When Amazon picks your book up for promotion.

I received a routine email from Amazon.com today, promoting five books I might be interested in for some reason or other. Nothing unusual in that, except of the five books displayed, MY OWN book was sitting at the top of the pile, winking back at me.

Irony

Initially I laughed. The irony of Amazon promoting my own book to me! I took a screen shot and punted it out on Twitter, Ha-ha, look at this! Then I started to think about the reasons for it. Why had Amazon picked up my book to promote? And why did it get put at the top of the email? Later, a friend over in the UK replied that she had also received the same email.

Copy of the email, with my book at top

Questions

So I asked myself how many emails had gone out? There is no way of knowing, of course, but mine came from the US and I am presuming my friend's came from the UK (I'm waiting for confirmation). If these emails went out from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, then presumably they have gone out to a fair amount of people, especially considering I know somebody else who received one. What will this do to my figures? Will my sales increase as a result of this?

Monitoring

Like most ebook authors, I monitor my book sales almost hourly. I have been paying close attention to my sales since January 1, since the day my book went gratis. I know exactly how many books have been downloaded each day for the last two months. I am due to post an update regarding the end of month figures for February this weekend.

Meanwhile, I will monitor any increase in sales which might be down to the Amazon promo.

Fingers crossed!