So what was the outcome of last week’s massive show of support for Patry Francis, as bloggers rallied around the cancer-stricken author to mark the paperback release of her debut novel, The Liar’s Diary. Jessica Keener, one of the campaign’s organizers, told me after the event that the book had risen from the #57,000 mark at Amazon.com to finish the day at #285… and #1 in the psychological suspense category.
I know we’ve talked before about how little such fluctuations in Amazon sales rankings can mean in terms of absolute sales, but a jump this high does usually hold some significance; more importantly, it’s a reasonably reliable marker of a book’s visibility—and helps make a book more visible on Amazon as long as it’s riding high on the charts. (Since that peak, it’s settled back down around #20,000.)