Interpreting the Amazon oracle

For some reason, the Amazon sales rank of Outwitting Dogs has been bobbing along above the 10,000 mark for several days.

Since it fluctuates hourly your results may vary, but as I write this, it’s hit 2,357 which is damn near champagne-worthy. Not that my champagne standards are all that stringent. Okay, okay, it’s not even close to champagne-worthy, it’s 11:00 on a Sunday night already, sheesh.

But still. What in Tarnation is Going On?

Has there been a print review somewhere that hasn’t been picked up by Google’s crawler yet?

Anyone have any idea?

This kind of thing doesn’t just happen. This book, The Impatient Gardener, is number 100 in Amazon’s Home and Garden ranking and it’s at 2300 right now. A couple more copies of Outwitting sell, and it’s . . . it’s made a List.

(Actually, it’s already made one list. The Dogwise Top 10 for 2005, but I didn’t find that out until the day before yesterday.) (So I didn’t even get a chance to wonder whether that was champagne-worthy.)

Seriously, if anyone reading this has an idea of what might have raised the book’s profile in the last few days, drop me a comment or an email! Thanks!