Monday 6 July 2009

amazon is another country


I said I would get obsessed with Amazon rankings, just like eveyrone else who ever lived and published a book. Here is the unbelievably boring news.

At various points, people pre-order copies of KSC. I know this because the ranking goes from 500,000 to 10,000 in a moment, slips quickly into the high 100,000s and then steadily down. Except Amazon famously keep changing their algorithms, and I know a few people have ordered in the last couple of weeks, but no movement. So maybe these purchases will only count when the book is actually released. If so, that's probably how my publisher would like it (grouping looks better) which makes me think that this might be a change suggested by publishers of books with large pre-sales.

Oh, wait //checks something// this doesn't work. The next Dan Brown is at eleven in the charts. In which case: I've got nothing.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I watch my Amazon ratings like a hawk, personally. Have you started using salesrankexpress yet? That's the best one-click (well, two if you've got US and UK editions) method.

Unknown said...

Oh, hey, this is James Palmer - I wrote the Bloody White Baron, and I've been reading the blog for some time thanks to shameless self-googling.

Unknown said...

Until your publishers tell you you have frightened them with your intricate knowledge of your Amazon position, you are nowhere.

Robert Hudson said...

I'm very glad to see you, James. Did you see BWB's appearance in the match reports (Google "bloody white baron" + spencerclub)? One of my team went to school with an Ungern von Sternberg.

Unknown said...

There's a bunch of them about, mostly from the German side nowadays. I ran into Ungern's great-great-grandniece when I went to see a German friend at Oxford, who turned out to be rooming next to her.

Ungern is in the new Charlie Stross novel due out next year, by the way - THE FULLER MEMORANDUM.

Robert Hudson said...

I read around about Charlie Stross after reading Halting State earlier this year. He is terrifyingly industrious. The Fuller Memorandum sounds all the fun in the world.

What are you doing next? (I will not be hurt by non-answer. I don't really talk about underway work.) You can email me at hotmail (if you want). I'm robbiehudson.