Last Saturday, for five days, The Long Second was available for free download from Amazon. As promised, here’s what happened.

The giveaway started at midnight PST – that’s 8am UK time. As is normal for a Saturday, I wasn’t up then – in fact I had an usually long lie-in and didn’t surface until nearly 11. I don’t take my iPhone to bed, so had no sneaky peaks before I got up.

The first thing I saw when I did finally switch on the phone were 2 Twitter Direct Messages from my online friend Joanna. The first told me she’d finished reading The Long Second, had hugeky enjoyed it and wanted to tell everybody but had noticed that the book was free, and did I want her to hold back? The second, about an hour later, stated that she couldn’t hold back and had already started telling people.

At this point, I checked the Kindle Downloads page and, to my surprise, saw that the book had already been downloaded 200 times – without me having to mention it.

Over the next few days I posted prompts on Twitter – hopefully not alienating my friends along the way – as well as Facebook, and watched as the downloads grew beyond belief.

I make no bones about it. I’m small-fry, an unknown. While I’ve seen authors claiming to ave given away 30,000 copies, I was never going to anywhere near that. Catherine Ryan Howard gave away 3,000 copies of her book. That was a more sensible figure but still, I thought, unlikely for me. In set a target of 1,000.

Let’s put that into perspective. The Long Second was published on 1 June 2011. In seven months I sold a grand total of 100 copies (on Amazon). Not terribly impressive, though still more than many achieve. In less than four hours I had given away double that. By Sunday morning, 500. By midday Monday I had reached my target of 1,000 with over 2 days remaining.

In the end, a total of 1,621 were downloaded; at one point The Long second reached number 134 in the UK free download chart and number 745 in the US chart. I would have loved to have hit the top 100, but it wasn’t to be.

As an added bonus, sales of Broken have increased by a small but significant amount. Since the end of the promotion, sales of The Long Second have been steady (though obviously much smaller).

I’ve no idea, at this stage, what longer term impact this will have. Will it have been enough to begin building the momentum, or is this destined to be the highest point for this book? Only time will tell.

As part of Amazon’s Select Promotion, THE LONG SECOND is now FREE on Kindle for a limited time (5 days, to be exact).

Why am I doing this? Because it has been shown to raise the profile of a book quite dramatically. Everyone, it seems, loves a freebie.

Won’t I be losing money? Strictly speaking, yes. But not much. And the value of more people knowing about (and reading, and then – hopefully – reviewing) the book dramatically outweighs the small amount of money I’d lose.

I was going to say that I’ve no idea how successful this will be, but the promotion has only been running for something like four hours and already (1) I’ve shipped more books total in four hours than on any individual previous month (2) I’ve shipped more books in the US than the TOTAL US sales over the past six months. So, on that basis, it’s probably proved its success already.

We’re still talking quite small numbers, but if I can ship over 1000 (and, at the current rate, that has to be achievable) then I’ll be really happy. It’s interesting that the ones shipped already have been despite that fact that I hadn’t announced it to anybody…

So, snap up a free bargain while you can. And, if you enjoy it, please consider posting a review (there are no reviews on Amazon US at the moment, so a review there would be really appreciated!)

The link for the US store is here and for the UK store is here. (It’s also available in Spain, Italy, France and Germany but I’m not expecting anything to happen there).

I’ll report back next weekend on the results.

My thanks to the lovely people at Our Book Reviews for reviewing The Long Second.

It’s a short review, and quite honest in that they admit that the book isn’t perfect – which is fair enough as I’m happy to admit that myself (with the benefit of hindsight, at least!).

I do, though, have to quote my favourite part of the review:

“A very clever idea … and possibly one of the best endings to a novel that I’ve read”

I’ll admit I’m pretty happy about that.

The review is here

After much consideration I have decided to, possibly on a temporary basis, remove Adam’s Game from Amazon and Smashwords.

Adam’s Game has consistently failed to receive the level of interest, sales and – most importantly – positive feedback that the other two books have received. It’s not that I think it’s a bad book, but I have begun to wonder if it is a less “complete” book than either The Long Second or Broken.

At some point I may sit down and conduct a massive edit/rewrite, but I don’t expect that to be any time soon. Other projects need to be completed first: namely the third in the TLS series, and at least one new YA (Young Adult) book – which will hopefully be submitted to publishers, assuming my agent likes it enough.

TLS3 is currently on-hold while I concentrate on the new YA. I am using National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to kick-start this project – though I’m not holding myself to either the daily word-count (1667 per day) nor the total size (50000 words) nor to the deadline of completion by the end of November. I would like to have the first draft finished before the end of the year, if possible – as a YA novel it is likely to be around 60000 words so that should be achievable so long as the story remains strong and focussed in my mind. It’s an idea that’s been kicking around for a while, is currently codenamed WIW8, and will hopefully be a lot of fun.

Once WIW8 is completed, I intend to turn back to another unfinished YA, codenamed DD. Both YA novels will be submitted under a new pseudonym to avoid confusion with Marshall Buckley books, which will always be more focussed on an adult audience.

Only once WIW8 and DD are complete will I return to TLS3. That most likely means Spring 2012 at the earliest – so, apologies to the small but dedicated group of followers who are desperate to find out what happens to the Cole family. I hope the wait will be worthwhile.

After what seemed like the most painful proofing process in the world (at least partly, and probably entirely down to my own errors), I’m now happy to announce that the paperback of BROKEN is now available to order. Best of all, unlike The Long Second, I should be able to send these out very quickly – delivery is expected next Tuesday (11th October).

You can use the link on the right or just click here.

It’s all been a bit quiet around here lately. Summer seems to do that.

The paperback of Broken is now very close to being available. I’ve been through two sets of printed proofs – the first I managed to set the wrong page size, which gave me some lovely big margins in which to write the corrections… The second set were on the correct paper size but still contained the old version of the interior. I can’t be certain where the error occurred as I thought I had uploaded the new file, but I can’t prove it.

The (hopefully) final proof should be here on Friday and, all being well, I’ll be able to approve for printing. I’ll post a link to the page to order your copy as soon as I’ve confirmed it.

In other news, Amazon are now listing the paperback of The Long Second in the UK as well as the US. It actually works out cheaper to buy direct from them than it does from me. So, if you fancy a copy, the link is here.

Finally, work on part 3 is progressing slowly… I seem to be spending more time reading than writing at the moment, but that’s just allowing all the ideas to develop and mature, so I now have a much better idea where to take it. It’s still a while away, though.

As always, all three books are available for Kindle from Amazon US and UK, and for other readers via Smashwords.

This blog was always intended to be a journey of discovery through the world of self-publishing, discussing what works and what doesn’t work (for me, at least). I’ve been a bit remiss on that front recently, so will try to address that over the coming weeks.

It’s now 3 months since The Long Second was published on Amazon’s Kindle platform. So far, it hasn’t set the world alight despite almost universal praise from everybody who reads it. I’ll admit that many of these readers are personally known to me and so carry little weight in the grand scheme of things, but many of these people I was completely unaware that they were reading it until they finished it and told me how much they enjoyed it (and were now reading the sequel – Broken). Had they not enjoyed it, they would probably never have mentioned it to me, so I take it as positive that they did.

In June and July sales were steady. In August, they nose-dived dramatically. This seemingly coincided with my decision to raise the price of the books to £2.99/$2.99 – following the theory of some that the 99p/99c price level devalues books, makes them seem almost worthless. I’m not saying they are wrong (in fact, I’m inclined to agree) but it does appear that casual browsers are more willing to take a chance on a 99p book than a £2.99 book. Does that buyer actually read the book? I’ve no idea…

As of today, I have reset the price of The Long Second to 99p/99c and have (following the advice of another successful self-publisher) changed the Amazon description. I’ve also changed the genre category. That does, of course, complicate matters because having changed three things it will be impossible to know which has had the most impact.

I intend to change the description on Broken and Adam’s Game, but I won’t be changing the price on these just yet.

I still hope that “word of mouth” will eventually lead to some good sales figures, and I keep being told that it’s a slow process. I’m still very reticent to promote heavily on Twitter and Facebook following the earlier issues with offensive tags being added to the book, but I may revisit this in a different, hopefully less intrusive manner.

Time, as they say, will tell.

A warm welcome to visitors, new and old.

If you are here as a result of the feature in The Telegram, thank you for your interest. Please explore the site and discover the journey that Marshall Buckley has taken from the initial idea to publication of the three books. There are also a couple of short stories – the chilling A Very Ordinary Killer, and the much more light-hearted Taken (published to support the Macmillan Cancer Support “Coffee Morning”).

Comments and questions are always welcomed; if you use the Contact Me page, I guarantee I will answer personally.

You can find free sample chapters from The Long Second on the Samples page (these samples are in Word format).

All three books – The Long Second, Broken and Adam’s Game – are available for all e-book readers. Amazon Kindle owners can follow the Amazon links on the right of the page. Owners of other readers can find the books at Smashwords. (Smashwords and Amazon also offer free samples of all the books).

At present, only The Long Second is available in paperback format. Broken will be available later this year, Adam’s Game will be available early 2012. If you are in North America, you can buy the paperback from Amazon. If you are located else where, please use the “Buy Now” link on the right.

You can find Marshall Buckley and The Long Second on Facebook and Twitter (be warned, many tweets are unrelated to the books and may be somewhat irreverent!) – new followers are also welcome; say hello and I’ll follow you back.

Once again, thank you for your interest in Marshall Buckley.

I had considered revealing my actual sales figures here, but have had second thoughts. Not because they are especially bad or especially good but I’m just not ready yet to put them in the public domain.

I will say, though, that July sales were almost identical to June sales. That’s quite positive because more of July’s sales would be to “random” purchasers (i.e. to friends/family/colleagues). They’re also good because sales of Broken – the sequel to The Long Second – have been strong, indicating that readers of the first book have enjoyed it enough to purchase the second (and, presumably, want to find out what happens next).

I’ve stepped back al little from the constant promotion, still smarting from the unpleasant tags that appeared following my early attempts at targeted promotion on Twitter. Again, though, the lack of persistent promotion doesn’t seem to have harmed sales much (if at all).

However, it looks as if there may well be a significant development on the publicity front coming very soon. I won’t reveal anything yet but, if my understanding is correct, then I’ll be able to talk about it very soon (and maybe point you in the direction of it, too).

Finally, The Long Second paperback is now available to order direct from Amazon – though it’s only available on the US site (it’s listed on UK but shown as unavailable). Bets of all, last time I looked, they’d knocked $5 off the price. It’s practically a bargain!

The e-books, of course, remain available on both the US and UK sites. I wouldn’t object if you felt the need to pop over there and buy some…

I’m horribly aware that my good intentions to post regularly here have fallen by the wayside somewhat. To put it simply, life got in the way. On top of that, I had run out of new insights into the self-publishing world.

So, time for a little catch up.

All the books continue to sell, slowly, on Kindle. There has also been a very small number of sales on Smashwords, and I’ve sold all of the first batch of paperbacks.

But we’re still talking small numbers here. Searching for the magic formula that turns the trickle into a flood is proving as difficult as expected. I’ve been seeking reviews from independent sites, but I’m just one of many and the few that have responded have told me there is likely to be a long wait. I don’t mind waiting.

No more Amazon reviews have appeared, which is disappointing as I continue to get excellent direct feedback from people who have read it. While I try not to put too much emphasis on reviews from friends and colleagues, I’m heartened that these are often from people who I had no idea were reading the book, and they then take time to find me and tell me how much they are enjoying it (and, as I had no prior knowledge, then they could have read it, hated it and not told me!)

Hopefully things will begin to settle down and I can return to writing. The third in the trilogy is begging for attention (and I’m already being badgered for it).

In the meantime there’s the small distraction of changing my car (much to my wife’s annoyance!)…