"Lost" in Amazon reviews

It appears that many out there are closing the book on my little book.

In the last five days, four new customer reviews have popped up on Amazon.com's sales site for Lost in the Ivy. That brings the total number of customer reviews for my book to seven.

The good news is that the average customer rating is five stars, the highest rating that can be given to a product sold on Amazon.

The better news is that the Amazon sales ranking climbed considerably after these reviews were posted. As of 9 this morning, the ranking was around 56,000. The Amazon rankings are highly volatile, but as I've noted before any time that a book that wasn't published by one of the big New York presses hits five figures or less, it is doing incredibly well. Truth be told, any figure below a million is pretty decent. There are probably in the neighborhood of 3 million books being ranked by Amazon.

Of course I can't definitively correlate the Amazon customer reviews to the spike in sales. But one thing is for sure: they can't hurt. And if nothing else they certainly make the author feel darn good.

So a hearty thank you to those who've taken the time to not only read my words but also to leave their own very kind words about my book.

Now on to the good stuff...a sampling of the reviews--

From D. Demarest of Vallejo, CA: "A true mystery and expertly written."

From David Cripe "Cub Fan 2" of Chicago: "I found it hard to put the book down."

From Addison: "Holy cow! Lost in the Ivy is a superb mystery -- well written and intriguing to the last page.'

From bookworm: "This is the perfect contemporary mystery."

From Cynthia Jaranowski: "I started reading the book and couldn't put it down until I read the entire book...at times I felt I was lost in the ivy."

From Arlene Kovash of Pedee, OR: "Lost in the Ivy was an excellent mystery..."

From Intl Johnny "Dogman": "The text drips of Chicago...I was interested until the very end."