After some additional research, it turns out that BookAuthority is merely an Amazon “partner.” They advertise Amazon books and get a bit of money from Amazon for doing so. As near as I can tell, they create these “top X” categories and use that to attract potential purchasers whom they hope will click through and purchase from Amazon. They also provide meaningless graphics for us authors to place on our web sites to generate traffic to their web site.
They claim on their web site that the “ratings” they give each book are calculated using a “proprietary algorithm” from publicly available data. Whatever. This seems to be a way to prevent authors and purchasers from finding out how they really work.
I do not believe that they have any relationship with the people they claim recommend the books they list. That is not to say that those people don’t recommend those books, just that the don’t do it “for” this organization.
So my conclusion is that being on any of their lists is bogus and meaningless in terms of the value of my books. Such value would be impossible to determine because not one of the three volumes in my “Using and Administering Linux: Zero to SysAdmin” series is available yet so no sales figures can possibly be available for a few months at least.
You will need to determine for yourself whether my books are of any value to you or not. If you do find that they have some value – after you purchase and use them to learn how to be a Linux SysAdmin, please leave a legitimate review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or GoodReads. Thank you!
However, with all that said, it really did boost traffic on my personal web site considerably when I posted the article yesterday.
My source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simple-secret-being-big-deal-online-john-nemo
