Big thanks to everyone who asked me for a book in the badge, signature etc promotion event. I was going to order them on Friday but then I noticed that merely mentioning the book on the blog seemed to have sent my Amazon ranking from 180,029 to 14,710. That's an impressive leap in some ways, though even at best it means that there were 14,709 books selling more than EBCB. (I think that's what the ranking means.) I presume this is the result of some kind person just buying the book for themselves. (Or it's a statistical anomaly that just happens randomly, a kind of tidal effect in rankings.) This must be what life in the long tail looks like. Tiny moves are magnified into excitement as you whip up and down the tail, all to little effect in the real world.
Unless you pay a lot of attention to your ranking on Amazon you don't really notice this stuff. I only spotted it because Adrian was kind enough to build a ranktracker into twitter.
Anyway, I thought I'd wait until the number had settled down again before I ordered 20+ books, just to see what happens. So I'll do that in the next couple of days. Sorry I've not replied to all your emails yet, I'll do that once the books have arrived and they're ready to be posted (and for people who interested in postage to the States etc I'll work out what that might be and work out whether I can afford it or whether I might have to ask you for a contribution.)
Does it work the other way around? I mean, how much does Amazon's ranking make a difference to your sales (as opposed to your self-esteem, which I'm sure is also worth a lot)?
Posted by: Andy Polaine | February 20, 2008 at 10:19 AM