Slightly Off the Mark

I noticed recently that if I went to Amazon.com and searched for "Mark R. Hunter", I did not come up first.

In the Kindle store, the first six hits didn't have "Mark R. Hunter" attached to them in any way, and none of them had the word "Mark" at all. In fact, four of them also didn't have the word "Hunter".

Under books, "Mark R Hunter" was the sixteenth match. Realizing I forgot to put in a period, I typed "Mark R. Hunter" ... and came in 19th, right after Operative Thoracic Surgery by Larry R. Kaiser and Glyn Jamieson.

This bothered me.

I suppose it's partially because sales were flat last autumn ... except that Operative Thoracic Surgery ranked at 1,333,795, and doesn't have any connection to my search other than "R". (To compare, The No-Campfire Girls ranked at 1,033,462.)

I understand ranking lower than more popular books of the same name, but this was like searching for George Washington and getting fifty matches for Abraham Lincoln. What bothers me about it is that when I'm talking to someone about my books, I tell them to just search for ... Mark R. Hunter.

On searching for myself on Google I ranked third, but at least the first two matches were a different Mark R. Hunter. I guess now I have to memorize: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO.

And my memory's not that great.

(In all seriousness, I've done some research, and it seems on Amazon you have about thirty days to make some sells before your book sinks into obscurity, and is afterward ignored by their algorithms. In other words, you have to make sales to be visible, but you have to be visible to make sales.)

https://www.markrhunter.com/

(Another note! This turned into fake news sometime after I wrote it in November, because I'm again  the first to come up under a search for my name. I'd imagine it's because since then, we put More Slightly Off the Mark on the market.)

We stopped at the Glenbrook Square Barnes & Noble on the north side of Fort Wayne last week, and I was very surprised to find they still have our book in stock:

 I say "book" singular, because it's the only one of our nine that we've managed to get into a chain bookstore--the others are either through small publishers, or independently published, and it's not easy to find shelf space for those. In any case it was a suprise, because I've always heard that major book stores won't keep a book for longer than a couple of months before they return the unsold copies, to make room for new releases.

But that's not the only Noble County related book they had in their history section:

Yay for local history books! For those of you who don't know, Ligonier is indeed within Noble County. The author of that book, Daniel L. Replogle, was my high school science teacher, far enough back that we'd probably both rather not discuss how far back it was. As for the other author, John Martin Smith, I got a look at his vast historical photo collection while we were researching for Albion and Noble County.

Of course, it goes without saying that you can get all of our publications at Barnes and Noble online, as well as all your better online bookstores ... and some of the worst ones.

You know what’s cool? When you stop by to browse the Barnes & Noble website and discover your short story collection is now up for the Nook. How cool is that?

 But wait, it gets better: Barnes & Noble is calling Storm Chaser Shorts part of the Storm Chaser “series”.

Series! Whoa … little head rush, there. Of course, the ten short stories do indeed take place in the same universe as the original novel, with the first seven set before Storm Chaser, and the last three after. You can have them for just $2.99, which, according to my sometimes questionable math skills, is less than three dollars. The Barnes & Noble link is here:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/mark-r-hunter

Both the short story collection and the original Storm Chaser are also available at Fictionwise, which features lower prices for members:

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/a67096/Mark-R-Hunter/?

And, of course, Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/e/B0058CL6OO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1/183-3059190-7528623

And my publisher’s website, www.whiskeycreekpress.com .

Although Storm Chaser Shorts is sadly available only as an e-book, if you’d like a print copy of Storm Chaser you can get order it through www.markrhunter.com, or contact me and I’ll let you know where you can pick one up.

 Okay, I’m off to do the Snoopy Dance.