Inkwell Guest: Jennifer August

Hi, everyone! Today I’m pleased to introduce to you a seriously hot writer. (She is!) While I’m off horseback riding on the beach, enjoy this fabulous post, okay?

First of all, Michelle and Man, congratulations on your wedding! I know you’ll be blissfully happy. – Michelle here – AW! Thanks, Jen! 🙂 –

Thanks, too, for letting me hijack your blog while you’re on your honeymoon. I pondered long and hard what to write about. The Texas Rangers immediately came to mind ‘cause we’re both baseball fans, but no. Then I thought about an insightful article on something writing related. Again, no.

Both are fine subjects, but I kept getting distracted. You see, at the end of October, I posted a book to Amazon’s Kindle store. A short erotica with a Cinderella twist I titled Strokes at Midnight. You can probably guess the sub-genre. But just in case, it’s got a bit of a BDSM slant to it.

Anyway, I’d heard about the new surge in e-book self-publishing and I figured, why not? This particular story was one I’d written a couple of years ago, specifically for a contest and had no intentions of trying to make it longer in order to fit a traditional print house requirement.

Here’s where I get distracted: I uploaded it on October 29. Within a few hours, I was able to go to the Amazon site and look it up (click here to check it out!). I admired the bodacious cover (it’s reallllly hot) then scrolled down to see what else was on the page. Now, I know about sales rankings on Amazon. My first book, Her Dark Master, is available through Amazon, too.

But when I saw my ranking as 35,765 I was pretty stoked. Yay! I posted on my Facebook page that I had uploaded the book and gave a link, then went back to work. A couple of hours later, I went back to the Strokes page, hit refresh … and my breath caught. My sales ranking was now up to 22,340! What? Did that mean 13,000 or so people bought my book? Woohoo!! I clicked refresh again, but the number stayed the same. Hmmm.

I got interrupted (darn work) and wasn’t able to get back for another hour or so. I hit refresh – 16,902! Woohoo! This was when I figured out they update the numbers every hour.

So, for the next several days, I constantly hit the refresh button and found myself in joys of higher rankings like 7,756 and the crushing blow of being really, REALLY low. Like 97,499 low. Gasp! It’s been six weeks since I uploaded Strokes and I’m still hitting that darn F5 hour after hour. It’s like an obsession. I still haven’t figured out how the numbers are calculated – I mean, how can you sell two books and jump up 30,000 slots? I totally trust they know what they are doing and am confident they have some sort of super secret, superior and intricate formula for said calculations.

Most of all, I know that I have a new form of Solitaire with which to distract myself from other things.

‘Scuse me, I have to go refresh!