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Fiction Debut Author Roundtable
9.
AOTW: Do you monitor your Amazon ranking, or sales numbers vigilantly? If so, what do you find the best driver of them to be?
Stella Pope Duarte: No, I do not have time to monitor. My writing started by way of a dream in 1995. This is a miraculous adventure for me, and I feel I am being guided and cared for. So far, this has been true. I have been mandated to write, if I do that, everything else will fall into place.
David Rosenfelt: I'm not obsessive about it; I haven't checked in almost twenty minutes. I have no idea whatsoever about what drives them. Let me know if you find out.
Steve Almond: Yeah, I check the Amazon ranking. It's idiotic, because the numbers don't really mean much. But writers, especially scrubs like me, have no other way of gauging how we're doing. It's not like we can check some database. I do know that Amazon sent out an email that mentioned my book and the sales rank zoomed from, like, 60,000 to 700 in the space of a day. So I thought, wow, I'm gonna be a star. But then, of course, it sunk back down the next week.
Masha Hamilton: No, I don't monitor vigilantly. As to what drives them, I have no idea and am eager to read what other authors have to say on this topic.
Karen V. Siplin: I do check my rankings online. I was amazed at the impact Cosmopolitan magazine had on them. There was an enormous jump in numbers in one day.
Jill Bialosky: Since the book hasn't come out yet I haven't been monitoring. I have an obsessive personality, however, and imagine in late July I'll be monitoring pretty heavily.
Terrence Cheng: I've been monitoring, even though I try not to! So far, radio interviews seem to have the biggest impact, but we've been building up steam for a while in terms of reviews coming in, bookstore marketing, and publicity. They all hit at about the same time I saw a jump. But radio has had the broadest reach of all of those, so I say --- unofficially --- radio. We'll see what happens if I ever get on TV!
Jay Nussbaum: I'll have to defer on this to the other, more experienced, authors on this panel.
Michael Redhill: I don't monitor Amazon. In terms of sales, I think reviews and word-of-mouth, plus good distribution, is the key.
Ad Hudler: I am trying to NOT look at the Amazon rankings, because they drive you crazy and eat you alive. You have to remind yourself that this is only one outlet for sales. I think the numbers are driven by a little of everything --- word of mouth, Internet marketing, radio and TV spots, newspaper reviews.
Kate Manning: I check Amazon a little too often to feel healthy about it. Most writers I know get obsessed for a while, with their moods rising and falling with the numbers on the screen. As far as what drives sales, I have no earthly idea.
Arthur Phillips: I have found that the thorazine-drip is helping now to prevent me from checking too often.
David Benioff: Yes, although once the number sinks below 10,000 it's a little too mortifying to check. I imagine a giant Amazon warehouse in Nevada, crowded with Grisham and Clancy books, and somewhere in a dusty corner a lone copy of The 25th Hour waits, like an unloved mutt at a dog shelter.
The best driver of the Amazon ranking was Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times.
Gary Shteyngart: I'm starting to look a little but I know I should look away. Almost every writer wants to be loved, but even better than the right numbers would be two or three people walking up to me in the East Village, patting me on the head and saying, "Good author, good author."
Ali Smith: I occasionally peek, and always end up wanting to argue with/punch/send a lovely big bunch of flowers to the people who write the reviews. I don't know what drives the figures. Being on shortlists probably helps.
Jill A. Davis: Amazon has rankings?
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