There's a lesson to be learned from Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men: don't check your amazon rankings. In the New York Times Sunday Styles section profile on him by Dave Itzkoff, he "lamented the fact that more visitors to his novel's Amazon page chose to buy Sloane Crosley's essay collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, than his book.

There's also a good podcast interview with Keith at Nextbook if you want to give it a listen.

(photo: Robert Wright for NYT)