I decided to do a quick check on sales of the first three Archibald Lox books at the end of August -- the BookBub promotion marked the end of my active marketing of the eBooks, so it seemed like a good time to see where we were at. And when I tallied up the numbers across all the different stores where the books are being sold, the total was just slightly north of...

50,000 copies!!!!

Now, granted, the vast majority of those "sales" were downloads of the first book, which is FREE, so, y'know, it's not the same as 50,000 "actual" sales! But, still, it's very hard in this day and age to even give away a book for free -- there are so many new books released every day that it's hard to make people aware of a book's existence, especially if you've self-published it. So I'm absolutely delighted with those figures -- now I just hope that enough people who downloaded the first book for free actually read and enjoy it and come back for more, so that I can cover the costs of putting together the paperbacks and then Volumes 2 and 3 over the next couple of years! :-)

If you haven't yet followed me into the Merge with Archie, Book 1 can still be downloaded for FREE, and the eBooks of Books 2 and 3 are VERY cheap. Paperback editions are on the way for those of you who prefer physical copies, and although they'll be more expensive because of the printing costs, I'll be keeping the prices as low as I can -- the bind-up edition, which collects all three books into one Volume, will be especially good value.

Even though it's fantasy, and less bloody and more carefully paced than my other series (which is the main reason why publishers gave it the cold shoulder), Archibald Lox has been getting a very strong response from readers, with high scores across the various Amazon stores, Goodreads, Kobo, Apple, Google, etc. It's also garnered lots of very strong reviews from bloggers and literary reviewers -- this snippet from The Bookbag nicely summed up the general response for me:

"I read quite a lot during the seemingly endless lockdown but nothing made me smile quite as much as these first three instalments in the Archibald Lox series. It's always a pleasure to read anything by Darren Shan but here, he's given us something new, I think. We still have plenty of action, loads of wisecracks and jeopardy aplenty, but this series is slightly less nihilistic and takes its time developing the working of its world."

There's some more info about Archie in the September issue of the Shanville Monthly, along with direct buying links for the Book 1 eBooks. Click here: https://www.darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly