9.26.2007

Amazon

Current sales rank: #20,713 in books. I announced at poker the other night (after a large martini) that those Amazon sales numbers rank all Amazon merchandise together: books, electric shavers, snow-shoes, you name it. That was obviously wrong, though it generated an interesting discussion. Still, the current number ain't bad, and it seems to generally be trending downward.

Currently #81 overall in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Police Procedurals, and that ain't bad, either. Currently #15 in bestselling new & future releases in Police Procedurals, updated hourly.

Amazon's weird and dangerous for obsessives like me, mostly because of its frequently updated sales feedback. It's very mysterious, too—the numbers seem to be all over the map, veering from 250,000-something, say, to 50,000 in under twelve hours. There's also the business of reader reviews, which are fine and democratic in theory, though one worries a bit about the handful of compulsives who instantly post reviews of thousands of books every year, the moment Amazon releases them. But hey, whatever floats they boat.

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