Monday, September 26, 2011

ML Stewart #1 Horror - Thriller Writer in The UK.

I am still wallowing in my prestigious position of #1 selling Horror / Thriller writer in the United Kingdom... but hey! Tomorrow I’ll probably be knocked off the top spot. Do I care? Not really, I have the screen shot and I can take that to bed with every night until I die.

It has taken me 12 weeks to become number 1. Why?
Because A) I got lucky and B) The Facebook Killer is a unique story.

OK kids, we are at the halfway point in this experiment, 12 weeks in and what have I learned.

1)      Don’t worry about the money. You may think that because you have spent a year writing your first book you are going to start coining it in. Wrong! Give it away free. Get the readers. Put it out on every available platform, free of charge, but stick it on Kindle for a price. Their bots will find it elsewhere and eventually they will bang it out for free, hopefully attracting 20 – 25,000 downloads. If you can, have your next book ready to publish when this happens.
2)      Before you publish, read the book again and again. Hands up, me and my firm goofed a little bit but we turned that to our advantage. When you proof read your own book, read it out loud, don’t read the story. Read the words, one by one, the speeling and the gremar:) Don’t rely on spell checkers, they suck.
3)      Don’t get big-headed or depressed by the reviews, after the first two or three I stopped reading them anyway and please don’t put on your own bullshit reviews, these can be spotted a mile away.
4)      The world is changing and one day people like me might just fit in.


SBJones wrote: 

Picture links are broken for me. Well done, I don't know what daily numbers you need to hit the overall top 100 list in the UK, and I can't wait till you tell us. All I know is that 5 a day doesn't break 10,000 in the US.

MLS replied: My cover’s better anyway mate and I didn’t cough up £400 for it. FBK2 is selling about 150 a day that keeps me around #40 in the UK Bestsellers, around #19 in the Thrillers and, of course, #1 in the Horror / Thrillers.


Kate Aaron wrote:

I'll say it for you:

woooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooo!!

well done!


MLS replied: Thanks for your support Kate. When I eventually kick Stephen King’s arse, you can be my bride’s maid.

 ...There was an article about e-publishing in the Sunday mail and someone said nice things about your books in the comments, so there's that :-)

MLS replied:
Thanks for that Sarah, I tried to get onto it but my satellite connection gets jammed up, too many megabytes to download.




Here is a blast from the past, from when I first started this experiment... (12 weeks ago)

ML Stewart wrote: Thanks Stephen, as a major international and highly acclaimed author, I appreciate you visiting my blog. If you are the great blue whale, I am the minnow's poop-shoot and I hope to kick your arse one day! No offence, you understand?"
Stephen Leather replied: Ha ha. But it's a common mistake, to assume that kicking another writer's arse helps you. It doesn't. Your aim has to be to produce quality work and to sell it to as many people as possible. It's like running a marathon, (this should actually be a semi colon not a comma by the way, MLS) it's your personal time that counts not what the runners around you are doing. I've lost count of the number of Indie writers who've said that they have me in their sights and their aim is to sell more than me. They come and they go and good luck to them.

When I started down my eBook route I wasn't interested in how many books other writers sell, or who were above me in the bestseller lists. That doesn't matter. All that matters is how good my books are and how many I sell. But hey, if you wanna kick my arse, you go for it.....

ML Stewart replied: Oops looks like I just did!






Regards all and remember, “don’t take it personally.”
ML Stewart

2 comments:

Sarah Tokeley said...

I have been reading kindle books on my pc for about a year now and I must say that many of the "Indie" books are complete tosh, spelling and grammar mistakes abound, but now and again I find some real gems like the Facebook Killer series, it still has mistakes and probably would not pass through an agent but the books like that which are available for free and under £1 make the errors bearable.
- Julia, Cardiff, Wales, 25/9/2011 10:41


That's the comment about you in the Sunday Mail

Anonymous said...

Your email is not working, just wrote practically an essay to you...lol x