EDEN: Week 2!

Well, I didn't expect this to happen!

Just two weeks after being published to Amazon, "Eden" has rocketed up the charts and at the time of writing is in position 2,600 in the Kindle UK chart ( paid ) which means the book is currently selling about 40 copies per day. It has garnered three reviews, all five stars, and I've had considerable feedback via my Facebook Fan Page and e-mail telling me that it is the best book I've written so far!

Of course, this does not mean that the book will automatically continue to climb the charts on its own, but its success so far is more than I'd dared hope for, especially since my efforts to gain promotional support in the form of blogger reviews and interviews has yet to take-off.

To date six very friendly bloggers have agreed to review Eden, doing so over the next couple of months depending on their very busy schedules. Some that I approached have not replied, but as it's holiday season this is to be expected. Many do say on their websites that due to the volume of requests they do not have time to reply individually. Again, par for the course and understandable.

So what's causing the rapid climb? I'd love to say that my carefully crafted plan is behind it all, but I suspect that it's a mixture of things, some that I dreamed up and others that I borrowed from other successful self-published authors. The price, for one thing, I think is "right". In these tough economic times, people need to be able to afford to take a chance on an author they maybe haven't heard of. If I'm polishing my own ego then I think my cover design is attention grabbing and says "big book" to browsers on the Internet. I think also that timing the launch alongside the fourth Ethan Warner novel may have drawn attention to Eden ( I'm thinking that people see The Chimera Secret while browsing in bookshops, wander home and find my author page to buy the book for their Kindle, and then spot Eden and decide to give that a go too, or even in place of The Chimera Secret, because of the lower price ).

But I think that there may be something else too: the fact that more and more people are switching over to digital books. We're behind the USA on this in Europe, but it's becoming more and more obvious that with hardback sales already in free fall, paperback sales are only going to go the same way. This is one reason why I've taken to digital publishing alongside traditional contracts: once you've seen the writing on the wall, it's not wise to hang around. If I'd published Eden to Kindle two years ago, I'm not sure that I would have seen the same sales.

There's still a long way to go, but so far Eden really is moving in the right direction and my cunning plan for digital domination appears, for the time being, to be working. More updates soon...