Five for forever — my ride from obscurity to superstardom and back

Amazon has this concept of author rank. According to Amazon definition it summarizes all your cross book sales and pitches you against the rest of the world. With Kindle Press-driven promotion for "Five", I had for the first time taken a systematic regular look at my own rank. Talking about modest, have a look at my ranking from the last half year. It reflects nicely my activities around the two books I published this year "Five for forever" and "Pieces of Trouble".

What do we see? February and March spikes are easy to explain. I had bought some gift copies   (10 each)of my books via Createspace, that probably was the large May peak that brought me into the 100.000 for the frist time. The other earlier peaks were the typical 1-2 copies per month per book. There appears to be an interesting calculation method in place that catapults you up at a purchase but then uses some moving average to the end, which explains the right-heaviness of the distribution of each peak. 

Then mid-June things became serious with Five for forever on Kindle Press and the parallel promotion on Amazon. Basically what they did is that they added my book to the various recommendation results that you typically see.

The peak was July 5th, seems there were a lot of bored people in the US Independence Day, and bought something good to read. I made it up to Author rank 27.503. This probably does not yet bring me up to ranks with Stephen King or Frederick Forsyth. But next book, next goal! Crack the four figures.

PS: Just a plug for Wattpad's "A Brilliant Plan" - the next chapters are online.

Unboxing Day: Pieces of Trouble Paperback arrived!

Always a tickling butterfly feeling in the stomach, the day a new book arrives in the mail for the first time. I spent hours layouting cover and interior, trying to get everything right and perfect. Proof the Createspace.com result on the screen and send it away, maybe only after another iteration of correction, submission and proofing. But then the new book is available on Amazon and I press the purchase button. 

And the big Amazon machine gets into motion and produces the book and sends it on its way to Munich. Where it arrives two days later. Ready to be held and browsed for the first time.

So it is hereby official: Pieces of Trouble is available on Amazon and any other outlet in paperback. Print on demand, so do not expect it on the table or on the shelves.

33 % MORE: Tripple Trouble now Quadruple Trouble

Lots of news: I decided to include the previously published Trouble at Christmas with my Troubleshooter novella collection. There will be now four stories and my estimator told me "about 180 pages" of storytelling.

The four novellas in this collection show faces of Paul Trouble you have not seen before:

• Fast Trouble: Paul Trouble and his trusted young sidekick Tom Chan need to solve a Strom Industries corporate issue in Brazil during a short stop-over.
• Private Trouble: Paul as a cocky young Marine helping out his girlfriend after a robbery.
• A Trouble Termination: Paul is back on the job after he lost his left hand to the hammer-blows of mad arms-dealer Picard. A Parisian operation tests his operational skills to the limits.
• Trouble at Christmas: Trouble will find Paul during his Christmas vacations back home in Montana, reconnecting him with a life he thought he had left behind twenty years ago.