That's how many more books I've sold in the last 7 days compared to the past 7 months The Monkey State has been out in the wild.Now, 'sold' is a misnomer as around 95% were free copies as part of the promo I've been rabbiting on about recently. It's taken the total tally for both books to 3,019 - with a heavy ebook and US reader skew now. Maths isn't my strong point. There's a reason I write. What I can see clearly though is it's 2,350 more people with a copy of the monkeys in their hands (or...

I was recently chatting with a colleague at work about HBO's plan to adapt Harry Potter into a TV series. It's a bold vision to create a series for each of the 7 books, spread over a decade. My friend went on to claim, 'Original stories are dead!' I had to admit, he had a point... Between endless sequels, reboots, and “reimaginings,” it can feel like the spark of fresh, original storytelling has truly dimmed. But there are exceptions. New explorations of existing story worlds are not without...

I was told from the start that books don't sell themselves. That whatever effort you put into crafting the story, you'd need to double that with your marketing. Like most first time authors I probably paid lip service to this. Nodding along. Reading up on the topic, without acting. Thinking I'll work that out when the time comes... That time does come. The monkeys have done pretty well—from a standing start—with 649 units processed and 9,000+ page reads since 20 Jan this year. Yet, it's still...