Amazon Sales Rank: A Fickle Mistress
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 11:26 PM
I did not heed the advice I'd read so many times: do not pay attention to Amazon sales ranks because you'll only drive yourself crazy.
Well, I paid attention, and now I'm driving myself crazy.
It's not that long ago that I was in the millions, occasionally making jumps into the hundreds of thousands, then a couple of weeks ago I seemed to settle in and around the 150k mark. Then all of a sudden I'm leaping up to 30k, 20k, 10k, then I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might make it into four figures some time before publication - then last weekend came around, and I'm up into three figures, peaking at a majestic 802. This also meant I was charting in the crime/thriller/mystery categories, and got to #49 in the upcoming releases section (thanks to Josie for pointing that out).
I found out afterwards that the weekend's spike was due to being named as one of the best 50 summer reads in a feature in The Independent last Saturday. The 'Customers also bought' bar is almost entirely made up of other titles that were in that list, and I am now 'frequently bought with' a certain Stieg Larsson. That's not bad company, really.
But now I am checking my ranking almost as often as I check my email, even though everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) says not to, it's not a valid number. But here I am, checking again, and I am dismayed to find I have plummeted to the 3-4000 badlands. Still, that's probably not bad a week before publication for a debut novel.
But still...
Well, I paid attention, and now I'm driving myself crazy.
It's not that long ago that I was in the millions, occasionally making jumps into the hundreds of thousands, then a couple of weeks ago I seemed to settle in and around the 150k mark. Then all of a sudden I'm leaping up to 30k, 20k, 10k, then I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might make it into four figures some time before publication - then last weekend came around, and I'm up into three figures, peaking at a majestic 802. This also meant I was charting in the crime/thriller/mystery categories, and got to #49 in the upcoming releases section (thanks to Josie for pointing that out).
I found out afterwards that the weekend's spike was due to being named as one of the best 50 summer reads in a feature in The Independent last Saturday. The 'Customers also bought' bar is almost entirely made up of other titles that were in that list, and I am now 'frequently bought with' a certain Stieg Larsson. That's not bad company, really.
But now I am checking my ranking almost as often as I check my email, even though everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) says not to, it's not a valid number. But here I am, checking again, and I am dismayed to find I have plummeted to the 3-4000 badlands. Still, that's probably not bad a week before publication for a debut novel.
But still...
Labels: publishing, self-promotion
posted by Stuart Neville at 11:26 PM
4 Comments:
I've said it for two years and I'll say it again tonight. It's going to sell like crazy. You're going to be famous and have to have bodyguards. But you'll still have to associate with us peons cuz that's the kind of guy you are. :P
I've failed to meet my challenge of commenting on your posts daily. Sniff. Just a bit frantic right now. But still very, very exctited for you!
Still doing damn good for an author that no one has read before (although I did print off The Six last night and am looking forward to reading it later)
Stuart,
Acceptance is the first sign of recovery. Sign up for a free account at Metric Junkie and let us track your Amazon sales rank for you. Never miss an update again.
www.metricjunkie.com
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