Michael Parker's Ramblings

Today, ROSELLI’S GOLD goes free on Amazon Kindle for two days. The change in sales rankings is quite dramatic when a book goes ‘free’. Although the e-book hasn’t been sold but given away free, it climbs up the rankings according to some weird algorithm that Amazon use. My book has already shot up to 9229 in the rankings from its very low ranking yesterday of about 60,000. In the UK it has climbed into the top 100. If it keeps climbing, then on Wednesday, when the book is no longer free, it will remain with its rank number for about forty eight hours. This usually results in some impressive sales compared to the period before it went free. I began ‘pushing’ the free promotion (as we are advised to do) about a week ago, and according to the sales ranking the book immediately plummeted to a very low rank. I suspect that this was because readers stopped buying it because they could see it was about to be released free. My total e-book sales for USA and UK this month (April) has reached about 750. It will be interesting to compare the results at the end of May to see if my free promotion has done the trick. It’s been a dramatic weekend for sports freaks in UK (and elsewhere no doubt). For me it’s about football, snooker and speedway. The football has provided some dramatic results in the Premier league and the Championship. Congratulations to Reading and Southampton. Tonight is the critical derby between the two Manchester clubs. Today Roy Hodgson was announced as the only candidate approached by the FA for the job of England manager. Not my choice, but good luck to the man. Saturday evening was the Polish Speedway Grand Prix. Fantastic battles there too: Well done Chris Holder. Hard luck Bomber Harris: he never got started really. And of course, while all this is happening, there’s a World Snooker Championship going on too. Oh, we were supposed to go away for the weekend but it was cancelled Friday morning. Unfortunately our friend was taken ill and spent the night in hospital. He’s out now but still not too good. We are hoping to go down there next weekend.