n!

Fox and Hounds is currently ranked #6,000 in "War and military action fiction." I'm not sure how it got there. I'm quite sure I didn't pick that as a category. Perhaps putting "London Blitz" in the keywords was a mistake.

So what does that imply? Does that mean there is a book currently at rank #1 for selling 6,000 copies? Well, that's not the best assumption. If you sum the series of positive integers you end up with 12 million total copies sold. (6,000 + 5,9999 + 5,998...)

Not implausible, but more likely that Amazon has more grain available, by weighting copies sold by how recent they are, say. (And, actually, with the weighting that #1 book probably sold a hell of a lot more than 6,000 copies).

The talk around eBook circles is dropping a thousand bucks on placed ads, also reviewers, GoodReads presence, and the like. Actually, the best way to push an eBook is to have a strong social media presence, enough of one to make pre-sales and to generate a first-day buzz.

Another thing that apparently kicks even harder than reviews is editorial comments. (And for reviews, the number of them weights more than the ranking. The big boost for reviews is around 20, though; after that the gains are incremental). Chasing down commenters is even more difficult than chasing down reviewers, though. At least reviewers, there are aggregating services that plop willing reviewers in front of books desiring reviews. For a feee, of course. In social currency or in money.

As part of those social circles, booktubers are a growing thing. But it seems at this point -- well, certainly in circles that self-identify with that name -- to have gotten a little echo chamber. (You know, with all this echo chamber crap that's going on in the partisan rhetoric right now, does anyone still remember what an actual echo chamber was and how it worked? Didn't think so!)

Booktubers are starting to write books, which are getting reviewed by other booktubers. And like everything else on that corner of the eyeball-hungry internet, it thrives on controversy. Books that get talked about are books that have a reputation. Sometimes good; Andy Weird and Brandon Sanderson are getting talked up. More often not -- lots of frightening YA is getting talked about.

It is very critical commentary and I probably shouldn't be watching so much of that. Because my own confidence is...low.

And that's the problem with all these higher-pressure sale tactics. I am caught in the conundrum of not knowing if it is worth it. Are my books so shitty I'm not only not going to get sales, I'm going to make people hate me for convincing them to buy them? I need readers who can tell me if I'm screwing up and in what ways (and with luck those are ways I can fix). I'm unlikely to get those readers if I don't push. But I'm unwilling to push when I don't know.

Which means I find myself spending a weekend making weirder and weirder settlements in Fallout 4, watching Bones and Dorkness Rising on Amazon Prime...anything but write.

Although I did just download Aeon Timeline. Maybe that will work a little better towards working out the GAANT-chart like dependencies of the Kyoto plot.