Mark Edwards – Two Bestsellers Hit Top of UK Amazon Kindle Chart
Togetherwithhis‘writerinarms’LouiseVossMarkEdwardswrote a book entitled,
Catch Your Death. As it sat at number one on the UK Amazon Kindle Bestseller Chart,
another book written by the pair – Killing Cupid – sat at position four.
This is a pretty amazing feat for any writer. In this interview I spoke to Mark about how
he became a writer and where he sees the future for authors.
Darrell - How did you become a writer?
Mark - I started writing about fifteen years ago after I left uni. My first novel was
written longhand in a series of notepads. It was terrible, but once I'd got it out of my
system I was able to write a slightly-less terrible novel which I typed up on a
contraption called a Sharp Fontwriter (PCs were quite expensive back then) and,
following the instructions in the Writers' Handbook, posted it off to several agents. I got
some interest straight away and thought 'this is easy!' But then they changed their
minds and I wrote another novel, called The Liberators. This time I landed an agent who
told me I was going to be rich and famous. I told everyone I knew I was going to be rich
and famous.
I didn't get rich or famous. After wiping the egg off my face, and learning an important
lesson about hubris, I kept plugging away. I wrote another book, then another... Then a
weird twist occurred. The BBC were making a documentary about wannabe writers and
I was chosen to be on it. It didn't lead to anything except being recognised once by a bus
driver and receiving a nice email from another writer called Louise Voss who was in the
same boat as me. Louise and I struck up an email correspondence.
This is the point in the movie where the clock's hands would spin round... A few years
later, when I was agentless, Louise and I wrote a book together called Killing Cupid, then
another called Catch Your Death. We weren't able to sell them. Then I started having
kids, got a good job and gave up on the writing dream. It was a great relief. No more
stress. No more rejection. I'd tried my best but I hadn't succeeded.
Last year, after reading all the stories about the Kindle and self-published writers
finding success, I persuaded Louise that we had nothing to lose by putting our books
online ourselves. We rewrote them and updated them, and then put them live, starting
with Killing Cupid. It took about three months to get into the top 100 on Amazon.co.uk
at which point we released Catch Your Death. That one took 3 weeks to reach the top
100 - and another 3 days to shoot into the top 10. As I write Catch Your Death is No.1
and Killing Cupid is No.4.
It's been a long, tortuous journey... but hopefully this is just the beginning.
