Book category, a new series of books, and some other thoughts…

Let me start by letting everyone know that Christopher is, once again, playing hockey and has perfect vision. We do have to check his eyes in 6 months and then every year for his birthday on the outside chance pressure starts building behind his lens. Not likely but it is on our calendar.

Curious Amazon book categorization:
My book, The IT Career Builder’s Toolkit, is a career manual for the technology professional – that is the computer industry.

On Amazon, however, they have it under careers / general, careers / job guides, and careers / guides. Those are all well and good but it is not under careers / computer industry. Were that the case, my book would have been number one in that category for the past 6 weeks. The impact on sales is not without consequence. Being at the top of a list that is frequented has its benefits.

Amazon, who can ship anything in 24 hours, can’t make the category change for 30 days. Ouch!

Today I checked my ranking and it was number 70 under careers / general. 5 places up from it at 65 was another important career title, The Complete Idiot's Guide To Amazing Sex (2nd Edition)??? No really, click the link and scroll down to find the "look for similar items by category" and the "similar items by subject" section. They are near the bottom of the page. I'm confused.

I’m not saying that great sex won’t help your career – I guess it depends on the career and with whom the great sex is with. But my question is how this book can get categorized under careers and my book can’t get categorized under careers / computer industry.

Also, I wonder if the proximity to that title has any chance of helping my title sell?

I did propose several new titles to my editor based on that title. They were:

- Computer Firewalls and Great Sex!: Safe Computing/ Safe Sex, the New Paradigm, First Edition
- Routing Exposed!: Your Complete Guide To Configuring Your Router in the Nude!
- The 100 Sexiest Geeks Of All Time (& Companion 18 month Sexy Geeks Calendar)

I don’t think they are going to opt on this series but boy, it could revolutionize the industry.

Depression for Dummies – revisited
I received a comment below on my Depression for Dummies post and it prompted me to change my blog's description/disclaimer above. I had to include the Stories and posts may be embellished to the point of unrecognizable fiction. Any relation to real events is probably coincidence unless it was a real event – in which case, the relation to real events is the event itself.

I don’t really know if the person posting, Mr. Anonymous, was serious or not. But his thoughtful response to my post below will help me refine my blog and ensure that misunderstandings are not my fault.

I still have to write about New Orleans – where I met up again with the folks from my publisher’s parent company. It was….interesting. It involved beads, bulls and Bourbon street.

Later.