How to be #1 on Amazon.com

Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar is the #12 bestselling book on Amazon today. A few days ago it was #1. I think it is highly likely that the author is buying their own book to get a high sales rank on Amazon. If you run searches for the book there are no reviews on the web. There are no mentions of media events about the book. 

The book is published by Wiley. Last year another Wiley book with a similar pedigree just appeared at #1 on Amazon. The book was: Multi-Family Millions: How Anyone Can Reposition Apartments for Big Profits. The book sat at #1 for several days at the end of April, 2008. If you run a search for the book now there is an odd collection of websites that show up but there are no reviews. 

I have read that the author of the Multi-Family book offers seminars that cost several thousand dollars a piece. If getting the book to #1 on Amazon convinces just 5 people to sign up for a seminar the author might get around $15,000. If you bought $15,000 of your own book on Amazon I bet the book would go to #1. For people selling seminars this scheme to push your book to #1 would completely pay for itself. 

What I am suprised about is that more authors do not try this. If you have poured years of your life into a book wouldn't it be worth $15,000 to have the book be #1 at Amazon? In regards to Wiley we will have to see if every spring a new get rich quick book appears at #1 on Amazon with seemingly no web or media coverage of the book. 

A site called EarlyWord that watches what happens in the book world noticed that the book went to #1 and contacted the author's pubicist at Wiley. EarlyWord reported the publicist as saying - The book’s rise has been driven by his own direct marketing to his followers and a smattering of appearances in business news outlets 

That seems like code for - "he is buying his own book to drive up the sales rank."

If you look at the reviews on Amazon you will also notice that all the positive reviews appeared on the same day. At the exact same tiem the book leapt out of nowhere to #1 on Amazon. If authors are going to game Amazon I would like to see it done by some novelists and not just by the author's of get rich quick books.