I'm not a prolific writer; quite the opposite. There was one year in which I published four novellas, perhaps two of them good, and that's the problem with writing fast or striving to be prolific ~ quality will inevitably suffer. No, I'm a plodding writer, a tweaker. I won't move on until the previous scene is exactly the way I want it.
So, I have an apparently stale catalog of books for sale. It's not that the writing is dated, but that the books are. Amazon never made my books easy to find, but it's even worse now. Really, the only way my books are discoverable is by entering the title and the author name in the search bar. I previously noted how I finally located my novel, The Apple, on the 46th screen after searching for it by title. Even books that didn't have the word "apple" in the title or subtitle appeared before mine.
The only way to remain on Amazon's radar (apparently) is to constantly publish new books. Well, it doesn't work that way for me. I've been working on my current novel since...I don't know...it's certainly been months, and the finish line is nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, my catalog keeps growing older. I'll probably never net more than one or two sales of any of them again. That makes me sad. I'm not the world's best writer, but I'm good ~ when I'm not trying to set some kind of publishing record. Even the couple of novellas I denigrate really aren't bad. I just don't consider them my best.
I have no idea how Amazon's algorithm works; I doubt that anyone knows. I've scrutinized their search results enough to know that it doesn't sort results by sales or reviews, so it has to be publication date. What else is there?
I'm comforted knowing that it's all out of my control. But a bit of reader recognition would be nice.
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