with some help from Amazon. A “little” push so to say.

This has been a slightly crazy week on the author front. Transparent to most of you, a number of significant events have transpired, which have left me scrambling to keep up.

First, Amazon selected The Jakarta Pandemic to be featured in their “Big Deal.” post Black Friday promotion. My book shot from #3000 on their paid Kindle list to #300 (#210 at one point). Amazing what some enhanced product placement can do for a product. My recently launched book, Black Flagged is taking a ride with it, ranked #1500. To put this in some sort of perspective, I sold 50 copies of Jakarta over six weeks last year (Oct-Nov)…Black Flagged has sold over 500 copies since its launch in early November of this year. Thank you, Amazon. The timing couldn’t have been better, and just the increase in reader and reviewer attention has occupied all of my free time.

Because of this, The Jakarta Pandemic reached the 10,000 sales mark a little ahead of schedule. I was happy last year to make it available to family and friends…and whoever else might be interested. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that over 10,000 people would read my novel. It’s really humbling, and extremely exciting…and even before the Amazon lightning struck last week, it had found a comfortable niche…gaining a thousand new readers every month.

At this point, The Jakarta Pandemic has 106 reviews on Amazon, which I have to imagine helped Amazon’s decision to promote my novel. If you have read my novel, and haven’t left a review…take a few minutes to write a quick one. Doesn’t have to be fancy or long. You’ll see a few of these there, but they were written by independent reviewers that do this for a living, or as a major hobby. Just pick a few aspects that you enjoyed the most. It helps readers, and it helps me…and feel free to include something that you didn’t care for in the novel. I’m serious! A balanced review is the true mark of a fair reader…of course, if you have a serious gripe, send me an email, and we can talk about it before you post online. I might decide to dispatch a few of the characters from my new novel to have a talk with you…or make some creative adjustments to your car. Just kidding!

The biggest winner in my view is the Disabled Veterans Donation Campaign (see upper right corner of blog). Based on sales calculations for December (and including my company’s matching gift program), The Disabled American Veteran’s Organization will receive roughly $1100, and that does not include the proceeds collected this weekend at my launch party (all proceeds go to the campaign fund). I see another $200-300 going to the DAV.

Based on the overwhelming response to this donation campaign, I would like to make this a book launch tradition for me. As always, none of this would be possible without readers and the generous support all of you have shown. THANK YOU! A special thanks to Mark, Jim, Adam, Steve C. and Nancy…who went above and beyond the call of duty, and made additional direct donations. INCREDIBLE!

On another front, I will be interviewed at a few blogs shortly. Stay tuned!