[Window Bar]

Do any of the old hands have any experience with sales rankings at the eBook stores, such as Kindle, Diesel, KoboBooks, B&N, etc.? "Spirit Thorn" has been live on most them for only a few weeks. Amazon's "Kindle" shows no ranking, which probably means no sales. Diesel-eBooks, on the other hand, shows a ranking of about 43,000 , which would put the book in their top several percent ... assuming the ranking is applied toward everything. If it's sci-fi/fantasy only, then it's more like top half (which seems more probable).

Why do I ask? Because it would allow me to focus my promotion on outlets that are succeeding for me, rather than to boil a thin soup everywhere. And yes, I could wait 'til end-of-quarter (or payday sixty days past end-of-quarter) to get an answer to my question, but that doesn't help with decisions today.

Thanks for whatever info you might have. -- WB

[kmtolan]

Good luck with those. Another useful tool for promotion is to put a tracking tool such as statcounter.com's free offering on your author's website and steer your promo to your site instead where they can use your buy links to these vendors. It can give you an idea of your promo success as well.

Kerry

[Window Bar]

Good luck with those. Another useful tool for promotion is to put a tracking tool such as statcounter.com's free offering on your author's website and steer your promo to your site instead where they can use your buy links to these vendors. It can give you an idea of your promo success as well. -- Kerry

Hey Kerry -- Thanks for the input. I do have a basic hit counter (as furnished by Serif, my site-building software). Is statcounter more sophisticated than just basic hits, with a choice of unique hits?

BTW, I just paid a visit to your site, and I must pass along my compliments.

-- WB

[kmtolan]

Statcounter allows you to drill down into things like search key words and even what percentage of browsers visited you. Even has a map so you can see everyone in the world who dropped by. Log file is limited to 500 entries (it rolls over) for free accounts but for me that's more than plenty.

Speaking of web sites, if any site sets the mood, it's yours. Very impressed by the fast upload of the splash screen.

Kerry

[Window Bar]

Kerry -- Hello again, and many many thanks. Statcounter is a must-do on our site.

As per the artwork and site mechanics on the Spirit Thorn site, I wish I could take credit for it. Hats off to Bob Jackson Miner, my VeraVoz partner. We've still got a ways to go on it, of course: Music, some audible reads, a more interactive blog ... the road goes on and on.

-- WB

[Window Bar]

More info on Diesel eBooks (approachable via Smashwords.com, an uploader/wholesaler in the eBook market): The rankings that Diesel posts for books are their rankings ACROSS THE BOARD, rather than separate ranking numbers posted for each genre. (Exception: They also rank books as #1-#50 within each genre's "Bestseller" list.)

Spirit Thorn's current ranking of #9181 (out of 2.2 million), is therefore within the upper 1/2% of all books they carry. I've watched the book slowly creep upward for the 4 weeks it's been at Diesel. This makes me feel great, of course. However, I still don't know how many book sales are required to make it into the upper 1/2%. Is it 4 books? Is it 4000? I won't know until a month or two after the quarter's end -- unless someone at this illustrious forum happens to know.

I have, however, ascertained that the #50 rank in the Sci-Fi genre only is occupied by a book that ranks #1169 over all. This means that Spirit Thorn must increase sales by an entire order of magnitude before it is actually displayed as a best seller.

There's still a take home message here, folks: Diesel eBooks is proving itself a valid marketer for an unknown author who wishes to try his/her books out on real readers. The book ranks well even though it's up against the work of known writers. Compare this to Amazon, a company that is perhaps 10x the size of Diesel: Amazon's display system seems, overwhelmingly, to favor the tried-and-true. As far as I can ascertain, at Amazon Spirit Thorn has had no sales whatsoever, in spite of being up against a similar number of gross listings as at Diesel.

[Chris Northern]

I have, however, ascertained that the #50 rank in the Sci-Fi genre only is occupied by a book that ranks #1169 over all. This means that Spirit Thorn must increase sales by an entire order of magnitude before it is actually displayed as a best seller.

Hi, thanks for posting this info. I just noticed that Prison of Power, one of my own humble efforts, has a Diesel Sales Rank of 1910, which seemed like a high number to me but I was still happy to see it, the first Sales Rank ever for me! Woohoo!

But from what I'm seeing here, 1910 could put Prison of Power within shouting distance of the top 100 Fantasy downloads? More or less?

[MLSawyer]

Will be interesting to see the answers to your questions. Sorry I can't help - I only just uploaded a pdf to smashwords (as I'm still trying the time to format for the site) It's my first novel which is set to be released in March for my book launch (I guess you would say it's pretty small press, but exciting none the less)

- I've put a coupon on my blog here to see if anyone has the spare time to read it for free and give feedback, so we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, good luck and look forward to hearing your success in a few months time (fingers crossed for you).