Hey all, Robin here. Michael and I might just be old fuddy-duddys, but we aren’t glued to our phones (I don’t know where mine is most days) like many are. As such, we’ve never used Tik-Tok or Instargram, and we aren’t really on social media (goodreads being the exception). Yes, we have facebook accounts, but we haven’t looked at them in years, and I really need to make Michael a BlueSky account (as we don’t use twitter these days either), but there are just too many other things to do.
Being as isolated as we are (both in our remote living location and electronically), we don’t know much about Michael’s popularity – or lack there of. But there are two metrics I look at with a fair amount of regularity and that is the number of followers on Goodreads and Amazon.
Well, today I looked and Michael hit 42,000 followers on Amazon – that’s an amazing number to me. Especially when we started this whole “writing thing” and I took up the mantle of “getting people to know the books exist” I asked Michael, “So how would you need to consider yourself a success?” He replied, “If fifty people read my books.” But then he paused a moment, and added a clarification. “But they have to be people I don’t know.”
Now, granted, not all 42,000 of those people have Michael’s books, and while he has “sold” more than 2.5M copies, we also don’t know many of those have been read, but based on review numbers, I think it’s safe to say it’s more than 50 🙂
Michael’s numbers on Goodreads are even better: 92,400+ followers. There was a time when he was ranked #40 on the most followed list, but he’s slipped from that height over the years.He’s now barely haning on to the bottom rung (#50), and I suspect he will soon fall off completely, but I think he’s been on it for over 10 years which is quite impressive.
So while I have your attention, if you don’t currently follow Michael on Amazon or Goodreads, I’m going to make an appeal for you to do so. Why? Well it’s not to boost Michael’s ego — he doesn’t know any of this “number stuff,” and I suspect he doesn’t care one way or the other. It’s only me, the ex-engineer, that looks at such things. But if you do hit follow, you’ll be notified when a new book of Michael’s hit the shelves, and I think if you are reading these words, that might be something you’d be interested in knowing.
- Goodreads – Click “Follow Author” button below Michael’s picture on the left hand side.
- Amazon – Click “+Follow” button to the right of Michael’s picture on the left hand side.
As always, thanks for the amazing support.