Well, 'the book' was formally published this week and it has received it's first feature article at Express.co.uk and its first Customer Review at the Amazon website, both of which I'm pleased to say were very positive. By the law of averages that may change. So far, however, I am not one of those people who claims never to have read their reviews. That may come later, at which point of course I will also deny having written these few words.
More-importantly, when checking the Amazon site for 'The Chieftain', I discovered a feature that I had never noticed before; every book is given an Amazon bestsellers ranking and that ranking shifts around every hour or so (or even quicker than that). As a consequence, I have immediately become addicted to checking the site regularly to see how the book sales are progressing. On Monday, when I started this process the book ranked 220,000th or thereabouts; within a couple of days, fluctuating wildly, it reached 9900th. I was over the moon, but within an hour it had slumped to 12000th...of course that was just before bedtime and I lay awake worrying that it had peaked too soon. After a sleepless hour, with an iphone by my bedside, I checked again....sales still sliding!
As it turned out, I needn't have worried (yet). At 3.15 pm this afternoon (Friday) it had reached the dizzy heights of 5947th . It was also 19th amongst books on London's cultural history, 34th in True Crime biography, and 64th in True Accounts, Society, Politics and Philosophy (notice how I have become obsessively more precise). By 5pm, however, another slide has set in; its down to 9275th. Looks like another sleepless night, or can I turn things round and get a life?!