Everything you wanted to know about algae

Art is not supposed to be competitive. Michelangelo wasn't thinking of one-upping Giorgio Vasari as he lay on his back painting Adam's testicles onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was creating great art and had more pressing concerns, like who picked the name "burnt umber". I never thought of the publishing process as a competition. Every book stands on its own merits, each having unique qualities that speak to the infinite moods of the human condition. At least that is how I felt before I discovered Amazon's sales rankings at the bottom of the web page. It was only a number, but one that beckoned like a siren. An attempt to quantify the qualitative.

Intuitively I knew that sales rankings are meaningless when it comes to describe the value of entertainment. After all, Freddy got Fingered made a heck of a lot more at the box office than Death at a Funeral. Still, I confess to clicking on the link to find out where Seven-Tenths stood among the hundreds of thousands of titles lining the virtual shelves of the super-cyber-store. To my amazement my book had cracked the top 100 of titles related to oceanography. In the first few days on Amazon's charts the book rose steadily to peak at #11. Now I'm sure that this meteoric rise was probably caused by an aunt or any number of other relations purchasing copies out of some sense of familial obligation, but hey, I was on a ride. I looked at who was above and below me, happy to yield the upper spots to Ballard, Cramer and Cousteau. Below me was slime, literally. I was content in the knowledge that Seven-Tenths was besting (but not by much) a problem solver's guide to algae.

It became a race. Me against the life story of an autotrophic organism. And like all races, some have the legs and some don't. At last count the seaweed was winning by a fair margin. My only solace was that Cousteau was poised to drop off Oceanography's top 100. I think it was Shakespeare's mother who said "Will, don't expect anything more than short-lived success as a writer, so go out and get a real job". There was a woman who understood publishing.

I'm not too worried. The ink on the pages of Seven-Tenths has barely dried and we haven't begun to get the word out that it even exists, so I think I'm going to resist the temptation to look at sales statistics...at least until my aunts go shopping again.