I can’t explain it. My book Tom’s List: 50 Commandments to Transform Your Life was published six years ago. Naturally, over time the sales of any book slows down. Tom’s List has been like that the last few years. Sales on Amazon have been slow. But in the last week more copies have sold than in the entire last year.
You probably never noticed, but each book on Amazon has a “Best Seller’s Rank.” This number, based on a complex algorithm, reflects how hot a book is on the market. The lower the number, the hotter it is selling. For example, books with a number under 1,000 are selling incredibly well. but if the numbers are over 1,000,000 sales are slow. These numbers fluctuate substantially hour by hour.
Here’s a couple of examples when I checked the Best Seller’s Rank on a few books. Zig Ziglar’s book Born to Win had a ranking of 168,000. First Things First by Covey ranked 1,222,000. And John Maxwell’s book Succes is a Choice came in at a ranking of 3,872,000.
Here’s where it gets interesting. When sales of Tom’s List spiked I checked the Amazon Best Seller’s Ranking and it was around 68,000. This doesn’t mean Tom’s List is a better book than those I just mentioned. But it does mean that for some reason the book gained new life last week.
I wrote Tom’s List based on a sheet of paper discovered in his brief case after my best friend Tom died. When we graduated from college in 1976 he told me his goal was to read a book every year. The piece of paper said at the top, “Commandments to Live By.” Under the heading there was a list of 50 truths. I realized these were the best lessons he had learned after reading a book each week for decades. That’s when I knew I had to write a chapter on each truth.
When the book came out, a friend told me he had purchased a large number of books to distribute to the young people in his Sunday School class. Several years went by and one of his students told my friend that the book had saved his life. If the book has any power or appeal, I give Tom the credit. Each chapter is titled exactly as it was written on Tom’s list.
Maybe it’s time for you to check out the book. It could be a game-changer for you.
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