What is literary fiction?

January 15, 2012

I belong to an internet forum populated by a right bunch of weirdos some lovely people, and in the course of discussions about my survey, the one in which I’m trying to figure out how people discover new books and authors (it’s still open, please answer it!), the question was asked: So what the hell is Literary Fiction? […]

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Argleton audiobook now available

January 14, 2012

After several days of recording, re-recording and editing, I’m happy to say that the Argleton audiobook is now available on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-wish basis, with no minimum price (i.e. free download). Due to Bandcamp upload limits, I’ve had to split it into Part 1 and Part 2, but you can buy them as an […]

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William King’s ebook sales figures

January 13, 2012

I do love it when authors are honest about the kinds of sales they are making, particularly when they are not the pack leaders like Amanda Hocking or John Locke. I am sure both Amanda and John have worked incredibly hard for the success they currently enjoy, and I’m not slighting them in the least, […]

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How do you find out about new books and authors?

January 11, 2012

I’m interested in finding out more from readers about what they like and how they find out about new books and authors. I’m starting off with a very simple two-question survey. Please do take a moment to fill it out! When I’ve got a significant number of responses, I’ll publish the results. UPDATE: Right, well […]

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Ebook pricing experiment: First (tiny) milestone passed

January 11, 2012

Today I passed the first milestone in my ebook pricing experiment: I have sold as many copies of Argleton in the first 11 days of January as I sold in the four months it was available last year. However, and it’s a big however, I’ve made less than a quarter of the money in royalties […]

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Authors: If you can’t take the heat, stay the hell away from your book’s reviews

January 7, 2012

Today I stumbled across a blog post by KB/KT Grant about how authors who can’t handle negative reviews should really stay away from reading them, and certainly shouldn’t throw a hissy fit about any criticism they get. I hadn’t previously seen any of the examples of authorial meltdown that Grant refers to, but she is absolutely […]

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Argleton New Year Sale, Now On!

January 5, 2012

As a little experiment, I have put the Kindle version of Argleton on sale, so if you’d like to support my writing you can now do so even more cheaply than before! Here are the current prices (the confusion over the US price is because it shows up at $1.20 to me, but I had […]

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For 2012

December 31, 2011

Last year, I laid out my goals for the year. If was a relatively modest list which I had no doubt I’d be able to plough through in no time at all. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. *pauses for breath* Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. At least I managed to […]

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The role of belief in ebook pricing and what to do about it

December 23, 2011

So yes, I know it’s nearly Christmas Eve and I know I should be turning my brain off, but this blog post about ebook pricing by Declan Burke came across my radar today on Twitter (and yes I know I should have turned Twitter off too) and I couldn’t not reply. Declan writes about his […]

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Five real-world sci-tech scenarios that would never fly in Hollywood

December 22, 2011

Being a scientist by training and a geek by choice, there are a number of Hollywood tropes about scientists and geeks that do rather get on my wick. So here, without further ado, are some real world situations that would never* make it into a Hollywood script. 1. The loner geniusYou know that loner genius […]

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The best Christmas present you can give a new author: An Amazon review

December 19, 2011

Last month there was a great blog post by Anne Allen about how important Amazon reviews are to new authors: […] Amazon reviews, which were only mildly significant three years ago, now have a make-or-break impact on an author’s sales. When you’re buying an ebook, there’s no helpful bookstore clerk to tell you what might […]

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Argleton cover redesign brief

December 14, 2011

The cover for my novelette, Argleton, was designed rather laboriously by me during my Kickstarter project to produce a paperback, paper-covered hard back and silk-covered hardback. It is, I’m afraid, a bit pants; the experience certainly revealed to me the limits of my design ability! In this blog post I’m publishing my brief for the […]

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Kindle sales stats: a paucity of information

December 6, 2011

As a newbie to self-publishing, I find myself transported back a decade to the time when I was so obsessed with my blog traffic stats that I made a spreadsheet and noted down what events caused spikes in traffic. After a while I lost interest in the numbers, but now I’m back to tracking thems, […]

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Argleton: Now available in (a few) libraries

December 5, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I offered a few copies of Argleton to any libraries who wanted to claim them. I ended up with 15 libraries showing interest, so decided to simply say yes to all of them and send out 15 copies. So if you want to borrow a copy of Argleton you will […]

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O2 suck: Problem now resolved.

November 30, 2011

UPDATE 5 DEC 11: Having been rather robust with my criticism it’s only fair now to be as forthright about the follow up from O2. The web team at O2 got in touch after my rather angry rant last Wednesday and asked me to email them with details, which I did on Thursday. I was […]

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