Amazon Best Sellers Rank?

There are a lot of things I need to learn in the publishing business. I noticed several writers talking about their Amazon Best Sellers Rank, and so I checked mine for "The Light Bringer's Kingdom," saw that I was really at the bottom rungs in the "Paid in Kindle Store" category. I think I was at about #1,800,000. 

When it comes to ranking, the lower the number the higher your sales AND sales potential, according to what I've read. Page visits and people reading your preview pages add to your sales potential. I think the number of Amazon reviews your book has also helps. Sadly, I have only 1 review despite knowing a number of people who've bought my book,,, Q.Q

I can totally understand, though. I think it's quite time-consuming to review and critique written work, especially novels which need a whole lot of attention.

From the Amazon FAQs

While the Amazon Best Sellers list is a good indicator of how well a product is selling overall, it doesn't always indicate how well an item is selling among other similar items. Category and subcategory best seller lists were created to highlight an item's rank in the categories or subcategories where it really stands out.

We choose a few of the most popular subcategories in which the item has a high ranking in relation to other items in that subcategory, and showcase the item's rank on the product page. As with the main Amazon Best Sellers list, these category rankings are based on Amazon.com sales and are updated hourly.

Yup, apparently it changes hourly. I checked my rank again a week later. Surprised at how far I've jumped, suddenly at the hundred-thousands mark. Not sure what it means but it made me happy!

Had to read up on this. An improvement in rank doesn't necessarily mean more sales, I found. The ranking is relative to other books being sold in Amazon. So, if they are suddenly selling less, I could see an improvement in my rank despite selling the same amount of books the past few weeks. In the same way, if suddenly everyone (including me) is selling more units, my sales rank might not improve because I'll be doing just as well as everyone else.

There's a summary of the potential sales my current rank means, and it looks like I'm selling less than one book a day...NOOOOO. From makeuseof:

Amazon Best Seller Rank 50,000 to 100,000 – selling close to 1 book a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 10,000 to 50,000 – selling 5 to 15 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 5,500 to 10,000 – selling 15 to 25 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 3,000 to 5,500 – selling25 to 70 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 1,500 to 3,000 – selling70 to 100 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 750 to 1,500 – selling 100 to 120 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 500 to 750 – selling120 to 175 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 350 to 500 – selling175 to 250 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 200 to 350 – selling 250 to 500 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 35 to 200 -selling500 to 2,000 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank 20 to 35 – selling 2,000 to 3,000 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank of 5 to 20 – selling3,000 to 4,000 books a day.
Amazon Best Seller Rank of 1 to 5 – selling4,000+ books a day.

Anyway, it's still the royalty statement that holds the true number. I'll wait for it and compare with these sample projections.

The Light Bringer's Kingdom now available in print! :)

Here it is: My blood, sweat and tears! Now available in print from Amazon!

As one review says in Amazon:

"In all the tellings and re-tellings of the stories of Lucifer and his rebellion against Heaven, he’s been a lot of things, but never an interplanetary, trans-dimensional being, as he appears in The Light Bringer’s Kingdom. Although Lucifer remains tremendously powerful, menacing, and filled with contempt for humans, this novel is a wholly unique twist on a very old story. Lucifer, along with all the other angels, originate on a planet in another dimension, Spheris, and they journey between realms—including Heaven, Hell, and Earth—as they follow various paths. Abad blends this science fiction-infused version of the cosmos with elements of religious lore and folklore, particularly legends from southeast Asia and the Philippines, to create a new and diverse set of villains out of familiar tropes. While the array of monsters and demons, and their complex relationship with angels and seers, is something of a challenge to keep up with, the literary payoff is substantial."-Amanda Smith

About the Novel:

Path Liang is the last person you would expect to believe in spirits or the supernatural. Her father, Hector Liang, is the inventor of the Wireless Command System (WCS), a technology that amplifies brainwaves to operate machines and computers and has revolutionized the society of the Phillipines in 2066. By day Path is a talented badminton star, and by night she is a hypergamer, immersing herself in the super-fast WCS-enabled virtual world.

But despite Path's best efforts, she has been haunted by a strange dreamworld since she was seven years old. Little does she know that she is a descendant of a powerful babaylan, shamans of ancient Phillippine society. Path will need all the help she can get to master her newfound powers. Demons, led by Lucifer himself, want to use her abilities in a new rebellion against Heaven.

Path is protected by Elantiel "Eli" Clementir, a revenge-driven young man with a mysterious connection to the angels and an ancestral magic of his own. As apocalypse looms ever closer, Path realizes their fates are more entwined than she could have ever imagined. To protect all they hold dear, Path and Eli must face their own families' tragic pasts and confront a cosmic rebellion a millennia in the making.

The Light Bringer's Kingdom, Pre-listed!

The novel I wrote and rewrote and reworked hundreds of times has finally materialized as a real book. I believe in this story and didn't want to give up on it even if I was feeling a wee bit hopeless that no Philippine publishers were interested in taking it. Maybe it's because the novel is science fiction? Maybe there's no market? Not sure.

But all of that happened so I can have this book published by the cool, professional folks of Zharmae Publishing Press. They're young and amazing and I love having the chance to work with them.

Here's the final cover art by Tomasz Wieja:

Pre-orders of the Kindle edition are happening now at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Bringers-Kingdom-Anne-Carly-ebook/dp/B011JZ53I8

The book will launch on September 12, 2015 and the paperback edition will be released a week after that.

Super excited! If you're interested, please do support me. I appreciate any help in getting the word out. I can give out copies for those who'd like to review my novel. :)

EPIKO Work Update

I've encountered several plot holes in this story, which I managed to fix in my two-week hermit writing session. These kinds of inconsistencies are impossible to spot in the outline of a work, and won't even be obvious in the synopsis. I discovered them while doing the writing itself. I had that what-the moment, you know, when you realize that the events you planned just don't make sense and could have easily been solved if the characters weren't so myopic.

I'm thinking of several title changes. Like--
Epiko: The Realm of Trickery
Epiko: The Bronze Seer
Epiko: The Goat's Horns

I dunno. I'm not inspired yet. Still, I'm at the editing stage. WIP's at 45,000 words. It's a short novel or maybe a novella. Really depends on which publisher is looking at it.

And it's back to my day job for me! Gonna have a lot to juggle.

In the Boiler Pot: My Second Novel

At last, I'm working on Epiko again, my second novel. It might turn out shorter, maybe a novella, but I'm not yet sure. I have a habit of turning short stories into long ones. Plus, its title is EPIKO... go figure. @_@

I'm predicting that it will have 15 chapters. Word count, maybe 50K. I'm at 15K now.

It took some time to get it in shape, the plot at least. I couldn't figure out how the events connected and flowed. I thought the story would just die cold. But it's now hot and fiery in my hands, ready to be shaped and written.

Damn I haven't felt this lively in a while!

The Uncommon Compliment

I have to admit, it's hard to gain confidence in writing in your second language. My second language is English, and I write primarily in it. I have been told quite a few times by foreign editors/publishers that some of my language use is a bit awkward, or they simply don't understand certain lines. I've pretty much gotten used to this. At first, I considered this a flaw in my writing. And then after some years reading work like those of Chinua Achebe, I realize it can't be helped. It is part of the evolution of language to have several versions of itself, which after some time, may not look anything like the original. Take Becky language, for instance. It is incorrigible to the unexposed.

And then here comes the unexpected compliment. I recently returned to the fiction scene, and managed to revise and restructure a novel I wrote some three years back. In the process of submitting the partial / full manuscript to publishers for consideration, I received some kind words from the founder of Freedom Forge Press LLC, Eric Egger. See, I submitted to this press because I was very much intrigued by their interest in exploring the concept of freedom (something much of my writing delves into). Eric requested my full manuscript and gave me the heads up about it needing a round of edits. I completely agree to this, as I've never been in love with my work too much to be so attached to the words I write. I told him this and also mentioned how I'm a second language speaker.

This is what he had to say in return:

"Please take it as a compliment that your command of English is better than many native “speakers” here in the US. :o) Some of your phrasing and word choices were both masterful and artful!"

You know what I thought? I thought, hey, maybe I'm doing something right. I just kept writing in my own way and style all these years, and maybe it's paying off, huh?

Little things like these make my day. Just to plug this in, I've also received an acceptance letter from Magma Poetry, a UK-based publisher.

 Dear Anne Carly Abad

Thank you for sending us five of your poems for consideration for Magma 58.  We have read them several times and would like to offer publication to 'Pub(l)ic Lies' if it is still available and if you would consider one small edit.

We enjoyed the word-plays throughout the poem greatly and wondered if you would like to build up to a three-way word play at the end...

Sincerely

Laurie Smith
Editor, Magma 58

In a separate post (once my poem is published), I'll talk about that teeny bit of change at the end that made a huge difference in strengthening the piece. Little tweaks do make a difference!

Thanks to these kind editors and publishers for taking the time and exerting effort in helping me become a better writer. :)

Now Reading: The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey

The Rowan is the first book of McCaffrey's Tower and Hive collection, which I'm only now beginning to explore. I've read a couple of her Pern novels, which I've enjoyed and reread a number of times, until I developed a stronger liking for  science fiction. Well her dragons are 'scientific', but in my opinion, she leans more toward fantasy in her Pern novels. It may be that I'm getting nerdier by the day, that's why I'm liking sci-fi more, or I must have previously read too much fantasy that I've become too used to all the sword and magic tropes.

Anyhow I'm not done with this book yet, but I felt strongly enough about it to make a post. Gotta say I'm hooked. I've searched some reviews and most of them are positive. I like following the life of this young telepathic girl called The Rowan. And I'm totally intrigued at the thought of exploring a world where pschokinetic abilities, not to mention clairvoyance, run the system, thereby sidestepping the usual "speed limit" in space travel.

Turn of Events

All this entering the workforce thing being a big change. It's real. At least for me.

I'm doing a lot of writing for Resorts World Manila, and I find that I'm enjoying it. Aside from learning guerrilla HTML (as in trial and error hehe), I get to check out the casino, and can I just say, I've been waiting for a chance to walk up and down these smoky (cigarette smoky) aisles for a long time, but it's only recently that I've reached the age where I can actually enter the place. It's not much different from an arcade, only I get to imagine under-the-table scenes like in the movies. I don't see mafia-worthy faces, though. Everyone just seems to be having fun. It's too bad we're not allowed to play, would like to try out the real thing and not those online games. However, I've found that I have to stop my ADHD tendency to press every button I see (i.e. Slot Machines). I bet that if I just get one chance, I'll get lucky. I have pretty good luck at these things, (and bad luck for everything else?).

In any case, the point I was making before I was distracted by my own thoughts is that, although I get to do a lot of writing, I pretty much have zero time for fiction. Here I am, blogging, which takes away another 10% from the time I could have spent writing the next page of a story I've already started but have now hidden away in some mental drawer and compartment of my PC.

What's funny is that I seem to thrive in such conditions--When I'm actually NOT free to write. It's like my mind has a panic button screaming "you must write!" and then it starts formulating all these story lines. I remember this is what happened back in school, when we were doing our thesis, and I at the same time, was finishing my first novel.

It remains to be seen whether I can finish my next story collection and novel in such conditions.

Pressure might be good after all.

Crossing my Fingers:D

Wow, looks like I might be able to sell my Sci-fi/Fantasy novel soon! Praying....Praying....!!!

What's it about? Well, the apocalypse, a different kind of apocalypse, where Filipinos will be the protagonists for a change. Set in year 2066, here we have a more advanced Philippines, (after 5 presidents overthrown by 5 People Power Revolutions, that is).

I hope I make it, despite my clumsiness in handling the hundreds of files in my computer that sometimes I don't even know where my stories are anymore.

Whew, I'm gonna fix my files, effective immediately! I think I'd like the cover for my book to be angels, like this painting of mine here: