What Do Amazon Sales Rankings Mean?

Hi folks, Here's a good article on what the numbers really mean:

http://dogearpublishing.net/newsletter_Amazon-Sales-Rankings.aspx

And here's another to keep in mind:

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2010/10/what-do-amazon-rankings-mean-to-authors/

Half-Blood Book Trailer

Check out the third Half-Blood book trailer!





And Amazon is shipping copies early. They aren't s'posed ta, but they are. So, if you can't wait to read it, now you don't have to.

Currently Syndicated Bear

I'm back. Chicago is SUCH a great city! I hope you all had wonderful holiday weekends.

Today, I'm linking you to my first syndicated article. I love the fact that Google Ads put fire-related links all along the right-hand side. I've also heard that Amazon is already shipping Minder, so if you ordered a copy from them, it should arrive soon. They've also lowered the Kindle price. I hope you'll leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, GoodReads, or Shelfari if you like it! Please drop me an email or leave a comment if you post a review--I'd love to get your feedback.

The Brenda Novak auction ended at midnight. My critique of a query letter and the first ten pages fetched $70 for diabetes research! Thank you to everyone who bid, and congrats to the winner. I'll contact you as soon as the auction folks send my your info. Feel free to contact me directly. So, for the next year, whenever I offer that critique as a prize in a contest, I guess I can say it's "a $70 value."

I'm on Amazon!

I woke up Saturday morning and found that my book's now listed on Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/Minder-Ganzfield-Novel-Kate-Kaynak/dp/0984531106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271689074&sr=8-1

When I was an aspiring writer, I had daydreams about this.
Now I have the theme from Laverne & Shirley playing in my head:
"Make all our dreams ... come true!"

Updates: I got the last of those shirts in the mail over the weekend. I'll have another giveaway in a few weeks, so keep checking back here if you want a shirt.

Of, and the Consumerist had an amusing link I'll share with you:
http://consumerist.com/2010/04/movie-studios-officially-out-of-ideas-for-nicholas-sparks-movie-posters.html
Thanks to Pimp My Novel for the link.

My Smutty Mouth

I write YA books, which generally have two features that distinguish them from books for adults.

1) the MC is a teenager.

2) there's NO SEX OR PROFANITY. Or, if there is, it's rare and toned-down.

I'm pretty cognizant of these things when I write, or when I post things online. I don't want to have my plans for literary world domination derailed by a viral YouTube post of me drunk, half-naked, painted blue, and screaming obscenities at a collection of nuns, cops, and large-eyed orphan children.

So it's a good thing that wasn't caught on video.

Uh, I mean -- so it's a good thing I'd never do that. *

* they weren't real nuns.

You therefore can imagine my surprise this weekend when I tried to update my Amazon profile and received an error message stating that "Amazon does not allow profanity in their user profiles."

At first, I thought I'd made some sort of Freudian slip. In the early 1990s, whenever I'd write something about a "floppy disk," I had an obsessive fear that I'd accidentally replace the "s" in "disk" with a "c."

Stick your floppy disk in here.

Is your floppy disk full?

Beware of spreading viruses with your floppy disk.

So, I re-read my entry carefully, trying to spot my typo:

My first novel, MINDER, comes out in June 2010. It's YA-fantasy/paranormal-romance. If you like YA-fan-par-rom, check it out! I'll have fun stuff and giveaways on www.ganzfield.com soon, too.

All I can figure is that "YA-fan-par-rom" is an obscure freakiness, like a fetish for clowns or something. But I don't know. So, if you DO know what I wrote that triggered Amazon's profanity censors, please post a comment.*

* or send me an email, if it's too graphic to describe publicly or involves something truly kinky, like a bizarre attraction to Civil War re-enactors.