O Canada, we stand on guard for thee — at No. 1!

Since “Losering” came out last fall, I’ve had great fun keeping up with it on Amazon.com here and elsewhere. That’s not to say it’s been a best-seller, of course. While the book has sold pretty well, its best U.S. Amazon showing to date is a modest No. 3,162 — enough to keep the American Music Series in business, even if it’s not going to contribute significantly to my retirement.

But probably just to keep fools like me paying attention, Amazon also runs “specialty” charts breaking it down into various categories such as music biograpies, rock, country and so on. That 3,162 was good enough to get “Losering” up to No. 4 in Amazon’s “Country” category, where it briefly lodged as high as No. 2 a few months ago (denied the top spot by Willie Nelson’s “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” dagnabbit).

While “Losering”‘s Amazon ranking has since descended a good bit in America, it seems to be doing well on Amazon Canada — where I am happy to report that it hit the top of, if not the poppermost, the “Country” and  “Bluegrass” rankings. Yee haw!

Friday afternoon, “Losering” climbed to the summit of both. Not sure what “Motown Anthology” is doing on either chart, but what the hell. Now it’s true that my book was only at No. 5,646 overall, so this is nothing to get too excited about. Still, a pretty cool thing to see. Cheap thrills are still thrills in my book.

Come summer, I figure I’m all set to start playing state fairs and bluegrass festivals up there…

Top-10!! Sort of…

So I have no idea how amazon.com reckoned this, and I expect it was either a mistake or some bizarre statistical aberration. But however it happened, on Monday evening “Losering” came to rest at a pretty lofty perch on one of amazon’s specialty charts — at No. 7 in country music books, right between Willie Nelson and (I love this) a book called “Bluegrass Mandolin for the Complete Ignoramus!”

Now it’s hard to get too excited about this, given that the book’s overall amazon ranking at this moment was…um, No. 31,029. Still…don’t it look pretty sitting there on a sales chart next to a single-digit number?

ADDENDUM: A day later, it’s somehow at No. 5, right behind Johnny Cash. Squeeee!

Ya can’t please ’em all

So yesterday was a mighty fine day on Planet “Losering.” The book excerpt ran in the Sunday News & Observer, to widely positive response — lots of nice comments and attaboys on Facebook. Another five-star review turned up on amazon.com. Even better, “Losering” climbed to its highest amazon.com sales chart position to date.

True, that was only No. 15,268 in the “Kindle store.” Still, that’s out of more than 1 million Kindle titles, and “Losering” jumped nearly 200,000 spots in one day. And however much the book sold was enough to get into the top-20 of books about “composers & musicians,” nestled at No. 17 between Duff McKagan and Buddy Guy.

No idea if that’s selling three books or 300, but it’s fun to see myself on there. I’ve always been a total geek for this stuff, devouring the charts in Billboard every week, so looking this up gives me ample cheap thrills. And even though the screen grab below isn’t my highest ranking, it’s still my favorite so far just because of the surroundings:

Anytime you’re ahead of the Beatles and The Boss, you’re doing okay in my book. But as we’ve covered before, humility is always just a mouse click away. That took me to  ryanadamsarchive.com, where response to “Losering” has been decidedly mixed among Ryan’s most faithful super-fans. This particular review wasn’t the least bit mixed, however:

dont want to affend anyone, but ive just finished it and didnt enjoy it at all. i actually found it an exhausting read which as it is only 200 pages is quite a feet. i thought the book was litirred with sly digs at ryan all way though and his opinion of nearly all Ryans post strangers almanac work was pretty annoying. the book is just pretty dull. im gonna sell my copy on ebay

“An exhausting read” — that, my friend, is the stuff of jacket blurbs (and word to the wise, I guess this means there will be a cheap copy on eBay soon). Ah well. In the immortal words of Tony Soprano: Whattareyagonnado?

ADDENDUM: in the wake of this, someone pointed out a much kinder review here.

The waiting is the hardest part

I am starting to learn that “publication date” in the book world is a rather fluid concept. Earlier this year, UT Press set the publication date for “Losering” as Sept. 5. But when I asked about scheduling readings for that same week, they were aghast. Apparently, publication date means “available for shipping” rather than actually in stores. Just to be on the safe side, they advised me not to schedule anything until October.

Eventually we compromised on a series of readings commencing Sept. 27 in Raleigh (followed by Sept. 28 in Chapel Hill and Oct. 4 in Durham), preceded by a mid-September launch at the Americana Music Association festival in Nashville. There’s other stuff pegged to September as well, including excerpts in the N&O and American Songwriter magazine. But at a certain point, that Sept. 5 release date turned into Sept. 15, leading me to fret about the AMA reading set for Sept. 13. Would books be ready by then? If not, gulp.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. UT Press sent out an announcement via Twitter on Aug. 13 that “Losering” was “in-house and ready to ship!” People who pre-ordered it started getting their copies in the mail shortly after that (thank you, Morgan McGuire!), and I’ve also heard from a few folks who have seen it in bookstores.

Best of all, however, was something very cool that happened on amazon. For a wonderful but regrettably brief period one recent evening, “Losering” nestled into the top-100. Not the overall top-100 (I wish!), just amazon’s listing of “music biographies.” Still, I was thrilled with the company. “Losering” came to rest at No. 73 — right behind Dylan and ahead of Elvis. It didn’t last long, of course, but that’s why screengrabs were invented.

So will that be the commercial peak on this thing? A few minutes posed with the gods weeks several before the actual publication date? Maybe, maybe not. Stay tuned!…