Look Whatchya’ll Did!

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Here they are: the long-awaited results of yesterday’s Debut Day on Amazon.com. It was so neat to watch the numbers change every hour. Thanks so much for taking part. It was a great kick-off event for the book.

Now, me bein’ an analyst an’ all, it’s only right that I comment on the graph and ‘splain to everyone what it appears happened. (Disclaimer: For those of you who don’t know me very well, the below analysis is purely tongue in cheek. Don’t you dare take any of it seriously)

First, the early part of the day:

As you can see, the book began the day at a ~840,000 ranking. That is stratospheric and is not a good place for a human or a book to be without supplemental oxygen. At the 7:30-8:30 hour, you’ll notice a precipitous—we authors are allowed to use words like ‘precipitous’ with impunity; we can use ‘impunity,’ too—drop in altitude, which is good when your novel is becoming hypoxic. What disturbs me is such little activity between 5:30 and 7:30. Where was everybody? I thought everybody is online cruising Amazon.com at 5:30 in the morning. I blame my sister, Robin, for not dragging out of the sack at a reasonable time and getting things rolling. Where’s family when you really need them?

Second, mid-morning:

At 9:30, you’ll observe a nice leveling out at the ~20,000 mark, where things hesitated a bit before dropping again. I blame the stutter-step on my sister, Robin, for only ordering 1 book instead of the 112 books I nagged her…er, that she promised me she’d buy. What’s up with sibling loyalty nowadays? And explain to me that spike up to ~28,000 at 10:30, when her co-workers were supposed to be chained to their computers, hardwired to Amazon.com, but were instead most likely given a lamely deserved coffee break. Whatever has happened to the American work ethic?

Third, later morning:

After dropping off to a nice four-figure level at 11:30, the book kept to the four-figure mark for most of the rest of the day. No drop-off; no progress; no three-figures. I blame my sister, Robin, for actually working on the job instead of being productive and harassing her co-workers to buy more books like I nagged her…er, like she offered to. Focus has never been a strong point of hers, but this is just unacceptable

Finally, later in the day:

“Languishing” is the only word for it. Yes, languishing. You guessed it: my sister, Robin, probably had the nerve to go home at the end of the workday—I mean, the book-buying day (not that these ever really end)—and she surely let her co-workers do the same. So there were all those computers sitting at the office going to waste. And we wonder why we’re losing ground in the global marketplace. My sister, Robin, has a lot of explaining to do when the next state-of-the-economy figures are released, that’s all I have to say.

So, now that the dust has settled, I want to thank everyone again for being so great during Debut Day—well, except one person.

And for those of you who think I’ve been unnecessarily hard on my sister, Robin, well, you didn’t see the birthday card she sent me…

All kidding aside, the response to Debut Day was phenomenal—even by my sister, Robin. (Okay, so not all kidding aside...). Peaking at 3,800 when the ranking set is over 2.5 million data points is incredible. And, as of the time of this whining...er, writing, the book is still below the 9,000 point. Thanks again to all of you. This was terrific!