Topping the charts

Rather inexplicably, The Mechanics of Modernity is doing really well on the Amazon sales charts. The rankings vary a bit since they are updated hourly, but right now it’s at #18 in “international economics,” at #16 in “development and growth economics,” and at #26 in “economic history.”

But, I should add, this is also only in the Kindle store, and it’s only for books that are free downloads. That’s right. My book is topping the sales charts but I’m actually not selling any copies. It’s OK, all I want is readers. My guess is that some class somewhere is using it as a textbook, and that this generates a (comparatively) large amount of downloads. Great.