If you grew up in the 70's, you're probably familiar with the Lynyrd Skynyrd song of that title, but you may not know what it referenced, and might have thought it was about literal bullets being fired from a gun and the singer wanting you to return them to him, adding insult to injury perhaps?


Billboard magazine tracked song popularity, and when a song moved quickly up the charts, they would print an icon of a bullet next to it, so a disc jockey might say "This is song number 20 with a bullet, rising fifteen spots in this week's polls." Lynyrd Skynyrd wanted to feel the rush of having songs climbing fast in the charts, thus writing that song.


Being an author on Amazon, I get a similar sense of rush when I see I'm rising in the ratings. As I write this, my author rank is 72,769; which means that is precisely how many other authors are more popular than I am on Amazon, as of this instant. Their handy chart gives me updates throughout the day, and with every sale I make, I see an uptick in my ranking. After that sale, my rank begins to slip, until I sell another copy of something. Upticks make me happy, dropping in the charts makes me sad.


Therein lays the problem. As I get on the computer, around the “Critical Windows Updates,” checking in on social media, answering email, etc., I find myself obsessing over sales. So instead of doing what I need to do to increase my sales, as in finish of the next book, I end up wasting time checking this rating, and reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, Audible and Bookbub.


Perhaps someday I’ll be confident enough to not worry about things like this. Today is not that day.


James Peters