It's nice to be No. 1

During the last few days, the ebook of my Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America has been No. 1 (sometimes No. 2 or No. 3) on Amazon.com's Kindle railroad book list.

Oh, this is good for the ego.

But it's unlikely to last. Part of Amazon.com's sales algorithm favors new books that sell well initially, but when the opening sale has found its immediate audience and saturated it, another part of the algorithm kicks in to favor the books that sell regularly over time. Right now, at 9:15 a.m. CDT on April 11, Zephyr is leading Frommer's Europe by Rail, a classic guidebook that sells well to a broad audience year by year, but by the end of the week could fall several notches below it.

All the same, the revenue trickle from all my ebooks seems to have swelled into a modest rivulet. I'm not complaining.