Counting my chips before the game is done.

Spent a large part of yesterday afternoon trying to ascertain my rankings on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

What's amazing is to see my books nestled among all those better known titles and authors.  Sure, most of them have been around a long time and my books won't be around as long as theirs probably, but still -- to know that currently my books are outselling a whole lot of people I've read or have heard about -- that is a strangely cool feeling.

My rankings are about twice as good on Amazon as they are on Barnes & Noble, even if you take out the bottom half of Amazon's rankings to make the numbers equal.  If I'm going to sell better on one or the other, I'd rather it was Amazon, I suppose.

The reason I spent so much time clicking pages was because for the life of me I could never find my books at B &  N.  I mean, I knew they were there, but I couldn't find them on the ranking pages.

Yesterday I realized I'd been searching by "Best Matches" instead of "Best Sellers."

So...it appears that as far as B & N's recommendations or matches is concerned, I don't exist, whereas in actual sales I do...Heh.

In comparison, Amazon actually promotes my books on a regular basis.

So once I went down the bestseller lists, I found my books are clustered in the same spot, like I said about 4 times worse than Amazon if all listings are counted, about 2 times worse if I compare the top 30K books.  It will be interesting when I finally see the B & N numbers to see how they compare, but I'm pretty sure Amazon sells multiples of B & N.  (Yes, 11 months later and I still don't know...)

I am getting a sense of how older books must sell for the big guys.  But I suspect most of their money comes from newer books and selling to other media.

You know, just trying to figure it all out.