A Kate Bit - Favourite Books Poll

I had an interesting moment this morning as I explored Amazon.co.uk. I don't think I'm the only author who gets intrigued by the various bestseller charts that Amazon sets up. It's fascinating to see what books have sold well - specially when you have one of your own out there and you want to see how it's doing compared with everyone else's.

One of the most interesting charts is the Most Popular Items on Amazon - in the last hour. This list is updated every hour so you can spot what people are buying through the day. You can start lat this list in the overall sales on Amazon and then by clicking on the list at the side, refine it through Romance - to Series - to Mills & Boon - or Harlequin Presents or whatever you want. It was a thrill to see that this morning the UK edition of The Sicilian's Red Hot Revenge was right there at #1 in the Mills & Boon sales. And then, intriguingly there was a secondhand edtion of The Twelve Month Mistress at #7.

But the really interesting moment was when I clicked on the Harlequin Presents listing and there from #1 - #6 were all these books of mine:

The Hostage Bride

A Sicilian Husband

The Married Mistress

The Sicilian's Wife

Constantine's Revenge

The Groom's Revenge

Now I'm well aware of the fact that this probably simply means that someone has bought just one copy of each of those titles and on a quiet day, that's enough to put them all in this ranking. Selling just one book is quite enough to make a title leap up the Amazon rankings. But it is interesting to me as it means that someone has gone to my backlist and has bought up some old books - hopefully because they enjoyed the one that's out now - and they wanted to read more. I believe it's called 'glomming'.

Anyway, this sort of ties in with the other thing I'm doing as part of the 50th book celebrations.

Back in 2005 when I was celebrating 20 years as a published author, I ran a Favourite Kate Walker book poll where I asked everyone to vote for their top five Kate Walker novels and I collected up all the results and at the end of the voting period I published the official Top Ten. (I still have those results somewhere - I must look for them and then I can publish them here and compare them with what everyone votes for this time.

So how about voting for your Top 5 Kate Walker titles?

Everyone who votes has a chance of winning a signed copy of a book from my backlist together with a Kate Walker bookmark and pen. All you have to do is to list your Top 5 Favourite Kate Walker books and send them to me with Favourite Book (yes - the English spelling ;-) ) in the subject line.If you need any help deciding which are your favourites, then check out that spotlight Lee has worked so hard on on Leena's Goodie Room over on Author Sound Relations - and take a look at the Backlist pages over on my web site to remind you of some you might have enjoyed.

And if you'd like to know how the voting is going - then here's last week's Top FIVE
1.A Sicilian Husband
2. The Sicilian's Wife
3. The Italian's Forced Bride
4. Desert Affair
5. The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife
jointly with
5. The Antonakos Marriage.

And this week the list has changed to this:

1. A Sicilian Husband
2. The Italian's Forced Bride
3. Desert Affair
4. The Antonakos Marriage
5. 12 Month Mistress )
The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife ) All 3 jointly
Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride )

Would you choose these ones? Or perhaps something totally different? I'd love to have your vote.

Authors reading this - I'd really love to hear from you too. And if I get time I'll post some of my favourite author's favourite books - that would be a great thrill for me. (Bound By Blackmail, India?)