300 contestants are being narrowed to 10 finalists for the 10th time!
Finalists for SPFBO 10 (so far)
I'm the author of The Broken Empire, The Red Queen's War, & Book of the Ancestor trilogies - spare ideas land here. ______________ Twitter @mark__lawrence (2 underscores!)
UPDATE: It's live!
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DF7GTLGC
US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DF7GTLGC
I should really post this next week, but in a desperate attempt to have more than one post a month I'm jumping the gun!
Also, this should make the elite few who actually read my blog get that warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing stuff that others don't.
I've put all three of my Book of the Ancestor short stories into one volume and for the first time I've self-published a paperback!
This was a learning curve but in due course I'm hoping to try a hardback edition, and then, armed with that knowledge, I will do a US paperback & hardcover of Road Brothers, and a paperback & hardcover collection of the three Library Trilogy short stories.
Who knows, I might even find somebody to do a special edition for some of these.
Here's the ARC (Advance Reader Copy) - cover art from Francesca Resta (originally sent to me as reader art!).
The paperback releases on the weekend (31st of August) and the ebook is out already.
The short stories (also available in ebook separately) are:
The Devil You Know (Book of the Ancestor #1.5)
Bound (Book of the Ancestor #2.5)
Thaw (Book of the Ancestor #3.5)
Prince of Thorns has been on the shelves for thirteen years!
The book is now the same age as Jorg himself is on the first few pages 😮
Worldwide the Prince of Thorns has sold about 1,000,000 copies... and UK paperback has reached at least 30 printings.
I'll take the chance to say thanks - thank you to my readers (and my publishers) for letting me spend the past 13 years writing stories, and more than that - living in them. It's been an unexpected privilege.
In other news, I now have a Patreon. Check it out!
In a few short days, Prince of Thorns becomes a teenager and will be the same age as Jorg himself for the first few pages of the novel!
I never expected to be an author. I certainly never expected this guy to pay off my mortgage. And I absolutely didn't expect to still be signing copies of the book in my local Waterstones 13 years after it was published.
This blogpost is along the lines of a Public Information Broadcast. It's intended to explain, not to cast shade. We've all got to hustle in the writing business.
When you're looking at books, thinking about your next read, you may have noticed quite how many "bestsellers" and "award-winning" books there are out there.
I had an experience recently which puts some context around this idea of "bestselling".
I self-publish short stories on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which puts them onto Amazon for sale. I was experimenting to see what it would look like if I published one under a different name - would there be any detectable ties to "Mark Lawrence", so I put out a novella I'd written a while back, a children's story.
I was also interested to see how a book by a new author would fare if they (I) did absolutely nothing to promote the book. So, I didn't mention this novella to anyone.
Then in the 3rd month one copy sold!
In the 4th month I noticed that the copy had sold. (for $0.99).
I went onto Amazon.co.uk (where the sale happened) and saw to my great surprise that despite a month having passed, the book was ranked #77 in the sales category "Children's Other Folk Tales & Myths".
I was a "bestseller" on the back of one sale a month ago. And these sales ranks 'decay' rapidly, so when it happened the ranking would have been considerably higher.
Another week has passed and that single sale 5 weeks ago still has the book ranked in the top 100 in the category. It has a top 100 best seller rank on Amazon ... it is a best seller!
And that's it. Just a bit of trivia for you. Why are there so many bestsellers? It's not because the authors are just making it up. They genuinely are bestsellers in some sense. It's just that Amazon makes everyone a winner.
I went to a fantasy book convention!
I was interviewed. And then again on stage - an actual stage with lights and backdrops and everything!
The Cymera Festival's in the heart of Edinburgh - a wonderful little city - and I had a great time. Hopefully, I'll go next year too.
Here are some photos to inspire you to turn up.
First, a shot from Armchair Books - the best secondhand bookshop I've seen! Easy walking distance from the festival site. Sadly, none of my books there - or I'd have signed them.