It’s been an exciting week – starting last Thursday when Capercaillie set Turn of the Tide to free download until Tuesday night.
As I watched the book soar up the Free Kindle rankings on Amazon I found it amazing to think that sometime soon there might be lots of folk all over the world reading something that I’d written. I took some screen shots of the Amazon rankings on both the US and UK sites 
– after all this was my first freebie and I might never reach such dizzy heights again… 
I’m not very mathematical (as my family will testify) one of my ‘quotable quotes’ – in response to a comment by my Maths teacher husband when I totally failed to comprehend negative numbers – was to classify Mathematics as ‘airy-fairy conceptualisation’. (I still don’t know which was more useful to them – my contribution of a new ‘big’ word, or my husband’s explanation of negative numbers. Though given that they all turned out to be on the science side of the arts / science divide, perhaps it was his.)
But I digress – graphs don’t usually excite me – but this one did – 
and a week later still does, even though I am slipping down again and will continue to do so unless I get some real sales to hold my position. What was very interesting (to me at least) was the point at which I came into the rankings again following the end of the promotion. 
I have no idea how long it will take to drop back to my previous level – it would be nice to think it wouldn’t happen, but I’m not that delusional! I’ve no idea either how they work out what colour to draw the line in now that the promotion is finished, though today there was a little blue dot showing in the middle of the orange line, which I’m presuming means a sale (or two? / three perhaps?) – My publisher has promised to let me know how / if this exercise has affected sales and if so by how much, but I’ll be waiting until Christmas to find that out.
In the meantime I have the figures of the freebie to cheer me, whether or not they lead to anything tangible in the end.
Here they are for those who might be interested –
37,158 (US)
4,112 (UK)
228 (Canada)
100 (Germany)
65 (India)
27 (France)
+ a handful (unspecified) in other areas. So a total of 41,600+
It’s rather lovely to think that at this very moment there may be folk out there somewhere reading what I’ve written.
Most experienced authors say that word of mouth is the best recommendation, and as a reader I can concur with that, so if even 1% of those folk read / enjoy and recommend the book to someone else I’ll be ecstatic. Is that possible? Will it happen? – Only time will tell.
But what has already happened is that I have 2 new review on the UK site and 4 new reviews on the US site, all of them encouraging, one of which, written by a blogger, Kate Martyn, amazed me by how quickly she must have read the book and marshalled her thoughts to produce such a comprehensive and lovely review with no spoilers. This was my first introduction to her and I shall be looking for more of her reviews of other folks’ books in the future. I recommend you do too – her reviews are literate, detailed, thoughtful and all without spoiling the story.
But however exciting all that was (and hopefully will continue to be) it was totally eclipsed by the birth of our 3rd grandchild 
in the middle of it all on Friday evening. A third boy for our son and his wife, and he is (of course) gorgeous! It puts the writing game into perspective – however much I immerse myself in the world of the 16th century and the lives of people, historical and imaginary, who march through the pages of my books – real people are so much more important. And next week when I’m away to actually meet the newest member of our family I won’t regret for a minute that I’m holding him rather than writing.