We’re number 2000-ish!

Yesterday and earlier today, I was in meetings with soon-to-be author/publishers and telling them that watching your own ebook sales rank is the ultimate in unproductive timesuck. Now Amazon goes and does this — check out Author Rank, where they list the most popular authors on an hourly basis.

If you have an Amazon Author Central account you can actually see where you are as stacked up against the greats. And when looking at a graph like this, an hourly account of your winning and failing, you can:

1. Be depressed.
2. Be excited.
3. Even more obsessively hit Refresh.

So the screenshot above is my best number. That is, I am currently the #2,919 Contemporary Romance author in all of the Amazon Kindle store. I peaked this week on October 4 at #1,956 (alas, I didn’t even know it! I should have basked in the glory). In all of Amazon, when lumped together with nonfiction and paperback-only, I drop to 140,000-ish.

Am I depressed? Not at all. I live in a city with 12 million people. Being #2,919 means something to me.
Am I excited? Yes. I wonder if I can do anything (that I’m not already doing) to make this a more impressive graph.
Am I even more obsessively hitting Refresh? Um, yeah.

Congratulations to the 2,918 contemporary romance authors more popular than me, at this hour! And to the many authors, a lot of them indie publishers, who are doing so well on this list! Any of you willing to share secrets in exchange for a cupcake? 🙂

Tags: amazon, publishing

Mina V. Esguerra