4 days ago, I launched my debut novel “Prison of Loneliness” and today I won against Shakespeare. While I worked for 1.5 years to polish my novel into a diamond, and while I am proud to have made it to #1 in Literary Fiction (English) in the German Amazon store, I don’t think that my work compares to Shakespeare. It would be preposterous to believe that. The pure fact that I ranked higher than Shakespeare shows how broken the book market is. Let me explain how it works.
Before I unclose why I think sales rankings should be regarded with caution, let me tell you about the making of my book and my first 4 days after the launch.
The Making
The start of my journey felt like climbing Mount Everest with no experience in mountaineering. While I was writing my first draft, I inhaled books and courses about how to outline story arcs, how to show and not tell, and how to improve my language. I even learned more vocabulary as I am not a Native English speaker. The first draft of my novel went to my beta-readers in July 2022. Yes, it’s August 2023 now. It really takes this long. Over months, my book went through 4 iterative editing steps plus proofreading plus formatting. The investment: roughly $5000 for editing + fees for courses and books. In the meanwhile, I had zero income. All the while, I tried to establish my business, making a business plan, thinking of my target audience, creating a webpage and an e-mail newsletter (and ignoring my social media channels for a full year until I felt forced to do something in the month before launch).
2023-08-01 Official Release Date
The day was chaotic. First thing in the morning, I sent out the notice on all channels I could think of. I set the book for free on my distributor Smashwords to boost the launch. Amazon price-matched after the second attempt to convince them to do so. I had one promotion on Instagram scheduled for the day, but had to realise that I was way too late to order a promotion on book promotion pages. Some were fully booked until September. Meanwhile, my Instagram exploded in comments and private messages saying “Let us promote you for only $100”, “I’ll review your book for only $40”. Apart from most of those requests being scammers, I got really infuriated. Here I worked hard for so long without any income, spending thousands of dollars into making a good book, and instead of appreciating my creation and paying me the cup-of-coffee-worth price for it, people had the audacity to ask me for money to read it. I felt sobered by reality.
2023-08-02 Best-Seller
While the day of the release left me alternating between tears and the urge to ragekill, the second day sent the emotional rollercoaster in the opposite direction. I wanted to send a friend a screenshot of my book ranking at spot 3 million in the kindle store, where it started off. But what I found instead was my book was among the top 1000 in the kindle store, and #1 in two categories—at least in the German Amazon store. But even in the US store, I was in the top 10 Psychological Literary Fiction. For half an hour, I was running circles in my apartment, phoning with my best friend, while I overcooked the meal I was making for a dinner guest. (I think it was edible, but the only comment I received from my guest was that they liked how I served it in a big bowl, rather than a small one ^^’). It was also now that I learned that my reviews in Germany and Canada don’t show in the US store. I still had zero reviews there.
2023-08-03 and 04 Battling with Orwell and Shakespeare
For two days, there was almost no change, apart from me telling all those business people that I don’t pay for reviews and asking my launch team members in the US to leave reviews as soon as they have finished reading my book. My book fluctuated in the top 10 Psychological Literary Fiction in the US store, sometimes reaching #7, then going back to #10. The reason: I was competing against Orwell with over 100k reviews while my book three days into its launch has only a hand full. (Did you know, only around 2% of readers leave a review? Please, my dear readers, it takes only a minute to write a few lines, but it’s a huge support for us authors).
In the German market, I was still on number one in “Mental Health (English)”, but was battling for the number 1 position in “Literary Fiction (English)” with Shakespeare. More as a joke than serious, I made a post on Instagram with a Shakespeare inspired quote from my book and told people to help me win against him in the sales ranking. A few hours later it happened. I reached #1 in “Literary Fiction (English)” and pushed Shakespeare to #2.
Why the Book Market is Broken
Let’s disect what happened. Having lived in Germany for many years, I have many contacts there. In contrary to the overcrowded American market, the German market for English books is small. By placing the book for free in this nieche market and getting my contacts to download a version, it catapulted me to number 1. The book promotions with the link to the American market pushed me to the top 10 there.
I poured my heart’s blood into creating an outstanding novel, but considering that I am still an unknown author publishing their debut novel and I reached best-selling status one day after my book launch, tells us that I did something right, but that the book market is broken. The fact that I beat Shakespeare in the battle of best literary fiction (while I don’t even dare to compare myself to his skills) teaches us the following:
A best-selling book can be, but does not have to be a best-written book.
To be fair, a bad-written book does not sell well even if well-promoted (at least not over a longer period). But a best-written book does not sell well either, unless well-promoted. Among the well-written books, the best-selling one is the best-promoted one.
Conclusion
I am confident that my best-selling book “Prison of Loneliness” is well-written and interesting to readers who enjoy deep and dark stories about the pschology of human mankind, but I want to caution you about best-selling ranks.
No, my dear readers. When you decide to buy a book based on sales rank, you might get a good book, but probably not the best. And if you check reviews to figure out whether the book is genuinely a good one, be aware that 100% of the big book reviewer channels and pages are being paid for advertising a book. Some authors (not me) do this to get more eyes on their books, but the honesty behind those reviews is questionable. Rather go for the small independent reviewers who are still genuine book lovers. But even then, be aware that they buy the books based on sales ranking, which—as we explained above—is bought by promotions.
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