The Numbers Game

As one might imagine, when an author has a new book published, he or she spends a lot of time following its activity minutely.  And certain surprising things pop up.

One of those is that most people don't believe it when told that a single sale can make a difference.  That if they buy something or don't, it was any impact at all.  Based on my experience with my first novel, I saw that it really did, but convincing others of that is another thing entirely.

But here's another way of putting that.

I was checking the sales of the Kindle edition of my novel, The Wild Roses.  That's because at $3.99, more of them sell.  It's simply more interesting to see the number go up than watch paint dry.  But every once in a while I do check the numbers for the paperback edition of the book.  And last night, I took a look.  To my delight, it added one new sale.

Now, keep that in mind -- sales increased by one book.  One.

And The Wild Roses jumped 45,000 spots on the Best Seller list!!! 

Now, to be clear, the book isn't very high on the "Best Seller" list, to the degree that using the phrase "Best Seller" not only requires quotation marks, but also gall.  But it's their word, and so it must be used.  But before I refreshed the page, it had been around #81,000 (take that Stephen King!) -- and after that one, single book sale it was now --

But I'll go a leap farther.  Apparently, all this talk about The Wild Roses got someone to buy a copy of my previous novel, A Christmas Carol 2:  The Return of Scrooge (since after all, a Summer heatwave is the perfect time for Christmas reading...)  It had been ranked a proud #392,000 on the Amazon hit parade.  But after that one sale, it is now...#108,083.  That's right -- the sale of ONE book jumped it 284,00 places!

So, if anyone every tells you that your vote counts -- you can believe them or not -- hey, sometimes it does.  But if they tell you that it actually matters when it comes to book sales...believe them.

For what it's worth, Amazon lowered the price of The Wild Roses from $12.79 down to $10.10 -- so, if anyone was thinking of getting it in paperback, now's a good time before their whim changes and it returns to regular price.  (And to be clear, I make more royalties on the Kindle eBook than the paperback.) 

Buy it or not.  Your choice.  Get it in paperback or Kindle -- your choice.  I just wanted to let you know that even buying a single book (at this level...) does, actually, bizarrely, make a difference.

And now, the obligatory cover.  But I'll make it small.

The Wild Roses.  Like the Three Musketeers, but with women.  Not ghost-written by JK Rawling.