Okay, we all know (you do know, don’t you?) that bestseller lists are determined by many different factors which depend on the particular list.
The New York Times bestseller list, for example, is probably the most famous list of its kind, the one most writers would kill to get on. But how are its rankings determined? It’s reportedly based on weekly sales reports from selected independent book sellers and chain bookstores and book wholesalers in the United States. How do they select them? How representative are they? Do the list compilers manipulate things when someone like J.K.Rowling or a religious writer dominates the list for a long time? Let’s just say there have been controversies.
Other lists have their own quirks, and the list my novel Chasing the Minotaur just showed up on is no exception. Chasing the Minotaur cracked the top 100 list of bestselling paid (as opposed to free) “metaphysical” books in the Kindle store on Amazon.com. As I write this, it’s sitting at #89, on the same page with books by Jack Kerouac, James Redfield, and Deepack Chopra. It may be off the list an hour from now. Or up at number 32.
And there’s the quirk of the Amazon lists. They track actual sales numbers by the minute. Their sales ranks also take into account whether a book’s sales figures are climbing, falling, or staying the same. There may be a bit of occult prognostication in there as well.
But you know what? I don’t care at the moment. Chasing the Minotaur is a damn good book about a story of discovery, both artistic and personal, and it deserves to be up in those lists. So I’m just enjoying it.
It could use some actual review, though. Sheesh! For readers of this blog, who I know would love to read it and leave a review online, you can get yourself a free copy for one week only (until May 25/11) at Smashwords. Just click on the buy button, enter the coupon code UW72L, and you should be able to download it in the format of your choice for free. If you’re a Kindle user like me, you download the Kindle format to your computer, then plug in your Kindle and just click-and-drag, or copy, the file from your computer’s hard drive onto your Kindle. Works fine. Trust me.
Or if artsy metaphysical is not your thing, check out some of my other stories available under my name – ghosts, SF, literary, historical, children’s fiction, even a romance or two. Something for everyone.
Until next week…
