Me and Jane Austen…Who knew?

So there’s this thing called a sales rank on Amazon that ranks your book’s sales against all the other kindle books being sold every minute, of every day.  Well I had absolutely NO CLUE about it until my dear friend, Belinda Boring, (check out her books, she is awesome) tells me in a Facebook chat one night:

Belinda: “Raine!  You’re a rockstar!  You’re on lists!”

Raine: “Come again?”  *has no idea what she is talking about*

Belinda:  “Your sales rank!  On Amazon!”  *geez, Raine really is naive*

Raine:  “Can you show me the link?  I never heard of it.”  *wonders what other things I am in the dark about*

Belinda:  “You have a 1600 ranking for Libertine.  Authors would kill for that rank.  You are selling a lot of books!”  *can she really be this dumb?*

Raine:  *does a Google search for ‘Amazon sales rank” and starts reading* Wow.  So I am selling some books.  *long pause*  Huh.  *another pause*  For realz?!  People are actually buying my book?  I really had NO idea!  *Belinda must think I am an idiot*

Belinda:  *thinks Raine is sweet, but a little slow on the uptake…good thing I love her*  YES!  You are selling a lot of books!

Raine:  Thank you for telling me, sweetie.  You are a great friend.  *thinks Belinda is amazingly smart and savvy*

…So this brings me to my picture.  Yes, there is such a thing as Amazon Bestseller Sales Rank and it updates every hour for books below 10,000.  You want your number to be small by the way.  And if you get into a low enough ranking for your genre category you get on the Top 100 List.  So yesterday I had a look (I really look like every hour now) and The Undoing of a Libertine was number 83 on the Top 100 Paid List and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was right beside it at 83 on the Top 100 Free List.  It was so pretty I could not resist the screen shot.  My book sitting on a bestseller list right beside hers.  Kinda surreal.   So here you go.

I am sure you are absolutely thrilled and amazed by this image, just like me.

Raine~