This is pretty cool. I am not a "numbers screamer," because I believe if you brag about how well you are doing when times are good, you should in all fairness be a whining, sullen, unpopular toad when your sales slide. In reality, the words are exactly the same and YOU are exactly the same. Just because you sell books doesn't make you a better writer nor a better much of anything except, for that particular moment, someone who is selling some books. And it will end. It always does. So bragging is never cool.
That said, I want to give a shout out to Christa Polkinhorn for translating The Skull Ring, because Der Schadelring is #122 in the entire German Kindle store. It is cool. But not ego-boosting, "Take that, Gunter Grass" cool, because we're only selling three or four a day. So what this tells me is the German market is very, very small right now. And I wish I had 30 German books, because the market is there for the taking. And I expect that pattern to duplicate as we make our way around the world with Amazon and Kindle. Thanks, Christa! Danke schoen. And all you translators, call me and let's avoid being toads.
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7 comments:
w00t! Very cool. :)
Wow! You and Christa make a great team. Two great people. Always nice to see you guys doing well.
Very cool.
thanks, Vicki, Brenda, and SG, these worldwide markets are very exciting!
Scott
Hey, thanks Scott. Just happened to drop by. It was an experiment and we didn't really know how things would develop. It could have been a total flop. But I always believe, if you do something that's exciting and meaningful, that by itself is reward enough. And everything on top is "gravy" (I'm learning North Carolina slang!)
Christa
put some crumbled sausage in that gravy and get on the train!
Had to look into this "gravy train" business a little more. Here is some trivia about the slang:
"late 14c. (early 14c. in Anglo-French), from O.Fr. grané (with -n- misread for -u- -- the character used for -v- in medial positions in words in medieval manuscripts) "sauce, stew," probably originally "properly grained, seasoned," from L. granum "grain, seed" (see corn (1)). See discussion in OED.
Meaning "money easily acquired" first attested 1910; gravy train (1927) was originally railroad slang for a short haul that paid well.
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