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By David Rothman

believeKindleeditionWas it the appeal of the e-novel or the online publicity from Publishers Weekly, the TeleRead blog, Ars Technica and elsewhere—or maybe a mix of reasons, the most likely possibility?

Daniel Oran’s beta-test edition of Believe, in any event, selling for a mere 99 cents a pop with the money going for charity, was Number Four on the Kindle Store bestseller list at 8 a.m. today, having been #7 just yesterday when he wrote me. Now, here’s a technicality. His Product Details listing mentioned a rank of just #11. But I’ll go by the actual bestseller page for the Kindle Store.

Ahead of Daniel were Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns  (#1), Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food (#2) and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants: A Novel  (#3). But he himself was beating out Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (#5),  Ken Follett’s World without End (#6), Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth (#7), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (#8), Stephanie Meyer’s New Moon (#9) and her Eclipse (#10). I rechecked at 9:30 and found Daniel was just #8. But point made, just the same.

“Maybe the NYC publishing folks will pay attention to e-books now!” Daniel e-mailed me at about 4 p.m. yesterday. “I really do think that e-books are going to power a revolution in the relationship between writers and readers—and in the publishing industry itself.”

An establishment-made success, after all?

I agree and am thrilled for Daniel, but you can’t get any more establishment than PW, where I blogged about the book because he’s an already-published novelist doing a beta with the Kindle—taking advantage of the E Ink capabilities to draw in paper-oriented readers. I’m in Alexandria, VA, just outside Washington, not Manhattan, and hardly an insider’s insider in the world of general publishing; but you can bet that the authentic “NYC publishing folks” read PW online and off. What’s more, other media pay attention to PW. The real test of the Kindle as a beta-testing vehicle will come with books that don’t launch with such fanfare.

Meanwhile, lest you think I’m slighting Daniel’s novel, which I haven’t read, not owning a Kindle, let me note that the two reader reviews posted at Amazon so far are both five-star. “It was a fast read as I could not stop turning pages,” T. Rowe wrote from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Combine the apparent appeal of the book with the 99-cent price and the fact that people know about it via PW and other publications, and just how can Daniel lose? A nice contract with a major house would seem the inevitable next step.

That said, I heartily approve of his experiment and hope others will follow and let me know what happens before I write about them.

Question: How easy will the Kindle bestseller list be to manipulate? Will Amazon audit it to try to make sure authors and publishers aren’t buying their own wares, or paying others to? Remember, we’re dealing with smaller numbers than with paper bestsellers, and the books cost less. If I were Amazon, I’d watch closely for mischief. Yes, I am curious about numbers, too, not just ranks. The Kindle page for “The most popular items in books” only gives ranks.

 
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