Why It's Getting Tough Out There For Self-Published Writers

There's definitely been a change in the way that eBooks are selling - it has become much harder for self-published writers to get into the bestselling charts.

My overall sales are holding steady but a lot of self-published writers have seen their sales stall and fall.

If you want to know the reason why - CLICK HERE

There's not much I can add other than to say that I thing it's going to get increasingly harder for self-published writers to hit the big time.  But only time will tell......

False Friends is out - paperback and eBook

False Friends is out, and selling well.  It’s already in the Top 100 on Kindle and is in all good bookshops and supermarkets.

My publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, are pushing the hardback this time and have priced it at £12.99. Amazon have discounted it to £7.27, which isn't much more than the mass market paperback sells for.

The eBook is selling for £6.99, and already a couple of thousand have been snapped up.

I'm a big fan of selling eBooks cheaply, but in this case I think the price is right. It's worth pointing out too that VAT is charged on eBooks but not on hardbacks and paperbacks, so 20 per cent of that £6.99 goes to our Government. Personally I think that's unfair and that the VAT should be consistent.  The fact that the eBook is cheaper than the hardback makes it a good deal.

There are two new characters in the book that I’m really pleased with. Harveer “Harvey” Malik and Manraj “Raj” Chaudhry, British-born Pakistanis who have infiltrated an al-Qaeda cell on behalf of MI5.

Because they are innocents in the undercover business, Dan “Spider” Shepherd is brought in to babysit them.

Harvey and Raj are great characters and I’m thinking of bringing them back in a novel of their own.  I’ve written Muslim characters before, but generally they’ve been terrorists planning to cause mayhem in the UK.  In False Friends, Raj and Harvey are true heroes, putting their lives on the line for their country.  It was something getting inside the heads of characters so different from me in terms of ethnicity and religion, but I was helped by a pal who is a UK-born Bangladeshi Muslim who gave me an insight about what it’s like to be a British-born Asian Muslim in the UK post 9-11.

I’m already plotting the Spider Shepherd book for 2013 – based on the Russian oligarchs who now call London their home.  There have been a number of Russian assassinations taking place in London and I’m going to involve Spider!


You can buy False Friends for the Kindle in the UK HERE


You can buy False Friends for the Kindle in the US HERE