Riding the Bestseller Wave

A strange thing happened on Wednesday and Thursday. My YA novel shot through the ranks at Amazon. I found out what it’s like to ride the crest of the wave.

Ever since I first published Screwing Up Time, I’ve been trying to market it on a shoestring budget. When other authors said, “My budget for this novel is $5,000,” I said, “My budget for this novel is 5 bucks.” And I was okay with that.

But it’s very hard to get the word out when you don’t have a megaphone. Still, my efforts paid off and I broke small sales barriers. And I was/still am very thankful. Then, I found E-Reader News Today. And they were willing to advertise my novel (given it had enough good reviews and I was willing to sell it at a bargain rate—99 cents) for a part of the royalties. I figured it would be a win-win situation. If the book did well, I’d get a lot of exposure. If not, I wouldn’t have lost a big investment. So I submitted my book.

I hoped and prayed for the best, but kept my expectations very low. The site warned me that YA books aren’t the biggest sellers in the e-book biz. (I already knew that.)

Wednesday came around. I had a couple of sales. Good. By afternoon, I had a few more sales. By evening, I was pretty excited. The sales were really coming in. And by Thursday morning, Screwing Up Time was ranked #6 in Amazon Kindle’s Teen Literature and Fiction. It was only two spots below The Hobbit!

It was the most amazing feeling. People were interested in my book. I had my techo-son do a screen capture so I could savor the moment later because I knew it wouldn’t last. And it hasn’t—this morning my book has slipped to #15, which is still amazing. And the sales are still very good. Who knows what will happen today—Fridays are much better sale than Thursdays. But even if I slide down the charts, that’s okay. For a moment, my book was on the top of the charts. 

Advertising

When I was in college, class titles were kind of self-explanatory. I took stuff like Restoration Literature, which was literature of the Restoration period. (Surprise, surprise.) And World Lit was literature of...wait for it...the world.

My daughter (the math major) is registering for classes in spring semester. And she’s getting emails from professors about their classes. They explain the classes they’re teaching. For example, “Non-Linear Operations Research.”  The blurb is “using scientific methods to determine the best way to analyze, operate, and predict (yada, yada, yada).” Then the professor listed “celebrated applications” of this type of math study. Celebrated? Really? Does anyone celebrate math?

But there’s more behind these emails. They’re worded like advertisements. Hey, take my math class, you’ll love it. It’s “celebrated.” I suspect the profs are trying to make sure that they have enough students for the class. You see, the department rotates professors through the classes that no one wants to teach. And who wants to teach remedial math? (Though most of those are taught by grad students; Ariel’s friend had a student whine, “You want us to memorize three formulas?! But that’s too hard.”)

Or perhaps it’s to combat RateMyProfessor.com. Here is a sample of an average entry of a math professor: Nice guy, who’s really good at math. However, he has only a nodding acquaintance with English. The average grade in his class is a 30, but it’s okay because at the end he distributes a few good grades just for the heck of it.

So I can understand why they’ve resorted to advertising (i.e., propaganda). Maybe the lit departments should consider doing something similar. I can imagine how they’d advertise Restoration Lit. Instead of “obscure literature written by giddy royalists who never met a clause they didn’t love,” it would read “forgotten plays and essays by writers who are thrilled to be rid of Milton/Cromwell and are pre-modern precursors to the bawdy situation comedy.” Literature studies would never be the same.

May Cause Death

Okay, I have a question. Why on earth do pharmaceutical companies advertise their prescription meds to normal/non-medical people? I mean “hello,” it’s not as if I can go to the store and buy them. What do they want from me? Am I supposed to go to the doctor and whine, “I want the new uber-high-potency-give-me-perfect-health medicine”? Isn’t the reason I pay my doctor big bucks because he/she is supposed to know what medication is correct for whatever’s wrong with me?

I suspect the pharmaceutical company wants me to whine at my doctor. Instead of the generic meds, which are cheap, they need to sell their new, weird variation, which doesn’t have a generic, so they want me to want it. But I don’t care. In fact, the ads irritate me. After all, who’s paying for those ads? The consumer!!

And doctors have no idea what the new meds cost (BTW, not all pharmacies charge the same price for the same medicine) or which insurance company covers which drug. When Jake’s doctor prescribed a medication, the cost was $250. Chad, our favorite pharmacist tech, said, “Uh, just so you know, you could get over the counter med A for $6 and prescription med B, which is $8, and if you take them together, they do the same thing at the same strength as the $250 medication.”I called Jake’s doctor, and she gave us a prescription for med B. She also apologized—she had no idea that the medicine she first prescribed was so ridiculously expensive. $250 instead of $14. No wonder health care costs are ludicrous.

And here’s another thing; when they advertise their drug, they’re required to list the side effects. But listing the side effects does NOT make me want to buy the new-uber-high-potency-give-me-perfect-health drug. I mean, thirst and sore-throat are one thing. But what about loss of sensation, heart attack, mood swings, weight gain, appendages falling off, and possession by the prince of darkness. Okay, I made up the last two. But death is usually listed as one of the side effects. Hmm. Doesn’t make me eager to try the new u-h-p-g-m-p-h drug. Let alone whine for it at the doctor’s office. Kind of counter-productive. But then, advertising has never been about logic.

N.B. My novel Screwing Up Time, is being featured this week on Ken Hoss's blog. Click here to visit Ken's "Indie Authors in the Spotlight" page.