Last month I had a little surprise in my bank account.

Three deposits appeared from Amazon totaling $11.04 for sales of the e-book edition of The BIG PICTURE - A Camera, A Young Woman, An Uncompromising Ethic.

Oh! my! gosh!

Upon investigation I discovered five e-books had been sold, one in March and four in April. Two were in Canada, two in the United States and one in Great Britain. Amazon doesn’t notify you when sales are made, and royalties are paid approximately sixty days following the end of the calendar month in which the applicable sales occur.

Since I’m more or less done with checking the reports and analytics on the sites my books are posted on I really have no idea what prompted these five strangers in three different countries to buy my book. I can’t think of anything I did during that period that might have brought my work to their attention.

Like Manuel, “I know nothing.”

If you’re an author with Amazon you can check your sales ranking. On April 13th, two copies of The BIG PICTURE were purchased which sent that book's ranking soaring from 2,593,668 to 173,973.

For that day my book sold more than at least 2,419,695 other books on Amazon.

It’s not hard to understand how book promoters can make you an Amazon bestselling author – at least for a day or two. Three months later and coming up to The BIG PICTURE's for anniversary I’m back down to 2,0008,844

It also gives me pause when I think of how many books are listed on Amazon that have very few sales, like none. Why am I surprised, up to that point I was one of them?

It’s all a mystery to me so I guess it’s still probably best to...

Stay calm, be brave, and watch for the signs (hopefully in my bank account)

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Video book reviews of self-published authors now at Not Your Family, Not Your Friend Video Book Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH45n8K4BVmT248LBTpfARQ

My new novels, FOREST – Love, Loss, Legend and The BIG PICTURE – A Camera, A Young Woman, An Uncompromising Ethic are available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU and as e-books at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/raglin

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsQVBxJZ7eXkvZmxCm2wRYA

All of these are priced from 99 cents to 1.99. Or at this moment at least. No idea of the quality of some of these - they're here because I once read something somewhere that made them sound good. I'm still narrowing down which I'll pick myself. If something in here you've read is exceptionally great or absolutely awful, do chime in!

I figured I'd stuff as many of these into one entry and maybe some of you folk would be interested. Because as usual my I'm Interested In This list is always a mishmash of subjects - lots are things that caught my eye eons ago and are only now on sale. Also there were more books than this - this is just the amount I decided to share before I got tired - narrowed down from 58ish books. Some I dropped since they were more than 1.99, which I always feel is a great price for "oh I'll give it a try." Which is why I currently have so many unread ebooks. ...Which is my way of saying, fair warning, perhaps pay no attention to all this.

While I haven't made my mind up on everything I can tell you what I did buy immediately - the one on Madame Tussaud. Because it's one of two books on her I've wanted and the woman has always fascinated me.

I'm assuming all the book images above will give you links to Amazon (again US Amazon, check to see if there's price matching in your location) - here are the ones that wouldn't fit:

Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made by Michael Adams

Talking to the Dead by Barbara Weisberg

The Man Time Forgot by Isaiah Wilner

Love and Madness by Martin Levy

Anne Frank by Francine Prose

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

The Lives of the Muses by Francine Prose

The Best American Crime Writing 2006 (Best American Crime Reporting)

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Reality Matters: 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching by Anna David

The Fellowship by Roger Friedland (Author), Harold Zellman (Author)

[I'd forgotten this was on Frank Lloyd Wright and had to look it up because I thought it was about LOTR]

The Greedy Bastard Diary: Around the States in 80 Days by Eric Idle

The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester

Note, if you're going to make an impulse buy on Amazon sales, go for the ones marked 99 cents more quickly. Those sometimes go away in a matter of hours. The higher the price the longer you can dither while making up your mind.

SusannaG has already posted one of the books on my sale alert with links here - it was Duel with the Devil, with a very long full title about a murder with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in on the history. As far as I've read it's factual. But because I've already been sucked into multiple sales this week, I have to pass on that one.

[Prices, as always, probably going to only on sale in the US. But worth a check on your end, just in case.]

I usually always give in on $1.99 sales too - but my brain (the Book Greed Center, wherever that's located in there) already wheedled me into buying these:

Cooking for Kings by Ian Kelly ($2.99)

I've had this on my Want list for some time because there aren't a lot of books (especially in English), about Marie-Antoine Carême. Check out that wikipedia link and I think you'll see why I found him interesting. I've waited for years for the ebook to go on sale and this is the first time I've seen one.

A Curious Man: The Strange and Brillian Life of Robert "Believe It Or Not!" Ripley, by Neal Thompson ($3.99)

In my continual quest to read all books on things strange Ripley comes up a lot. His...er field is much more in the P.T. Barnum line (mixed with cartooning) than nonfiction, but his bio should be fun. Hopefully. Also the first time I've had notification of a sale on this one.

And no longer on sale, but adding for the interest:

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell

Got this from a Daily Deals tip at Dear Author and since I've been slowly reading Montaigne's essays (yay public domain ebooks) this seemed a good time to snap up this bio. It was also $1.99 at the time (now back to 8.99, sorry), which made it an easy impulse buy.

If you're into impulse buys and sales I'd say to take a peek at Dear Author's Daily Deals, even if the romance genre isn't your thing. They regularly post nonfiction, scifi and fantasy, and the prices are usually under $3.00. Also there are links to multiple stores, not just Amazon.

Oh and I get my Amazon sale info email notifications via EreaderIQ. Short version: add the books and the price you want an email alert for, if it ever drops that low. (I've not trusted them for a full import of my wish list because I don't do that with online services in general.) Only works for ebooks. There's also an area just for adding a list of paper books so you can find out when/if they're released as ebooks. (Which doesn't work 100% of the time.)

[As always, I'm not affiliated with any of the sites I link! I'd tell you if so! Also I'd dither over it too because as a rule I never blog about work.]

[Warning: both Daily Deals and EReaderIQ vastly increased my ebook buying since I first started reading/using. So, just a heads up. In case you too have a weakness for book sales.]