Get Out of My Way, Louisa May Alcott! Back Off Mark Twain!

And, at Number 8 We Have...

Really, I reverence Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain and Frances Hodgson Burnett but, my little book was (and is now, as I write) outranking Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Secret Garden on the Amazon best seller list for free kids e-books!

It won't last, of course, once the $2.99 price gets reapplied at midnight west coast time.  (Hurry!) And I'm not delusional.  (I know my real place vis-a-vis Louisa May and Mark - even though she's at 22 and he's number 14 as I write - I  couldn't fit them in the screen shot).  But the giveaway caught fire, oddly, briefly outpacing Catching Fire, from the Hunger Games trilogy which was also free this weekend and with which my book ran neck and neck for several days.

I can hear scoffing, I might scoff myself.

Why get excited about giving away something for free?  Who cares about the competition between free books?

Fair enough, but that competition is fierce, publishing being what it is these days.  There are thousands of downloads available for free at any given moment.  And, more important, as I have said here before, it's always been readers that I was seeking, first and foremost.  I only hope that the (to this moment ) 3,500 people who've downloaded the book these last few days will like it.  It's not lost on me that I am outranked by several books at the moment that are not famous, including Polar Bear's Big Adventure at number two.  Although I'm sure that's a fine book.

Anyway, if you downloaded a copy or bought a paper back, or will go do download one now, or if you have told a friend - or kept your mouth closed if you read it and hated it (the good reviews were surely a big help) - I thank you.  A moment in the sun with Louisa and Mark is not something I will soon forget, brief as it is likely to be.

UPDATE

Here's one more screen shot that my Dad took for me about an hour after I posted this yesterday.  Note the position of Up, Back, and Away in reference to that Hunger Games trilogy book, ahem.

By the time the Giveaway ended last night nearly 4,500 hundred copies had been downloaded.  Now it costs $2.99 again and the magic is gone.  I picture it plummeting in the best seller ratings the way Ian-McKellen-as-Gandalf fell with the Balrog.  But I'll always have the screenshot...