What Is BSR on Amazon? A Guide for Book Publishers
Updated By the ColorCraft team6 min read
Short answer
BSR, or Best Sellers Rank, is the number Amazon gives a product to show how well it sells compared with others in the same store, and a lower number is better. For books it reflects recent and past sales, with recent ones counting more. A rank under about 100,000 in Books usually means a paperback is selling around a copy a day or better, but one sale can move a slow book a long way, so read rank over weeks.
Key takeaways
- Lower is better: rank 1 is the top seller in that store.
- Amazon ranks each format separately, so a paperback and its Kindle edition have different ranks.
- KDP says rank updates at least once a day and weights recent activity more heavily.
- One sale can move a slow book from around 2,000,000 to around 400,000 overnight.
- Average a few weeks of rank before you draw a conclusion.
- Rank tells you how a book sells, not how much it earns. Royalty depends on price and printing cost.
What is BSR on Amazon?
Best Sellers Rank is Amazon’s league table. Every product with sales has a rank in its store, and rank 1 is selling best right now. Print books are ranked in Books, Kindle editions in the Kindle Store, and audiobooks separately.
Amazon doesn’t publish its formula, but KDP’s Sales Ranking page says three useful things. Rank is based on a book’s activity relative to other books. It reflects both recent and historical activity, with recent activity weighted more heavily. And it’s updated at least once a day, though changes can take up to 2 days to appear.
How do you find and read a book’s BSR?
Open the right format
On the book’s Amazon page, pick Paperback if that is what you plan to publish. Each format has its own rank.
Find Product details
Scroll to the Product details section and find Best Sellers Rank. The first number is the rank in all of Books.
Ignore the small categories at first
The smaller category ranks underneath can look impressive even for a book that sells very little.
Check again over time
Note the rank on several days across a few weeks and use the average, not the best day.
Compare several books
Do the same for the top 10 to 20 books in the niche, so you’re reading a market and not one title.
Those smaller lines deserve a warning. A book can be “#3 in Dinosaur Coloring Books” and still sell only now and then. Being an Amazon “Best Seller” in a tiny category says little about demand.
What is a good BSR for a book?
It depends what you’re asking. These are rough estimates for US print books on Amazon.com, the same ones behind our free calculator. Nobody outside Amazon knows the true figures. Ranks from 250,000 to 1,000,000 rest mainly on measured rank changes across about 1,400 paperbacks. The top of the table is the midpoint of the two sets of estimates in circulation, such as Kindlepreneur’s, and is the least certain.
| Average rank | How often | Likely range | How sure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | About 45 a day | 850 to 2,200 a month | Rough |
| 10,000 | About 8 a day | 160 to 370 a month | Rough |
| 50,000 | About 2 a day | 40 to 90 a month | Fair |
| 100,000 | About 1 a day | 25 to 55 a month | Fair |
| 250,000 | About 5 a week | 12 to 28 a month | Fair |
| 500,000 | About 2 a week | 5 to 14 a month | Fair |
| 1,000,000 | About 1 a week | 2 to 5 a month | Fair |
| 2,000,000 | About one every 4 weeks | 7 to 18 a year | Tested |
| 5,000,000 | Roughly once a year | Up to 2 a year | Tested |
To check a specific book, our Amazon book sales calculator turns a rank into a likely range and says how sure it is. You get 3 free checks with no signup, and the full table and how it was built stay open to read.
For choosing a niche, a rank under 100,000 held over time is a sensible line for “this book sells”. For your own book, reaching it is a good result in most niches. Published calculators can disagree by several times over at the same rank, so read any single number as a rough guide.
Why can one BSR reading mislead you?
Slow books swing the most. A single sale can lift a book from around rank 2,000,000 to around 400,000 overnight, and then it drifts back down over the following days. Look at that book on the right morning and it seems to sell a few copies a week. It may have sold one all month.
- Seasons. Christmas books hold great ranks in December and poor ones in June.
- Promotions. A launch or an ad burst can lift a rank for a week or two.
- Age. Rank says nothing about how long a book took to get there, or how much it spent on ads.
That’s why a longer average beats a snapshot, and why you should compare many books. To turn a rank into money, multiply estimated copies by what one copy earns, which the free royalty calculator works out.
Does BSR work the same for paperbacks and Kindle?
The idea is the same, but the numbers aren’t comparable. A paperback is ranked against other print books, and a Kindle edition against other Kindle titles. The two stores have different sizes and different buying habits, and borrows through Amazon’s ebook subscription can lift an ebook’s rank without a purchase. A rank of 50,000 means something different in each.
Check the format you plan to publish. For coloring and puzzle books that’s nearly always the paperback, because people need paper to write and color on. If a niche looks strong only on Kindle, it doesn’t tell you much about a paperback.
Check the store as well. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and the others each rank books separately, so a book’s US rank says little about how it does in the UK. Most of the rough figures you’ll see online, including the ones above, are for the US store.
How do you use BSR to research a niche by hand?
Open the top 10 to 20 paperbacks for your phrase and record each rank in a spreadsheet. Repeat twice a week for a few weeks. Then count how many average under 100,000, and how many of those were published in the last year. Several recent books at that level is the signal you want. How to find KDP niches has the full method.
How does ColorCraft use BSR?
Niche Research does that tracking for you. It uses each book’s 90-day average rank from Amazon US, so one lucky day doesn’t count for much, and sorts the competing books by it. Sales pace shows how often a book’s rank actually rose in those 90 days.
More detail shows how the whole niche ranks, so you can see at a glance whether demand runs deep or stops after the first few books.
Reports use rank to judge a niche and don’t state sales for any book. Mini, Starter and the free trial (a card is required to start it) include 3 searches in total. Creator includes 30 a month, Professional 100 and Studio 300.
Frequently asked questions
What does BSR stand for on Amazon?
BSR stands for Best Sellers Rank. It shows how a product is selling compared with others in the same Amazon store, and a lower number is better.
What is a good BSR for a KDP book?
A steady rank under 100,000 in Books is a good result for most self-published paperbacks and usually means around a copy a day or more. Treat that as a rough guide, because nobody outside Amazon knows the exact relationship.
How often does Amazon update BSR?
KDP says rankings are updated at least once a day, and that changes can take up to 2 days to appear.
Does BSR tell me how many copies a book sells?
Not directly. Amazon doesn’t publish sales for individual books. Calculators estimate copies from rank, and they can disagree by several times over at the same rank, so use them for rough comparisons.
Why did my book’s BSR drop when nothing changed?
Rank is relative, so it can fall when other books sell more, and a book without recent sales drifts down steadily. On slow books one sale makes the rank jump, and it then falls again over the following days.
Sources
Last checked: . Policies, specs and rates were checked against these pages; KDP changes them from time to time, so confirm on KDP before you publish.
Make your first book with ColorCraft
Paige drafts and draws the pages, the cover generator builds the KDP wrap, and the Listing Assistant writes the description. Start a 7-day free trial and make a whole book.
Start your free trial7-day free trial · Card required · Plans from $9/month · Cancel anytime
Trial downloads are watermarked previews. The print-ready file comes with your plan, or unlock one book for $24.
Related guides
- How to Find KDP Niches, Step by Step
A step-by-step way to check a KDP niche by hand or with Niche Research, with four real examples.
- How to Sell Coloring Books on Amazon
From niche check to listing: what sells, how to price it, and what a copy earns, by hand or in ColorCraft.
- KDP Coloring Book Royalties: What One Sale Pays
Royalty = rate × list price − printing cost; 60% from $9.99 on Amazon.com, 50% below. Worked examples for coloring books and picture books.