Well, this is a blow to my author’s platform. Not to mention my every notion of book promotion/success. You see, and I blush in shame to admit this, but the work experiencing the most success right now is the one I have failed to mention anywhere!
That’s right. No publicity, no option to buy a copy on my website, no tweets, not even any Facebook posts (not until after it had already taken off). So, what gives? Well, I have theories but no real answer. WOOL is in a slightly different genre than my other books (post-apocalyptic), which might have something to do with it.
It could be the length and the fact that the sales are mostly going nuts on the Kindle store. The physical book is a mere 65 pages or so, consumable in under two hours of reading. Perhaps this fits into the Tweeting culture of short ideas that can be completed, briefly contemplated, and then move on to what’s next.
It could be the price, though I’ve had other books tagged at $0.99. It could be the positive reviews, but most of my books have these in droves. Maybe it’s the combination of lots of these factors.
What I don’t want to admit is that the story is just that good. That inspires two fears: (1) Everything else I’ve written sucks. And (2) Maybe I’ll never write anything this good again.
So this very limited success is troubling. Not just because I don’t know what caused it, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to duplicate it. And I don’t know what kind of legs it has. Each time I expect it to falter, it picks up speed. Last night, it rose to #20 on the general science fiction page of the Kindle store. That ranks it as the very last book on the front page. For those of us who never tread beyond the first page of Google results, this seems like a momentous occasion. And once again, I expect the story to have topped out. Seriously, this time.
#708 in all of the paid Kindle store. That’s weird. Unexplainable. Unreproducable. It terrifies me as much as thrills me. Maybe, finally mentioning it here, on the platform that is supposed to generate success and sales, I’ll finally put an end to the nonsense. Who knows?
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