Amazon Cuts The Price Of My Self-Published Paperbacks

The wonderful folks at Amazon have decided to slash the prices of most of my self-published paperbacks for UK readers for the month of May.

It's a terrific promotion for those readers who want to hold a real paperback in their hands.

I have self-published the books through Createspace, which is an awesome print-on-demand system which most self-publishers use.

Authors don't make as much money from the POD paperbacks as they do from eBooks but it's worth doing as so many readers do prefer paperbacks to eBooks.

Amazon have chosen six of my paperbacks as part of a May promotion.

New York Night - the latest Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller - is just £5.99 for the month of May - You can buy it - HERE

San Francisco Night - where Jack Nightingale fights demons in San Francisco - is also just £5.99 - You can buy it HERE

The Spider Shepherd SAS short story collections are included in the promotion with Spider Shepherd: SAS Volume 1 now £5.39 now, down from £8.99 - You can buy it HERE

Spider Shepherd: SAS Volume 2 is also £5.39, down from £8.99 - You can buy it HERE

Take Two - my murder mystery set in the world of soap operas -  is also down from £8.99 to £5.39 - You can buy it HERE

My psychological thriller The Bestseller is slashed from £7.99 to £4.79 - You can buy it HERE

First Response - The New Standalone Novel

Amazon has just discounted the hardback price of my new standalone novel First Response to just £8.  That makes it almost a couple of quid cheaper than the eBook. You can buy the hardback HERE

Hodder and Stoughton have set the pricing for the eBook at £9.99 which I actually think is pricey, especially now that the hardback is just £8.

Here's the blurb for the new book, which I think is one of my best:

London is under siege. 

Nine men in suicide vests primed to explode hold hostages in nine different locations around the city, and are ready to die for their cause.

Their mission: to force the government to release jihadist prisoners from Belmarsh Prison. Their deadline: 6 p.m. Today. 

But the bombers are cleanskins, terrorists with no obvious link to any group, and who do not appear on any anti-terror watch list. What has brought them together on this one day to act in this way? 

Mo Kamran is the Superintendent in charge of the Special Crime and Operations branch of the Met. As the disaster unfolds and the SAS, armed police, and other emergency services rush to the scenes, he is tasked with preventing the biggest terrorist outrage the capital has ever known.

But nothing is what it seems. And only Kamran has the big picture. Will anyone believe him?

The wonderful people at Lovereading made First Response their March book of the month and  gave it an awesome review HERE!

Blowing Up A Bus On Lambeth Bridge

I had an amazing time today watching Bond director Martin Campbell blowing up a bus on Lambeth Bridge in London.

Martin is halfway through filming my book The Chinaman, starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan. The bus blowing up is one of the major stunts in the movie and cost more than £300,000.

It could only be done once, obviously, so it was rehearsed several times so that all ten cameras (including one in a helicopter) would capture the shot.

It looked amazing, and my hats are off to the nine stuntmen who were actually on the bus when it exploded! Here's the picture I took!

The explosion was reported on ITV and most newspaper websites carried photographs and video!

This is how ITV reported it -  CLICK HERE

This is how the Daily Mail reported it - CLICK HERE

The Guardian, possibly the worst newspaper in the world IMHO, reported that Londoners were terrified as they thought it was a real terrorist bombing.  Absolute nonsense, of course, but I realised long ago that you can't believe anything in The Guardian. I was there, no one was terrified. And there was plenty of warning as to what was going on.

I saw a lot of the footage taken and it was amazing, truly amazing. Martin Campbell is a genius.

After the explosion I was allowed on to the bridge to inspect the damage with screenwriter David Marconi.

To be honest, there isn't a bus bombing in The Chinaman. I wrote about a bombing at the racecourse at Ascot but they weren't happy about having a bomb there so David wrote a bus bomb scene. I'm glad he did because it's really effective.

What was really cool was that Pierce Brosnan turned up to watch, even though it was his day off. He wandered around in a warm jacket and a baseball cap and was virtually unrecognised! Like the rest of us, he captured the explosion on his phone!

It's going to be a great movie and I'm really looking forward to seeing it on the big screen!

The Chinaman Movie

Filming is almost halfway through on The Chinaman, and the footage I've seen looks absolutely amazing. Yesterday I watched the filming of the scenes where The Chinaman (Jackie Chan) confronts IRA man Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan) at a farm in Ireland (actually filmed in Oxfordshire).

Jacky Chan and Pierce Brosnan are giving great performances and it's going to be a terrific film.

I went to the set with David Marconi, who wrote Enemy Of The State and who has produced an amazing script from my book.

The production set-up is amazing with more than a hundred people supporting director Martin Campbell. They have brought in dozens of trailers and built a metal platform on a field to support all the vehicles.

The farm they are using is terrific, very much as I had imagined it when I wrote the book some twenty-five years ago.

The stunts in the movie are amazing and cost more than a million pounds. I came across a car they've blown up and there are more explosions planned!

I can't wait to see the finished film - I know it's going to be brilliant!

My Two New Self-published Paperbacks

I was quite late coming to self-publishing paperbacks. I had done really well self-publishing eBooks - becoming one of Amazon's all-time Top 10 UK self-publishers - but I hesitated to try publishing paperbacks. The profit margins looked low and there's a lot to do in the way of formatting and covers.

Eventually I published the Spider Shepherd short story collections on Createspace - who sell through Amazon - and they did surprisingly well. I followed up with my two self-published Jack Nightingale books - San Francisco Night and New York Night.

All sold well and it's clear that there are readers out there who still prefer paperbacks, even when they are considerably more expensive than the corresponding eBook. The problem with publishing paperbacks is that Createspace are quite expensive, and then the retailer - usually Amazon - also take their cut. So although a book might sell at £8.99 or £9.99 for the paperback (admittedly a trade paperback, which is larger than the regular mass market paperback) the writer is lucky to get much more than £2 or so. Bearing in mind the cover and the formatting costs several hundred pounds, it can take a while until you recover your costs. But it's definitely worth doing, if for no other reason than it gives readers a choice.

Here's the Amazon link for The Bestseller paperback -  CLICK HERE

Here's the Amazon link for the Take Two paperback -  CLICK HERE