1. at 99 cents, 1 in 14 people will buy book one right away.
2. at $3, only 1 in 25 will buy book one. In the UK, however, this is closer to 1 in 10.
3. giveaways on Mondays have 2.5X the volume than weekends for my genres. I think my target demographic is now computer people surfing to avoid work.
4. Volumes on UK weekend sales are so low, anyone can hit top twenty in a category. (17 a day)
5. there are browsing categories for e-books that e-books cannot select (like Arthurian), as well as categories you can select that don't show on browsing (like paranormal). Some of these dead categories have so few books they can't even make a top twenty and should be trimmed.
6. The easiest categories to score in are the least trafficked at therefore sell the least. Do a comparison of number twenty on each target front page. [ see table below. ]
7. Big publishers get to cheat and put their book in 3 or 4 categories, not just 2. (Does "Game of Thrones" really belong in Sci-Fi adventure as well as the other categories?)
8. Past the top hundred in browsing, your book's sales rank number is meaningless. #109 could be 2000, while #110 100K and #111 4000. They are RANDOM.
9. I tend to get better reviews and more loyal fans from weekend readers.
10. there are a lot of quirks in the system. Several paper books show up multiple times in a list, and a lot of books cheat on the category. Several of the Arthurian books are actually "erotica". Some of the anthology books haven't sold a copy yet this year and are still on the list.
GENRE RANK of book 20
| action adventure | 668 |
| children's literature | 726 |
| romance fantasy | 802 |
| sci fi adventure | 879 |
| fantasy epic | 1003 |
| fantasy contemporary | 1070 |
| world lit mythology | 1865 |
| horror occult | 3000 |
| fantasy historical | 3191 |
| sci fi high tech | 3237 |
| mystery thriller tech | 4275 |
| horror ghost | 4853 |
| short stories | 6416 |
| fantasy series | 10759 |
| horror dark fantasy | 15558 |
| sci fi series | 16398 |
| religious sci fi | 16666 |
| sci fi anthology | 180287 |
| fantasy Arthurian | 369692 |
| horror anthology | 472480 |
Scott, you too can 'cheat' the way publishers do using Shelfari to expand your categories...
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