So in continuing my little miniseries about buying books, I thought I would turn my attention to Amazon today.

Ah, Amazon. So many products available in one place. With a click of a button, they’re mine, no matter what time of night or day it is. I have to admit that I love Amazon — free shipping on orders more than $25, no sales tax, and they have great discounts on hardbacks and trade paperbacks. Not so much on mass market paperbacks, though.

And, of course, like other authors, I obsessively check the ranking of my books on Amazon to see where they stand. Since Spider’s Bite came out on Jan. 26, my Amazon ranking has pretty much stayed above the 10,000 mark, which I’ve been thrilled about. I’ve even cracked the top 100 contemporary fantasy books a time or two and been as high as in the 3,000s.

But you know what? It’s only translated to about 500 copies sold at Amazon, according to my editor. I have to say that this surprised me. I’ve always wondered what the Amazon rankings really mean (if anything) and how many books they actually sell. Apparently, since Amazon sells everything, they don’t necessarily sell a lot of one particular thing, if that makes sense.

Spider’s Bite has sold more copies at Walmart, Barnes & Noble, and Borders group than at Amazon. Of course, I’m sure that more popular authors sell more copies on Amazon, especially as more and more folks buy Kindles.

In recent weeks, I’ve also signed up to become an Amazon Affiliate. That means when you click the Amazon link to one of my book covers, go to the site, and buy the book, that I get a small percentage of the sale. I’ve made about $8 so far this year. You have to accumulate $10 before you can cash it in for an Amazon gift card. I’m not sure what I’ll do if (or when) I hit that $10 mark. I might do a giveaway here on the blog or something. We’ll see.

Anyway, these are just some of my general thoughts on buying books at Amazon. What do you guys like or dislike about Amazon? Share in the comments.

So, as some of you know, Spider’s Bite is available at Walmart, so I’ve been checking out my local Walmarts to see if they have they book. Some of them do, some of them don’t. But it’s got me thinking about books and Walmart lately.

I think that if Walmart really wanted to, they could give Amazon and Barnes & Noble a run for their money in the book business. (Or maybe they already do, I don’t know). I never used to look at the books at Walmart. I was there to get groceries or office supplies or whatever — not books.

So you can imagine how surprised I was to discover that most paperbacks are at least $2 cheaper at Walmart than they are at B&N and other bookstores. It’s like a whole new world has opened up to me! I bought Pleasure of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole at my local Walmart for $5.97, along with The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay. Now, every time I go to Walmart, I swing by the book aisle just to see what they have.

My only complaint? It’s hard to see what they really have or find a specific title that you’re looking for. It seems like the books at Walmart fall into four categories — inspirational, romance, best-sellers, and westerns. (I think they had more westerns at Walmart then I usually see at B&N.) The books are loosely grouped into sections, but within those sections, there’s no real order. All the authors/genres are just jumbled together. I think that if Walmart put in a few more rows of books and had them all organized, that they could really put a hurt on the other book chains. I’d go there if it meant saving $2 on a paperback.

I asked the folks in my local critique group about this, and they said that they all cruise by the book shelf at Walmart on a regular basis just to see what they might have. Looks like I was the only one out of the loop on this. LOL.

What about you guys? Do you ever buy books at Walmart? Why or why not?

Okay, I’ve gone in and created a fan page on Facebook. You can check it out here.

I’ve also signed up for Goodreads. (And was a little shocked to see that I already had an author page set up over there.)

I’m going to keep doing my regular book review posts here on the blog. Over on Goodreads, I’m just going to do a quick little summary of the books that I read since folks can see the blog feed over there too.

I think Goodreads is really cool, though. It’s a neat way to keep track of all the books that you read and what you thought about them. So if you haven’t checked it out, you might want to.

I’m glad that it’s Friday. Come to think of it, I’m always glad when it’s Friday. 😉

I’m hoping to finish up my final polish on Elemental Assassin #5 this weekend so I can send that off to my agent next week. If nothing else, I’d at least like to have read through the manuscript and marked my changes on it. We’ll see how much I actually get done on it.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!