RedHotRomance

This has been a truly bizarre week, and leaves me with only one thing—well, maybe more than one—to blog about. Sales rankings, or, to put it bluntly and succinctly, the numbers that scream OHMYGAWDTHEY’REBUYINGMYBOOK..or not. When Wolf Tales first listed at Barnes and Noble online for pre-orders, I checked it out. The ranking was at some obscene number like 476,104 which told me that EVERY other book B&N listed was more popular. So I did what I imagine a lot of authors do, decided to ignore B&N because that massive number screaming "not selling" was more depressing than not. Then I heard from a reader that she’d actually received her copy of Wolf Tales from B&N—they were shipping six weeks ahead of the book's release date. I waited almost a month before going back to look at my ranking numbers. They had broken the 10,000 mark! I was hooked. I started checking every day...7,345, then 7,225, 6801 and today at 6,696...someone, somewhere is buying Wolf Tales and might actually be reading it. The funny thing is, I’m also in an anthology that released about the same time Wolf Tales began shipping. I just found out A CHANGELING FOR ALL SEASONS, has been in Amazon’s Top 100 Romances for the past week, hovering between #56 and #80. Not bad for a first print book from a tiny little independent press. When I checked the B&N site online, I discovered it was also outselling Wolf Tales by a large margin. I had to laugh...I’ve been following the wrong book! If I’d just concentrated on Changeling, I might not have spent so much time agonizing over Wolf Tales, which just tells you I’m probably a lot better off not even looking at numbers. So, I go back to the B&N site to double check, and on a whim take a look to see if Sexy Beast, coming out from Kensington in March, is listed yet. Yep, there it is. No picture yet. Ranking is 476,104. Oh my.