John Y. Brown, III: Book Sales

Incredible!

Just got to view a graph of my book sales during its first week.

All I can say is that if this were a roller coaster instead of a book sales chart, it would be epic! Everyone would want to try it!

In one week the book rocke…ted (downward) from the top 11,000 books selling on Amazon.com to the top 396,865. That is about a 4000% drop. Which is something few authors can claim. And have hard data to back it up. I claim it and have the data and am sharing it now.

There are a total of 8 million books on Amazon.com. So, in theory, being ranked 496,865th isn’t as bad as it sounds.

Except that it is.

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It sounds so …..um, what’s the word?….Sounds so far behind everyone else. I guess that’s what I’m saying. I mean…have you ever had to pass up 385,000 of anything to get back to where you started? At what point do you look at that blur of 385,000 somethings and say to yourself, “You know what? I’ll try to pass some. Maybe 20 or 25. But the other 384,975 or 384,980 can have it.” I think I’m about to reach that point.

Another option that I am going to suggest to Amazon.com is to re-frame how they describe rankings in my sales territory. Tomorrow I’ll probably hit, say, rank 511,150th. I’m not going to tell anyone about that when it happens. 396,865th is bad enough. But I might be tempted to brag about it if Amazon.com described the ranking instead as “You are now ranked in the bottom 7.5 million in book sales listed on Amazon.com” Something about being in the bottom 7.5 million makes a bigger statement, makes me feel part of something bigger, and doesn’t sound so darn lonely as 396,865.