In case you weren’t aware, I unpublished “Ice Climbing Training: In Season Program” last week. That means I took it off the list of available books on Amazon. I am still bound by the publishing contract, so am unable to sell it on my own sites, or on any other book sales site, like B&N.

Why unpublish Ice Climbing Training Manual?

That’s a good question, but the answer is complicated. When I first published it, I had a few sales and no reviews. Sadly, Amazon really only cares about sales and reviews statistics, and if you don’t have much of either, you could do a search “Ice Climbing Training” and my book would appear on page 10, after 9 pages of “hello kitty ice cube trays” and other miscellaneous nonsense.

I could have easily done what other best-selling authors on Amazon do, which is to buy reviews for anywhere from $5 (not legit) to $500 (legit) each. I chose instead to do the “Free Flash Sale” and offer the book for free for one day, with a day notice. I did this for my “Weight Training Secret Manual: 8 Hacks to Beat the Plateau” and got about 400 “sales” in the first 12 hours.

I tracked my links to the flash sale, and about 3000 individuals in my targeted “book buyers” “free book downloaders” “ice climbers” lists got to see the link for the free book. When the 24 hours of free were up, I had gotten 33 “sales” and at that point in time I decided to pull the book from Amazon and drop it. No interest.

Ice Climbing Training Manual Issues

Yes, I had a little bit of feedback. Here’s a general overview.

• There was no actual ice climbing in the book.
• There were no insanely intense radical circus trick exercises.
• The exercises had nothing to do with ice climbing.

Well, right up front it was an in-season program. That means the majority of your extreme efforts should be in the actual climbing. You don’t want to get totally pumped out in the first 5′ of climbing because you were doing sets of 100 with a 365# Captains of Crush Hand Gripper. That would be awesome in the off-season program, but don’t do stuff like that in-season.

An in-season program is designed to maintain gains made in the off-season, especially in the antagonist muscles, which don’t get anywhere near enough work in-season and eventually weaken, leading to higher potential for injury. A marathon runner will often train chest, back, shoulders and hamstrings in-season to assist in their long running training. It’s the same deal here.

I’m sure there are other factors involved, such as my lack of fame, but the fact remains that (surprise surprise) it actually costs me money to market my books and sell them, and I can’t afford to market this one when no one appears to want it.

That being said, I’m doing a Kindle Countdown Deal on all of my books starting late this week and going into next week. In a Countdown Deal, your book starts at $.99 and works its way back to the original price over a few days time. It’s in your best interest to get it early.

• The 100 Calorie Diet Plan: Portion Control Using 5th Grade Math – March 30 to April 3
• Finding Time to Train: Time Management For Athletes – March 30 to April 3
• Summit Success: Training for Hiking, Mountaineering, and Peak Bagging – March 30 to April 3
• Carstensz, Stone Age to Iron Age (Seven Summits Quest Book 3) – March 27 to March 31
• Elbrus Race 2013 (Seven Summits Quest Book 4) – March 30 to April 1
• Elbrus, My Waterloo (Seven Summits Quest Book 1) – March 30 to April 3
• Orizaba, My Almost Free Mexico Adventure (Seven Summits Quest Book 2) – March 30 to April 3
• My Sweet Infected (My Infected Book 1) – March 30 to April 5

That last one was a little outside my usual box for you folks, right? It’s a dystopian young adult romantic triangle with zombies, and has great reviews, if that’s your thing.

Anyway, I will see how sales and reviews go for this group. Particularly for Finding Time to Train, and Summit Success, which have been a little low in the rankings for lack of reviews. I have mentioned a few times the review issues with Summit Success ARTICLE HERE, and will do so again in an upcoming article on my mountaineering pages.

If things don’t change for those two books I’ll have to pull them both as well. Time will tell. Thanks again though for all of you who have bought and read my books, and especially for those of you who have given me your honest heart-felt reviews.