Another day another record breaking performance for the once cancelled Star Wars book Heart of the Jedi on Amazon. I've been collecting data of where Heart of the Jedi has landed on the Amazon's various best sellers lists every few hours on the Wayback Machine, and posting updates on how it has done. Late into yesterday it did something I didn't think was possible when I first started collecting the data on Friday.
It hit 3rd on the Science Fiction Adventures list, peaked at 8th on the Science Fiction List, and 26th on the overall list. But that doesn't even tell the full story. The only two books ahead of it on the SFA list is the kindle and audiobook of a book that comes out today. No physical book is outselling it on this list.
Keep in mind Audible is owned by Amazon, and most people get their audiobooks via free credits that they get from their subscriptions. So it is difficult enough to out sell an audiobook on this platform. Heart of the Jedi has outsold every other Star Wars book of every format. But that doesn't even tell the full story.
Each of these data points at the tail end of the graph is approximately 3 hours apart from each other, meaning it has done this for 12 hours. What's even more impressive is what it has done on the overall books list.
Throughout that streak of 12 hours in the top 5 it has steadily climbed the overall charts in all but the final update where it dropped by 6 ranks. But that is a point that I don't want to gloss over as it has dropped off in this recent update. It doesn't look like much on this chart but when you look at the hourly sales numbers based on the TCK publishing calculator those 6 spots are big.
Still though this fall hasn't been too far and even with the drop in 6 spots overall it is still selling quite well. By my estimations, that overall sales number is around 1100 now, 300 more than my previous estimation last night, which was also double the estimation of yesterday morning.
Finally a look at the google trends also seems to indicate that Heart of the Jedi is on the downswing.
This was going to happen eventually as everyone who wanted a copy got theirs, but I think it is still impressive that Heart of the Jedi hit the highs that it did and that the drop has so far been gradual.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that the first High Republic book Light of the Jedi has had its Kindle version discounted at 90% for Star Wars day and has jumped from 40th to 6th in 12 hours. Heart of the Jedi has been discounted at 10% since Sunday so we could very well see it out paced by the end of the day.
Time will only tell if it bounces back, or continues to fall. And time will also tell of how much longer it stays available on Amazon.
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