BESTSELLER STATUS? OR NOT?

Well , I don't know. Confused or what? I proudly boasted in my last post about being on Kindle's Bestseller List. and I was. But I'm now wondering if these lists actually have anything to do with sales.

According to my own data, Down Among the Dead Men is currently selling poorly, yet according to kindle's Bestseller List, it's selling better than my other two, who both  trail DADM. Yet Dead before Morning has always been my bestseller according to amazon's KDP accounting and Death Line, which was published on 20 March, is a better seller in April than DADM. What am I to make of this?

Are the Bestseller Lists so much hogwash and do they periodically switch the Lists around so as to give every author a taste of Bestseller status? Was it Buggin's Turn when mine featured on the List?

 

I wish I knew. Any comments if you have experience of this would be gratefully received.

BARGAIN BOOK! 99 CENTS / 71P

For a short time only! Death Line, my latest Rafferty & Llewellyn mystery ebooks is going cheap! 99c / 71p.

Blurb of Death Line

Jasper Moon, internationally renowned ‘seer to the stars’, had signally failed to foresee his own future. He is found dead on his consulting-room floor, his skull crushed with a crystal ball and, all, around him, his office in chaos.

Meanwhile, Ma Rafferty does some star-gazing of her own and is sure she can predict Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty’s future –   by the simple expedient of organizing it herself. She is still engaged on her crusade to get Rafferty married off to a good Catholic girl with child-bearing hips. But Rafferty has a cunning plan to sabotage her machinations. Only trouble is, he needs Sergeant Llewellyn’s cooperation and he isn’t sure he’s going to get it.

During their murder investigations, Inspector Rafferty and Sergeant Llewellyn discover a highly incriminating video concealed in Moon’s flat, a video which, if made public, could wreck more than one life. Was the famous astrologer really a vicious sexual predator? Gradually, connections begin to emerge between Moon and others in the small Essex town of Elmhurst. But how is Rafferty to solve the case when all of his suspects have seemingly unbreakable alibis?

READ AN EXCERPT:

http://www.geraldineevans.com/wednesday_14_december_2010_021.htm

WATCH A TRAILER OF DEATH LINE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTOg75pLNzc

DEATH LINE - available now on kindle for 99c/71p. Soon to be available on nook, iPad, iPhone, sobo, android, Mac, etc. Buy it. You know it makes sense.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004T3FQR6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Line-Rafferty-Llewellyn-crime/dp/B004T3FQR6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1300799763&sr=1-3

DEATH LINE PUBLISHED WITH TRAILER

Well, it's now up on kindle, minus the cover at the moment, as I received this after the book content. But that will adorn the book shortly. But what I've done differently with this one is to embed my trailer into the actual book. How advanced is that? Needless to say, I wasn't responsible for it - I just asked and it was done by my lovely ebook formatters hitch@Q.com and her staff.

Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTOg75pLNzc

Hitch thinks it's a hoot, but she may be biased!

Have any of you embedded a trailer in an ebook? I have to admit this is a new concept for me. I'm still gobsmacked about the whole ebook revolution. It seems like some sort of miracle to an ignored midlister like me. Now we can perform on something like a level playing field with the bestsellers.

I love being able to set my own price, decide on my own cover and control what extras are put in the book. For the next one, I think, as well as an embedded  trailer, I'll probably put the first chapter of Absolute Poison, the next in my Rafferty & Llewellyn mystery series.

How about you? What plans do you have in this mad ebook world? Going to bring out an anthology of your short stories? Or your writing tips articles? Admittedly, with the latter, you can't begin to compare to the king of tips, J A Konrath and his Newbie's Guide to Publishing (see Blog List at right). This thousand-page book, made up of countless blogs about the publishing industry and marketing and epublishing, is a phenomenon. It helped to persuade me to join the revolution. I'm glad I did: by the time I publish Absolute Poison, I should be earning £400 a month. Maybe more, as it's said that the greater the number of books up on kindle, the better the all-round sales. We'll see. But I'm not complaining. How about you? And if you've yet to join the revolution, you could do worse than buy Konrath's Guide. You've nothing to lose and maybe everything to gain. I think it's the best advice book I've ever bought.

PREPARING DEATH LINE FOR EPUBLICATION

Death Line is the third of the out of prints in my Rafferty & Llewellyn humorous mystery series that I'm publishing as an ebook. I've just reread it while I was adjusting the format after its conversion from an Amstrad disc and it strikes me as more serious than the other books. Its plot is also far more complicated. Whether those are good or bad things....

Anyway, I've just sent the book over to America to my ebook formatting lady, Kimberly Hitchens. If any of you are looking for a reliable and reasonably priced formatter for your ebooks you could do worse than use Hitch's services. You can contact her at hitch@Q.com. This is also the third of mine that Hitch will ready for epublishing. I'm looking forward to working with her again.

Although I've selected a photo from iStockPhoto.com for use as the basis for the cover, I thought I'd experiment a bit myself, just in case I could save myself a bit of money. I decided, because the book's called Death Line with a murder centred around a New Age business that deals in hand analysis (palm reading) and astrology, I thought I'd have a picture of a human hand with blood following the curve of the Life Line (to symbolize death). I also used a black cloth and pix of astrological symbols. What do you think? The one below is probably my best shot.

I tried to cut my own hand to get some blood, but apparently we have a houseful of blunt knives! Certainly none of them would cut your throat to oblige you. So I had to resort to other means. I didn't have any tomato ketchup, so I used tomato puree. Then I tried red nail polish. Nothing if not inventive!

Each time I set my props up, got the tomato gunge on my hand, took the shots, then cleaned up and put everything away, my husband complained there was this wrong with it or that wrong with it. So I did it again. Four attempts later...

Well, I thought it was pretty good for a book cover. Not too cluttered, limited colour palette, stark. Though Rick Capidamonte, who does my jacket graphics wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped. So we're going with the picture I first thought of from iStockPhoto with Rick adding various elements to the basic hand picture. I really like it. I love the colours and think it's pretty striking. What do you think of it?

Have you ever attempted to do your own book cover? Tell us about your experiences and if the experts rejected your brave attempts as they did mine or if you went on to use it in an actual publication. Put a link in your comment so we can see what you did.

NOW PREPARING DEATH LINE FOR EPUBLICATION

Death Line is the third of the out of prints in my Rafferty & Llewellyn humorous mystery series that I'm publishing as an ebook. I've just reread it while I was adjusting the format after its conversion from an Amstrad disc and it strikes me as more serious than the other books. Its plot is also far more complicated. Whether those are good or bad things....

Anyway, I've just sent the book over to America to my ebook formatting lady, Kimberly Hitchens. If any of you are looking for a reliable and reasonably priced formatter for your ebooks you could do worse than use Hitch's services. You can contact her at hitch@Q.com. This is also the third of mine that Hitch will ready for epublishing. I'm looking forward to working with her again.

Although I've selected a photo from iStockPhoto.com for use as the basis for the cover, I thought I'd experiment a bit myself, just in case I could save myself a bit of money. I decided, because the book's called Death Line with a murder centred around a New Age business that deals in hand analysis (palm reading) and astrology, I thought I'd have a picture of a human hand with blood following the curve of the Life Line (to symbolize death). I also used a black cloth and pix of astrological symbols. What do you think? The one below is probably my best shot.

I tried to cut my own hand to get some blood, but apparently we have a houseful of blunt knives! Certainly none of them would cut your throat to oblige you. So I had to resort to other means. I didn't have any tomato ketchup, so I used tomato puree. Then I tried red nail polish. Nothing if not inventive!

Each time I set my props up, got the tomato gunge on my hand, took the shots, then cleaned up and put everything away, my husband complained there was this wrong with it or that wrong with it. So I did it again. Four attempts later...

Well, I thought it was pretty good for a book cover. Not too cluttered, limited colour palette, stark. Though Rick Capidamonte, who does my jacket graphics wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped. So we're going with the picture I first thought of from iStockPhoto with Rick adding various elements to the basic hand picture. I really like it. I love the colours and think it's pretty striking. What do you think of it?

Have you ever attempted to do your own book cover? Tell us about your experiences and if the experts rejected your brave attempts as they did mine or if you went on to use it in an actual publication. Put a link in your comment so we can see what you did.