God Save The Queen

“Losering” has been out in the world for a couple of years, long enough that checking its Amazon sales ranking ceased being a daily ritual some time ago. But I’ll still look it up on occasion, mostly to see if anybody else has reviewed it (I’m still waiting for a review in Spain, Brazil and France, among other places, y’all). And it will still jump on up the sales list every now and then, too. The other day, in fact, it even hit No. 1 for “Biographies of Country Musicians” on Amazon.UK — nestled, as you can see below, ahead of books about Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.

Of course, this was short-lived. “Losering” slid on down very quickly and yielded the top spot to Johnny Cash, which seems only right. Still, I think I like this one even better than the book’s other summit appearances, in Canada.

---

God, I love Canada

For the first year or so that “Losering” was out, checking my sales ranking on Amazon was a daily (oh, who am I kidding, several times a day, at least) ritual, even though it’s a bad idea. I was finally able to wean myself off of it after the book dropped to ranking consistently below No. 100,000, and I rarely check it anymore. It’s as humblingly low as ever here in the U.S. (yes, I just looked); but today, on a whim, I decided to check it on Amazon Canada for the first time in a while. Lo and behold and lookee here, for whatever reason it’s somehow back up to No. 1 again on the country book list up there, ahead of tomes about Buck Owens, George Jones, Gram Parsons and Loretta Lynn.

As Jim Lauderdale might say, now that’s Americana!

---

---

 

From Kalamazoo to Timbuktu

Here’s a moderately cool little thing that I stumbled across recently: the University of Texas Press Influence Map, an interactive map that was made to show off the geographic scope of subjects and authors that the press publishes. Most of UT Press’s books originated in the United States, and it’s hardly surprising that a sizable cluster of those are within Texas. But they also go as far east as Turkey and Iraq; as far south as Panama and Ecuador; and as far north as Canada and England. Take a look; and if you click on the balloons on either my hometown of Raleigh or Ryan Adams’ birthplace of Jacksonville, North Carolina, my book “Losering” is what pops out.

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…