On The Up!

Great news today: NORTH SLOPE has reached #1 in the Action Adventure category on Amazon in the free Kindle store. If this was related to sales I could retire! Oh, I am retired. But never mind; this could influence my paid sales figures when the promotion finishes. My other e-book on the promotion, A COVERT WAR is not doing badly either; it has reached the #5 spot in both Spy and Action categories. The influence of Amazon’s Kindle Select programme on book sales has been the source of much talk lately; some good, some not so good. I have just read an article that suggests the Amazon KDP bubble will burst and Amazon will let it die slowly because on the unreal (and unhealthy) affect it is having on real sales and the big hitters. I think we’ve always known this will happen. There’s no way the big publishing house will allow this to go on and I expect them to find a way of restoring the status quo and re-establishing the pyramid where their top authors sit astride the colossus while we bottom feeders sink slowly away into our digital slush pile. But by heck we’re having fun, and long may it continue. Business this morning; handed our income statement in at the fiscal reps office. Come Friday we’ll know how much we have to pay the Spanish tax man. We all know he’s broke, just like the rest of Europe, so let’s hope the bill isn’t too steep. One thing though; I doubt if it will be as high as the UK Inland Revenue would charge. The IR managed to give me the wrong tax code this year and have changed it to the right one. No real damage done though because I don’t pay tax in UK. Getting back to book promotions, I think I need to increase my Twitter savvy, and how to use it effectively. I have Tweet deck, but it annoys me every time it tweets at me. What must it be like for someone with thousands of followers? Surely they don’t have the Tweet deck switched on? I’m off now; going to learn more about marketing, promoting and selling books. I’ll probably leave this blog alone for a week now unless I have something really bright and startling to report. (Like a million paid downloads?)