For those of you who have followed my adventures with TimeSplash from the beginning, thank you. You now have the bragging rights to say you were among the very first to spot the book. For those who have just joined us here, welcome. For those who don’t know what this is all about and have just stumbled on this page while pootling around on the Web, why not grab a copy and see if you like it?

In the past few days, TimeSplash has started selling. It began with a free book giveaway on Amazon which saw the book zoom to the #1 spot in Science Fiction and #1 in Techno-thrillers (and several other sub-categories) in the free book rankings in the Kindle Store. Since then (just a couple of days ago) it has been steadily climbing its way up the ranks in the “paid” section. As I write, it is standing at #1 in Techno-thrillers and #6 in Science Fiction, and its overall ranking is still improving. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to all the people who have downloaded it – especially to those who actually bought it.

And not only is it selling well for the first time since it was launched, it is still getting great reviews. The three reviews below are all five-star reviews and have all been added to Amazon in the last three days:

This was suprisingly awesome! I cant wait to read it again as well as any other books from this author. Was a little worried about the time travel idea, but it was well presented and almost believable. (Mom_of_Two)

Timesplash is an excellent read. I was looking for a book to read over the long weekend and this one captured my attention. I was hooked from the beginning, and couldn’t put it down. The author has an interesting take on time travel that I found refreshing, and I also like his writing style. I will be on the look out for future works from this author. (Julie)

Great Book! This is a really great book about time travel. The ideas presented were clear and believable. I thought that the time travel lingo was brilliant. I could not put this one down. It also had a refreshing and hopeful ending. (Zelda)

Mom_of_Two, Julie, and Zelda, you guys rock! Thank you.

(And for those who like to listen to books in the car or on their MP3 player, don’t forget there is an audiobook edition available from Iambik Audiobooks, and Amazon’s Audible store.)

If you’re visiting because you are one of the thousands of people who have downloaded TimeSplash for free in the past 24 hours, welcome. You haven’t had time to read the book yet, but, when you do, I’m really hoping you’ll like it – and then come back here and let me know what you thought. In fact, if you want to do something really nice in return for your free novel, why not leave me an Amazon review – just one line would be great – and while you’re there, add a rating and tick some of the “tag” boxes. It all helps me to sell copies in between free offers.

And if you want to find out some of the background to the book, the characters, and the time periods visited in the story, here are a few of the blog posts from this blog that you might like to take a look at.

Creating TimeSplash: Finding the Right Time

When the Time Came for Time Travel

Creating TimeSplash: Picturing the Past

2050 is no Place for a Beautiful Young Woman

Sniper in World Exclusive Interview

Jay: Researching and Planning This Character in my Novel

And if you’re interested in the guy who wrote the book, I’ve done a number of interviews about myself and writing TimeSplash. Click on the “TimeSplash Reviews Index” tab near the top of this page and have a browse around (I can’t guarantee they will all still be there).

Thank you so much for your interest in my book. If you want to see what else I’m up to, I have a blog about my writing that you are most welcome to visit.

I’m trying an experiment with the TimeSplash ebook. I’ve put it into Amazon’s Select programme. This means that for the next 90 days, only Amazon can sell the TimeSplash ebook. They have total, worldwide exclusivity. I can’t even sell it on my blog (not that I do anyway). I feel kind of guilty about this – mainly because I’ve had to take it off Smashwords (and all the other sites that Smashwords sells through). And I like Smashwords. Yet the fact is that sales on Smashwords and all its third-party retailers are – and always have been – minimal. Taken all together, they are hugely outstripped by Kindle sales. So, financially, it is no great loss and, potentially, a big gain, because the benefit of being in the Select programme is that you can run promotions through Amazon. Each book in the scheme can be offered for free for 5 days out of the 90-day exclusivity period. And for the next two days (13th and 14th Jan) TimeSplash will be on offer in the Kindle Store. Let me repeat that for the people skimming, rather than reading.

For the next two days (13th and 14th Jan) TimeSplash will be available FOR FREE in the Kindle Store.

I’ll repeat the offer in February and in March (but might not bother you again with a mention of it).

And what’s the big deal about giving my work away for free? Well, there are two benefits. One is that it is extremely hard to run a free book offer while you are selling your work on Kindle outside of the Select programme. Amazon’s contract states that you can’t sell your book elsewhere for less than it is available in the Kindle Store – and nor can you give it away. To enforce this, their bots trawl the Web looking for infringements. You can move your Kindle price down to match the offer price elsewhere so you can actually run an offer, but many people find it very hard to get the offer removed quickly from everywhere it might have appeared, forcing your Kindle price to remain low (or free) for weeks and sometimes months. Using Select, having a free offer is extremely easy and they even have a clunky little tool to let you set it all up.

The other thing is that, well, it’s Amazon, and Amazon is big. I put another book into Select – a small collection of short stories called Placid Point: Tales from the History of Transhumanity – to see how it would go. This collection has been available from Smashwords and Amazon for nearly four months now and has not sold a single copy. No, not a single copy. It’s true that I have never promoted this little book, but you’d think one person in the whole world might have noticed it and bought a copy. But no. Anyway, it had a 2-day free promotion through Select just a couple of days ago and I gave away loads of copies of Placid Point. In fact, last March, during Read an eBook Week, I was giving away five ebooks through Smashwords. The result was phenomenal. Yet in just two days, giveaways of Placid Point almost equalled the total for all five books in that week. For a moment there, the Amazon rank of Placid Point, in the Science Fiction category – NB not some obscure category, so refined there are only ten books in the whole group – was #77. For the effort of ticking a box and taking the book off Smashwords, this seems like a great result. I could not have given Placid Point so much exposure if I’d blog toured for a year. (On the other hand, that result was in the ‘free on Kindle’ bucket. Once the offer was over, and the book was no longer free, the rank disappeared. Shame.)

So I’m hoping to give TimeSplash a similar boost. It’s almost two years now since it was first published by Lyrical Press and, of course, sales are flagging. It needs a kick up the pants and this may well be the way to do it. It would be nice to get some momentum behind the ebook again so that when the print edition comes out, later this year, there will be some level of awareness of it.

Wish me luck.

PS I forgot to mention that Kindle Prime members can now borrow TimeSplash from the Kindle library.

PPS I just saw that somebody has bought a copy of Placid Point from Amazon since the offer ended. Congratulations on being first, and thank you, whoever you are!

Yes, another one. So, for all of you who missed out on the Martha’s Bookshelf giveaway, and anyone else who fancies a free copy of this fast-paced time travel thriller, hurry over to the Nerfreader blog where three more copies of the TimeSplash audiobook PLUS a short story (the prequel to the novel) read by yours truly, can be had.

And there’s more! Chris, who runs the fabulous Nerfreader blog, interviewed me about the recording of the short story and about TimeSplash. I’ve been interviewed a few times now about TimeSplash now but I found Chris’s questions particularly interesting and engaging. I had a great time answering them (which, of course, says something about me, doesn’t it?) So check out my Nerfreader interview and find out what was the hardest part of recording the short story, and why people should stop trying to invent time travel.

As with the previous three-audiobook-plus-bonus-short-story giveaway, this one has been organised by (and the audiobooks kindly donated by) the brilliant Iambic Audiobooks – a publisher I am really enjoying working with. If you want low-cost, excellent audiobooks, you should definitely take a look at the Iambik Audiobooks website.And what better way to relax with a bellyful of Christmas pud and sherry, than to let someone read you a great book?

And that’s my last post until the New Year, so Merry Christmas everybody and I hope you all have a happy and successful New Year.

An Interview with Alaskan Bookie

You will remember the Alaskan Bookie site recently gave TimeSplash a five-star review. Well, afterwards, Dorothy, who runs the site, asked me over for an interview. You can see the result on the Alaskan Bookie website. This is a particularly good interview in a couple of ways. Firstly, the questions were really enjoyable. I’m not sure quite why, but each one sparked a little excitement – which you might notice in my enthusiastic responses Secondly, I am very impressed with Dorothy’s professionalism. You can see some of this just in the way the interview is laid out. It is one of the best-organised interview formats I have ever seen, with all the right information available but presented in a very palatable format. Again, I’m not quite sure why I think this. I will have to sit down and analyse my aesthetic response to what Dorothy has done here. Anyway, if you want to see me in excited and enthusiastic mode, talking right at you, visit the Alaskan Bookie today.

I just wanted to point you all to a review of the new audiobook version of TimeSplash. This is on the Alaskan Bookie site – where you can find reviews of other audiobooks as well as author interviews. I am very pleased to say it is a very positive review! It’s great that there are sites like Alaskan Bookie providing audiobook reviews as this is a hugely popular format that doesn’t get enough attention. In particular, the Alaskan Bookie reviews include a section about the narrator – crucially important to the enjoyment of an audiobook. I’d just like to quote what was said there about Emma Newman, the very talented writer who recorded TimeSplash for Iambik Audiobooks:

E.J. Newman has a clear voice and good enunciation. I enjoyed her accent during the book. She also has a younger sounding voice which works well for this novel because it involved a lot of younger people.

I like audio books. I’m just getting over a bad dose of man flu and, for a while there, there wasn’t much else I could do except lie on my back groaning and listening to books on my wife’s iPod. I listened to Robert Goddard’s ‘Dying to Tell’ and Philip K Dick’s ‘Minority Report’ and both were terrific. I don’t get to listen to audio books as often now as I used to. A few years ago, I had a commute to work that was at least an hour each way. Needless to say, I went through lots of audio books during that period of my life. It actually made the commute something to look forward to.

And now, look at me! I have my very own audio book of TimeSplash. The good people at Iambik Audiobooks – a Canadian audio book publisher – released it today. You can download it for your own favourite MP3 player (or iPad, or smartphone, or laptop/desktop/netbook – hell, even TVs play audio files these days) for the incredibly low price of $6.99. And, if you are a rabid consumer of audio books as I have been and my wife still is, you will know that that is an exceptional price.

Best of all, you get to hear Emma Newman reading my book. I’ve written at length on my other blog about Emma’s involvement in this project, so I won’t go on about it again, except to say, even if you have already read the book, I’m pretty sure you will get something extra out of the experience of hearing Emma read it.

On another matter, let me say a big thank you to all the people who are buying the new ebook edition of TimeSplash on Amazon. Even without a big launch, or even a small one (no blog tour, no 24-hour round-the-world non-stop Twitter tour, no begging letters to book reviewers, no nothing, really) it is doing much, much better than the first edition did. And that is a BIG puzzle to me, which I’d like to understand one day! Any thoughts?