Useful Paragraph Alert if you’re publishing or promoting a book. Skip next paragraph if not.

A few months ago I linked One Two and Three Four to Viewbook, because it meant (a) nice short link and (b) the link adjusted itself to the nearest Amazon website.  Very handy; so when Five Six joined the family very quietly a few days ago, I wanted to link it, too.  Viewbook has become BOOKLINKER, a slightly different setup. Oh MY. Booklinker counts every time it is used, AND shows which Amazon it bounced to.  I converted the Viewbook links, and suddenly had a history on them too.

Even better – sorry, just a moment. You, the reader skipping paragraphs? This could take a while. Maybe come back another time, if you know all this already, or are never planning to promote a book?

Even better, I could judge how my promotion of One Two was going almost by the minute. Run a tweet. Make a cup of coffee. Check my stats. Run a link on FB. Drink the coffee. Check my stats. It was literally that quick.

One Two had 43 clicks on the clock when the promo started and I started posting. I made the first cup of coffee, idly refreshed the count – 176 clicks. I nearly dropped my cup.

Fascinated, I ran a single tweet (heavy with hashtags) on another book I’ve written under a different name, which nosedived into the ground on publication and has sold a princely two copies (one of them to me).  18 clicks, instantly.

These are not, of course, sales. Just people going off to view the book. Another book I put out under yet another name attracted 89 clicks in a little flurry of notifications, and I rushed off to see my sales in a blaze of excitement. No sales. In fact it is currently doing rather less well than the one above, I don’t understand it because it’s a terrifically useful little reference book.

That’s beside the point, which is, at the moment, clicks. If people don’t go near the books, they won’t sell. If they are interested enough to go, but not buy (or even take One Two as a freebie), well, that’s a horse of a different colour and a problem still to be puzzled over and fixed.

Booklinker also gives you country feedback. I’ve had a click in Canada, 1 in Italy, 2 in Japan, 18 in the UK, and 27 in France (yup, that puzzled me too) and the rest have all been in the US.  So that’s pretty cool stuff to know.

The other thing puzzling me is that I added 5 6 into my profile on Amazon, to update my author link ready for Monday.  Amazon offered to show me stats on my book rankings.  1 2 – with all the promoting – is in the top 1000 books for today, which was nice. The puzzling part is that 5 6 is higher in the rankings than 3 4. MUCH higher.  In fact according to Amazon it has already substantially out-sold 3 4 even though it only officially launches on Monday and hasn’t had any promotion yet.

I don’t quite believe it, and I absolutely will not go look at my sales figures because that’s always so discouraging, but it’s a nice thought to go to bed on.

Which I’ll be doing as soon as the electric blanket has kicked in and the bed is suitably warm.  This is Scotland, and it’s cold and dark and I’ve been slaving over a hot computer all day.  Maybe one more post on one of those wonderful FB sites that I found. And a last tweet for the day. And of course count my clicks.