The picture with this blog shows me pointing out my novel Alternative Outcome in a number one slot in a listing of other books on Amazon US website. Impressed? I was! Or was it all just wishful thinking?

Well, the screenshot is perfectly genuine, so I’m not going to knock it. However, I have to be honest. The listing shows books in a very specific category – “International Mystery & Crime”. Moreover, it singles out books that were free on the day in question. It was the final day of a week’s free listing promotion that I was running on the Amazon site.

I also need to tell you that International Mystery & Crime is not a very populous category. There were just under a hundred free books listed on that day.

So I was really and truly number one for a few hours – but only in a very specific category of free books. But I reckon that’s a lot better than never being number one in anything.

Number one – in free international mystery and crime!

If you wanted to be seriously literal, you might question whether Alternative Outcome is strictly an international mystery and crime book in the first place. My argument is that there’s crime in it, and the action ranges over more than one continent, so it definitely meets some of the more obvious criteria. Beyond that, the categorisation is really a matter of judgement. My primary category is just plain “Mystery”, and I have to say that sums it up better.

The free promotion resulted in more than six thousand downloads of the book, which was pretty exciting. A whole lot of new readers now had my book in their possession … and hopefully some were actually intending to read it!

The broader objective was simply to get the word out to more people, and hopefully to pick up some run-on sales for this book and the sequel, Deficit of Diligence. Did it work? Watch this space.