rabbi.author

. . . to whoever bought Chanukah Guilt from Amazon two nights ago. Within a period of four hours, my rating went from 1.1 million (yuck) to 100,000.

Don’t think I check Amazon (or titlez.com) every few hours. Usually it’s every few days. Or weeks, depending on how depressing the rating is. I happened to have checked around 8:00 PM, and my husband happened to have checked around midnight. (I don’t know how often he checks – he only tells me when the ratings have improved.)

Does anyone have any idea of how those ratings are calculated? I’m guessing that one person bought a book during an hour when no one else in the world ordered any other book. Unless the ratings are determined by a dice toss. Either explanation is equally plausible.