It's now three weeks since "Kidnapped" was launched, and in between nipping off to spend time with the US Marines in Afghanistan, I have been doing various publicity interviews for the book. It is a varied bag, taking me to the Holy Grail of travel writing, Radio Four's "Excess Baggage" with Sandi Toksvig, via local papers such as the Southwark News, and also slightly more off-track outlets such as Sabado (a Portuguese language news magazine). What the effect of these various efforts is on sales, however, is very hard to tell. The only real indicator is the book's ranking on Amazon, which has a real-time sales ranking for every book in its stock worldwide. As I write, "Kidnapped" is currently at number 10,506. Which doesn't great, I admit, until you compare it with how other books are doing, for example tomes like the Geological Society's gripping read, "Deformation Mechanisms, Rheology and Tectonics", which is currently at number 4,787,712.
Broadly speaking, as far as I can work out, any book that has a ranking of four figures or less is doing okay, although they do seem to fluctuate rather wildly: Kidnapped, for example, has gone as high as 5,000 and as low as about 50,000 within a couple of days. The way it works, according to this article here, is that each book gets a vote whenever a copy is purchased, and is re-ranked every hour. It isn't an absolute measure of sales quantity, but a measure of how a book is doing relative to others, so books that aren't selling will gradually shift down the ranks. Which means, though, as far as I can tell, that if half a dozen copies are sold within one particular hour, it may rocket up quite a bit, while if there is a fallow period, it will plummet towards six figures again, despite this not being much of a real indicator of how it's doing overall. The upshot of all this being, however, that one gets completely hooked on checking Amazon all the time (I have already looked about three times today, and will probably check again before bed). It's more addictive than email.
Broadly speaking, as far as I can work out, any book that has a ranking of four figures or less is doing okay, although they do seem to fluctuate rather wildly: Kidnapped, for example, has gone as high as 5,000 and as low as about 50,000 within a couple of days. The way it works, according to this article here, is that each book gets a vote whenever a copy is purchased, and is re-ranked every hour. It isn't an absolute measure of sales quantity, but a measure of how a book is doing relative to others, so books that aren't selling will gradually shift down the ranks. Which means, though, as far as I can tell, that if half a dozen copies are sold within one particular hour, it may rocket up quite a bit, while if there is a fallow period, it will plummet towards six figures again, despite this not being much of a real indicator of how it's doing overall. The upshot of all this being, however, that one gets completely hooked on checking Amazon all the time (I have already looked about three times today, and will probably check again before bed). It's more addictive than email.
