Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Technician Rising.

Julie Crisp at Macmillan is rather pleased. Here's a sample from a recent email:

Here's some rather good news for you. THE TECHNICIAN has racked up an amazing 799 copies of sales in hardback in its first week. This places it at number 24 in the Bookscan charts! This is a terrific start and just goes to show how the popularity of your novels is on the rise. Hurrah!

14 comments:

Antony said...

I have one of those!

I think it helped that it was only £8.99 from Amazon...

Sean said...

How did I miss this? I mean...seriously! I subscribe to your blog, I read all your posts and await all your new books yet somehow or another...this book was released a month ago and I totally missed it? Did you post a "The Technician released" blog post? (If not, maybe you should :))


Interestingly though, I just got the Kindle version off Amazon, which was rather surprising. Usually Amazon does not have the Kindle version of your books and I end up getting a hardcover. This time around, all they had was a Kindle version, although they did have a "available through these sellers" link to the Hardcover version on the TOR website.


Apparently the publishing houses are still engaged in pissing matches with each other. Which basically does nothing except make it hard for the reader to get books and hard(er) for you to make money.

Anonymous said...

I didn't realise it had come out. So just ordered it, so add a brick to the outhouse with my name on it ;)

HarlsB said...

I bought the Kindle version of the technician and loved it.
Can of worms question though, which version of the book gets you the author more money - ebook, hardcover or mass market paperback? Does it even matter?

Grim's Reality said...

What matters is that it's not out in softcover for a year and that's not fair, and I'm not budging. I'm not reading it until it fits in the side pocket of my work backpack so I can have it on the train in the mornings.

Spencer said...

Having been busy with DIY, my dad has yet to start it. Im giving him the time it takes me to finish re-reading Orbus, then im stealing it. Fairs Fair :) Hope the sales keep going up and up for you!

Ben said...

More Polity novels please.

Jan Harald said...

Bought it, read it, loved it!!! So now I'm hungry for more... Again... Damn you for leaving me wanting more Polity. I think it is really great that you've created your own universe, and keep to it. It's familiar, like revisiting old places you been - or always wanted to go... :)

Thank you very much! :)

chrisheli said...

A fantastic read as I knew it would be. It answers many questions about the Atheter and Dragon which were left open in previous books.
Were all these facets interlinked in some kind of grand plan from the start?
Is 'Gordon' you in disguise - you would appear to have similar views?

Theo d'or said...

Pre-ordered the Technician about 8 months ago and kept on looking at Amazon to see when it would finally get here. When it finally did, I read it in two sittings. Loved it. Very nice ending. Loved the funky wildlife you always manage to come up with.

P.S. I'm still pissed that you get to live in Greece and I in Switzerland. Wanna swap? The Swiss are very punctual, correct, orderly and everything works and bla bla bla. God, I miss the med. Crazy buggers there, and full of shit, too, but at least with traits to show they're human.

Neal Asher said...

Antony, mmm, there go my royalties...

Sean, I did mention it quite often, but you're right, I should have done a big blaring THE TECHNICIAN IS RELEASED blog.

The market will eventually sort all that electronic stuff out. We keep seeing pissing matches like this all the time. Think Betamax...

Skar, we don't have an outhouse, as such, but I could carve your name in the concrete cap of the cess pit?

Per item HarisB, that would be the hardback ... then again, only if it is not heavily discounted.

Graeme, I perfectly understand, I too prefer paperbacks to read. However, there's those who are pepared to pay a bit more for a collectors item so, paying more, why shouldn't they gain in this way?

Spencer, tell him to buy his own copy!

Ben, not for a little while, but I think you'll enjoy The Departure, Zero Point & Jupiter War...

Jan, thank you for telling me. Even now, after so many books, I still await those first comments and reviews wondering if I'm still hitting the right buttons.

chrisheli, as someone once said to me, 'You just make it all up as you go along' to which the reply has to be, 'Erm, yes'. No plan, but a great deal of integration as things go on.

Theo d'or, thank you very much, for the same reasons as mentioned above.

Sorry about me living in Greece and all that. You need to get a job you can do anywhere, with a laptop! And yes, they are all crazy buggers.

Theo d'or said...

I have read all of your books, Neal, even got a genuwhine(fake american accent there, just to show how un-South African I am) botched editing version of the Engineer, which took a while to figure out what with some stories missing parts and others deftly interleaved with other short stories.

Fortunately, time has helped me forget the earliest ones in details, so I'll have to start at (Africa) zero again (hugely witty pun, there).

You and Richard Morgan would get my vote for the Theo SF award for writing SF that doesn't bore me to tears.

P.S. I actually did start writing my own SF novel a couple of years ago, then discovered that Paul McAuley had gone and ripped my premise right off, the cheeky bugger. He also did it years before I got around to it, which shows that he's not only a plot thief, but can see the future as well ;-)

Clockwork Zeppelin said...

Hi Neal

I haven't bought it yet.

I bought a kindle

AND ITS NOT F**KING HERE YET!!

Soon as it's here....it's mine

Phil Ackerman said...

Ordered mine in Feb from Amazon, so there must have been some publisity then for me to know about it.
Not read yet, but looks great (hope to get to it soon).