Ups and downs on the read-marketing circuit. Here's the up: with Japanese Poetry & Haiku, a fairly easy category, epiphany coup haiku was number seven today. Today only - I had to look fast, as tonight it's 41 already. But hey, sevy,en is not bad. If certain people check the top ten ever, or if those people checked it this morning, there I was.

Actually, my luck was good in general, or has been lately. I'm getting a lot of books read, as I have a reputation. Even if it's not people's favorite read, they at least know it'll be ok, so they jump on these trains; they read mine; I read someone's, someone reads theirs; it all works out.

On the downside you have people who will sit on your book for a few days. They grab it and put it on their TBR list (as it's called) and then it sits there for a while. You have no control. You wait for a pageread or a ratings bump that never shows up, or takes days. By the time you see either you've forgotten what you'd been hoping for, or you'd moved on in some other way. I have an occasional sale that the zon doesn't pick up, doesn't give me a ratings bump for; I'm left wondering if it's in some other category, like library sale or expanded distribution or some such thing. You sit here waiting for a score that never comes.

It's the price of addiction - in my case, to ratings.