Thursday, August 4, 2011

Pre-Order A MAN OF HIS WORD!

I am in a state of thrilled shock.

A Man of His Word is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com!

Here's a funny story about Amazon and it's rare and wondrous ranking systems. The moment the pre-order went live, my mother (Hi, Mom!) ordered herself six copies. This jumped me out of no ranking all the way to 42 thousand and some-odd change. But more than that, it put me at the following:

#3 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Romance > Series > Silhouette Desire


So on a sub-, sub-, sub-, sub-, sub list, I was number three! PARTY AT MY HOUSE!


Then my mother (Hi, Mom!) called my Gram (now 96 and 1/2 years old) and told her about the availablity. Gram told Mom to order her six books (both of these kind women overlooking the fact that I was going to GIVE them books). Mom did as requested.


Suddenly, I jumped up to the mid-39 thousands in rank and--get this:


#1 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Romance > Series > Silhouette Desire



For a brief, amazing time in my life, I was ranked higher than Brenda Jackson. (Yes, I expect you to know who she is. Look her up!)


While it is thrilling to say that I'm #1!, the cold, hard facts are, I sold 12 books. Just 12. Not hundred, not thousand. Twelve lonely little books. To my mommy. And in the bigger scheme of things, I was still 39-thousand-some-odd. 


But for those of you who are wondering what makes a best-seller on Amazon, the take-away fact is that unless you're in the top 500 on the Amazon Bestsellers Rank, selling as many as two books will significantly impact your rankings, potentially jumping you from 100,000 up to 30,000. What does that mean? That you sold two books. 


So if you're new to this whole Authorial thing, like many of us are, don't let checking the rankings be something that takes you away from writing. The book comes first. Rankings come in at about 312th.

3 comments:

Blythe Gifford said...

Most exciting is that YOU HAVE A BOOK AVAILABLE!!! YAY! (But the rankings? Well, I had a good one once. I took a screen shot and sent it to my editor. We authors need all the strokes we can get!)

Sarah M. Anderson said...

Oh, screen shots were taken, Blythe. I didn't say I wasn't excited. I'm just trying not to let that plus a couple of people who have started gushing over me go to my head!

lucylucia said...

Sally - I'll be pre-ordering today!! yay!