazon Sales Ranks Mean:

Books with sales ranks between 1 and 10,000 are re-ranked every hour. The rank depends both on how many books sold the previous hour relative to all the other books on Amazon, plus the recent sales trajectory. A book that holds steady in this range is usually considered commercially viable by trade publishers, [whew!] and means substantial income if you're self-publishing books. Since ranks are relative and overall book sales vary with the time of year, there is no exact formula for describing a sales rate. Books with a steady sales rank near 10,000 are averaging sales of more than one copy a day. Around sales rank of 1,000, the sales rate approaches ten copies a day. Keep in mind that some of these ranks are occupied by books that sold many thousands of copies on Amazon during their day in the sun, and hold onto a good sales rank for years because that initial surge of sales keeps their "average" above that of most other books. Books with steady sales ranks below 1,000 are selling very well, topping several dozen copies a day as you approach 100. I don't have any hard data on the top 100 books, but I'm sure it puts a smile on the face of any trade publisher to have a book selling that well, independent of the season and the competition.

My top rank so far is 2,577. Averaging around 8,000...