Friday, November 14, 2008

Sales

It's so funny the way I constantly check Amazon to try and figure out how well the book is selling. There are websites which try to explain the true meaning of the sales rank number--it's almost like the way scientists monitor lists of random numbers for decades trying to unlock the pattern. But from what I can tell, the number basically tells you how recently you've sold a book. Every time your number spikes, you've made a sale.

I think.

But there are other things to watch. The list of "people who bought this book also bought" is fun, because the more that list grows, the more books you can be sure you've sold. It was fun to watch that list go from just a couple to now 15 pages worth (6 to a page.) Of course, technically, that could just mean one person bought our book in an order with 90 other books. And the fact that when I click on one of those other books, our book isn't necessarily in their list. Who knows.

But I was very happy to see a new thing on our page today. It said "customers bought these two things together," and showed our book next to the 2009 Red Sox wall calendar. It didn't go so far as to offer a sale price for buying both together, but it did give the option of adding both to your cart at once. You know what this means, though? Why do you buy a wall calendar? As a holiday gift. And people buying our book as a holiday gift is exactly what we're looking for. When you've got a baseball-related book out after the baseball season ends, you've at least got the holidays going for you.

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