Business on Tuesday: AUTHOR SHAMING EXPERIMENT RESULTS

On November 4th, I proposed a week-long experiment here on my blog. I also emailed a group of my author friends about what I was proposing and asked that they tweet about it to help spread the word.

Here are the results:

• My AMAZON ranking moved up from the dark, depressing 4 millions to the 137,000s. At last check it had wended its way back down to the 900,000ks.
• On the GOODREADS YA BOOKS of 2014 list, I traveled up from 137 up to a peak of 109 and is now at 110. There was a small uptick in additions to peoples' "to read" lists and a few other nods. On the GR February 2014 list, TSoLG remained solidly at #69. No additional votes.
• Not enough blog comments to do a giveaway.
• The needle did move but the absolute numbers (additional GR votes, additional pre-orders or whatever changes your Amazon score?!) were small.

IN SUM:
The aforementioned needle is very sensitive to even the slightest motion. Therefore, aside from the top and bottom outliers, these rankings are pretty insignificant.

QUESTION:
Were the results worth the time, effort and imposition on friends' goodwill the required? Not really (but thanks everybody!). In fact, the more the needle moved, the more I realized its insignificance for a midlist writer such as myself.

TAKEAWAY:
If your stats really bother you, you can probably just as easily move your Goodreads/Amazon stats by getting people like your mother-in-law to pre-order your book and your neighbors to click on your Goodreads links.  Or, see if somebody like Dr. Who can morph you into Cassandra Clare.  Either way ;)

Still running this, though...

GOODREADS ARC GIVEAWAY FUN!  Ready...set...click!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Sound of Letting Go

by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Giveaway ends December 01, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win