My OH cut her fringe the other day. She put the severed hair into a plant pot in the garden and we pointed one of the cameras at it. Since then we’ve been watching footage of birds coming to collect beak-fulls of hair to line their nests. Blue tits, sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds, and starlings, so far. There’s a starlings’ nest and a blue tits’ nest in the huge clump of ivy three metres from where I am sitting, and every so often there’s an explosion of tweeting when a parent returns to feed the concealed yet noisy hatchlings.
And I’m having a celebratory beer. My publisher, Hobeck, has run a three day promotion for the Kindle version of my novel, dropping the price to less than a cup of coffee, and, in Australia, less than a can of beans. Low price isn’t on its own a guarantee to sales – the novel was the same price for about a week shortly after publication. However on this occasion it has also been accompanied by advertising on Bookbub, and it’s had something of an impact.
Shortly over half-way through the three day period and the Amazon Kindle charts tell a tale that I haven’t quite got my head round yet. Hunted has reached :
#15 in the overall Kindle chart in Canada, and has the #1 best seller flag in Crime, Action & Adventure, and #2 in Thrillers and Military Thrillers.
#22 in the overall Kindle chart in Australia, and has the #1 best seller flag in all three of its subcategories there - Thriller and Suspense Action Fiction, Action & Adventure Fiction, and Crime Action & Adventure.
#547 in the overall Kindle chart in the UK, which is its best placing since launch, some 700 places higher than previous best.
#9,460 in the overall Kindle chart in India, which doesn’t sound like much, but it was at #343,286 on Thursday…
And, finally, in the US, which is not covered by the Bookbub promotion, it jumped more than a million places to inside the top 10,000 in the overall Kindle chart. Not the best it’s done there, but considering the lack of marketing and that all sales must have been driven by folk over-hearing people talking about the novel on the other side of the border with Canada, I’m pretty chuffed with that too.
It’s amazing. A huge thank you to everyone around the world who has taken a chance on my writing. I hope everyone enjoys it, and feels they got their money’s worth. I shall leave you to read, whilst I get back to writing Endangered and listen to the starling chicks singing for their supper.