I know what you’re thinking. “Man, if only Gary did more blog posts in which he tried to flog his bloody ebooks!” Well, have I got a happy surprise for you!

Bring Me The Head of Mark Zuckerberg is a new ebook by yours truly, and it’s available right now from – yes! – Amazon UK and Amazon US. This one’s non-fiction: it’s a collection of various tech pieces I’ve written in recent years, some of which are funny and some of which aren’t. Hopefully we’ll all agree on which ones are which.

Ready for some blurb? Let’s go!

Things move fast in technology. In 1998 Google was still in a garage, Microsoft ruled the world and the internet was made of wood. iPods, YouTube and Facebook were years away. Phones were rubbish, getting online cost a fortune and Gary Marshall tried to convince the readers of .net magazine that the Hitler Diaries had been written by a small dog. 

Luckily for him, the dog didn’t sue. 

Gary Marshall has been writing about technology like a pixelated PJ O’Rourke since 1998. In this collection of tech journalism from titles including .net, PC Plus, Techradar.com and Official Windows Magazine Gary picks through the PR nonsense, inflated claims and the reality distortion fields of the tech industry to concentrate on the big issues – issues such as, “does Google’s Eric Schmidt really own a coat made of human skin?”, “just how evil does Facebook need to become before people stop using it?” and “why are we being chased around the internet by adverts for horrible shirts?”

As ever, comments, Amazon reviews and offers of six-figure book deals would be very much appreciated.

Update: Coffin Dodgers hit the 10,000 mark in February 2012. I’ve broken down the numbers here.

A wee milestone: Coffin Dodgers just sold its 1,000th copy, and to gladden my heart further it’s just outside the humour top ten (it’s number 12) and number 440 in the UK Kindle Store. The charts are updated hourly, but the book has been in or around the humour top 20 for more than a week now. As ever, I’m very grateful to everyone who’s said nice things about it or recommended it to anybody else.

I’d love to say I’ve learnt some really important lessons about publishing, but I haven’t. I’ve noticed a few things, though.

* First and foremost, ebooks don’t follow the “big splash then slow decline” sales model: my sales appear to be accelerating. In its first month Coffin Dodgers sold 89 copies; so far this month I’ve sold 260. That’s happening without my involvement, so I’m assuming there’s a positive feedback loop where Amazon spots books that are doing reasonably well and recommends them to readers.

* People don’t read free samples. That might be a side-effect of 99p pricing – people think “oh, what the hell”, because 99p isn’t very much – but it’s clear that people aren’t going “new author, eh? I’ll download the free sample to see if I like it” before hitting the buy button. I’ve had a few refunds and at least one one-star rating on Goodreads.com, which I’m not going to obsess about. Oh no. (For what it’s worth, the total number of refunds is about six, which isn’t a lot.)

* One star. One! No explanation. Just one star. One!

* Amazon’s Kindle is where it’s at: it’s to books what iTunes is to music. Last month I sold 272 books on Amazon UK, 3 on Amazon US, 3 via Smashwords and one via Apple. The difference might be sheer luck – maybe iTunes would show the same feedback loop as Amazon if I’d sold more there – but for now at least, you could concentrate solely on the Kindle without losing much sleep or many sales. It’ll be interesting to see if that changes now that the Kobo reader is selling in WH Smith.

* As I’ve mentioned before, pricing is key when nobody knows who you are. Whether you like it or not, 99p is the price people expect to pay for ebooks from unknown authors. If your objective is to be read – and mine is – then pricing higher is probably counter productive.

* One!

* This isn’t a living. Assuming sales of 300 copies a month, which is pretty good, that’s around £90 in royalties per month – it’ll keep you in Moleskines, but it won’t pay the mortgage. What it does do, I think, is prove that no matter how niche your book, it’ll find an audience. And it encourages you to write more by flattering your ego, and by making you think things such as “okay, one book doing 300 a month is ninety quid, but if I had ten books doing that…”

* I really need to get my arse in gear with my other books. A non-fiction one is imminent, and I’m swithering between two fiction titles: one’s a sequel to Coffin Dodgers and the other one isn’t. Time to commit, I think. Or two write two books simultaneously.

New ebook publisher Blasted Heath (vested interest alert: they’re friends of mine and occasional employers) gave me one of these the other night.

It’s the Blasted Boxset, 5 ebooks on a USB drive in a presentation tin.

I think it’s a really good idea, and hopefully there will be more like it: while ebooks are wonderful things, if you want to give one as a gift you’re reduced to printing a receipt on an inkjet.

Update: Coffin Dodgers became a proper bestseller in February 2012, topping Amazon UK’s humour chart and breaking into the overall top 40 too.

I’m quite delighted to see that Coffin Dodgers is currently number 20 in Amazon UK’s Books > Fiction > Humour chart, as well as number 33 in Kindle Store > Books > Humour and number 56 in Books > Humour > Fiction. I can’t say being in the top 20 has changed my life, but it’s certainly helping to sell more books: total sales are at 913*, and I’m selling around ten books per day at the moment.

If you’re interested, my highest overall chart placing so far is #608 “out of over 400,000 books in the Kindle Store”, Amazon tells me. That’s quite good, isn’t it?

I mentioned before that sales were overwhelmingly from the UK, and that’s still very much the case: for every 1 ebook I sell in the US, I sell 25 books over here.

Thanks once again to everyone who’s been nice about it, reviewed it or told anyone else about it. I’m very grateful.

I am still working on another book, but it’ll be months before I’ve got anything sensible to say about it.

* It might be higher than that: anything sold through Smashwords, such as iBooks, Sony or Kobo sales, takes ages to be reported. 

I’m hopeless at catching programmes when they’re actually broadcast, so it’s taken me a while to get round to watching the DCI Banks adaptations of Peter Robinson’s books. I like the books, but I encountered exactly the same problem I had with the recent dramatisation of Mark Billingham’s DI Thorne novels. No, not the annoying sidekick, or the maverick cop breaks the rules but always gets his man blah blah blah… the problem I had was overacting. It was bad in Thorne, but even worse in Banks.

Put it this way: if you created a drinking game where you had to down a shot every time DCI Banks made this face:

You’d be very pissed very, very quickly.

That face put me off the programme. I mean it. It’s not just his “I’m angry at a suspect” face. It’s his “I wish I’d had some toast before leaving the house” face, his “I wonder what I’ll have for my tea” face and his “I’m feeling quite chipper today, actually” face.

I don’t get it. Was there a memo that says all TV detectives are allowed two facial expressions, Really Pissed Off and Absolutely Fucking Furious?

A new ebook publisher launches later today: Blasted Heath. I need to declare an interest – one of the founders is a friend of mine who occasionally pays me to write things – but I think what they’re doing is really interesting: they’re picking authors who they believe deserve a bigger profile and marketing the hell out of them. I’ve read two of the launch authors – Ray Banks and Douglas Lindsay – and loved their books, so if BH can maintain that level of quality they’re on to a winner.

I like some of their other ideas too: ebooks are DRM-free and provided in the major file formats (Kindle, ePub and PDF) to ensure maximum compatibility, and if you fancy giving books as a gift there’s a nice wee box set with the books on USB stick inside a presentation case. I know both Blasted Heathens, Kyle and Allan, and they’re definitely on the side of the angels.

Blasted Heath is giving away a different book every day this week, so if you fancy something a bit different you should pop along. Today’s giveaway, Douglas Lindsay’s The End of Days, is a hoot.

I love Tim Dorsey, and I don’t need to finish When Elves Attack to urge everyone to buy it. It’s typical Dorsey, which means it’s superbly deranged Floridian tomfoolery that had me hooting with delight by the second paragraph – which, in this case, is a 93-year-old explaining why she’s gone off sex. If you haven’t read Dorsey and found Coffin Dodgers even remotely funny, you really ought to check out the work of the master.

The most excellent Simon Royle publishes what he calls indieviews, interviews with indie authors. And today it’s my turn to talk bollocks.

I’ve lost track of the number of times a supposedly smart, glass ceiling-shattering female character suddenly becomes a simpering idiot thanks to Captain Exposition. This kind of thing:

Him: We need a laser.

Her: A laser?

Him: Yes, a laser. It stands for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation, and it was first suggested by Einstein in 1917. In 1958, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow theorized and published papers about a visible laser, an invention that would use infrared and/or visible spectrum light, however, they did not proceed with any research at the time. Today, however, lasers are everywhere, used in a variety of industrial and military applications. You’ll even find them inside home entertainment equipment such as DVD players.

Her: You are so clever! Let’s have sex!

Yes, imagine! And then make it, and give me cash!

Chris at Adarna SF has posted a thoughtful review of Coffin Dodgers, for which I’m very grateful. I think the criticisms are spot-on too.

Despite these hiccups, I really commend Gary Marshall for coming up with a well-written (and well-edited) debut mystery. There are moments in the book that subtly move into the realm of social commentary without having to try so hard. Irreverent tone notwithstanding, it feels much more polished than the usual indie e-books that I’ve come across — definitely worth an afternoon read.