Joe Wikert's publishing blog has some interesting links to check out on the Amazon sales ranking system and what it tells you (and doesn't tell you) about how well a book is selling. He calls this article from the blog Beneath the Cover "the most useful, straightforward summary of all," but provides other links, as well. (My thanks to blogger Anne Wayman of The Golden Pencil for providing these links.)
When my mystery novel first came out, I compulsively checked its sales rank. Sometimes it was high, other times it was wa-a-ay low. (I think the highest I got was four figures at one point. I wish I'd written the number down now. But the book never went stratospheric or anything.) I eventually stopped doing this, when it started to feel like a silly exercise--like watching the stock market, minute-by-minute, to see what my book's "value" was at the time. Like a day trader, only with no purpose other than satisfying my curiosity.
As Wickert points out, "There's really no tight connection between Amazon sales rank and how many copies of a book have sold at Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc. It's generally safe to say that a highly ranked book on Amazon is also doing well at the brick-and-mortar outlets, but I know of know formula that accurately calculates total retail sales off the Amazon rank."
Book sales figures are one of those mysterious matters publishers aren't terribly open about with authors. The Book Industry Study Group, a trade association that keeps track of all the players in the industry "from publishers to booksellers, paper manufacturers, libraries, authors, printers, and wholesalers, as well as organizations concerned with the book industry as a whole," follows buying trends and issues reports on what's selling. BookScan is also supposed to be an excellent source of retail book sales data for individual titles, although I've been told that it also doesn't give the complete picture (I think it misses online sales).
But one thing I do know: placement on the New York Times bestseller list has little or nothing to do with retail sales.
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