The Doomsday Genie is an apocalyptic thriller based on the response of a group of heroes (and heroines) to a WMD threat to America.  It was only ever published by Swift as a POD and, latterly, as an amazon kindle e-book.  I regard it as my only true self-published novel, since, although it was published under the small press Swift Publishers label, Swift allowed me to pay for and see to every stage of publication personally.  It was part of a stage by stage exercise I conducted with the readership of the website www.lablit.com, aimed at showing readers how to go about self-publishing a novel. 

Being self-published, sales were inevitably limited compared to my normal books, though we went through about 800 B-format paperbacks in the first year.  Sales were initially more into America, since the action is based there, but over the weekend a spate of sales through amazon co uk raised it into the category top 100 science fiction kindle military type best-sellers.

I know this is a small achievement in the big world of best-selling fiction but it came as such an unexpected and very welcome surprise I went out and bought a small bottle of Jamieson's and one almighty cigar - and I finished them both in a haze of Rolling Stones and Rage Against the Machine. 

P.S.  4th December 2011  It's happened again earlier this week.  Another spurt of UK-based sales - so the previous flush of sales wasn't some kind of fluke.  Blooming great considering the dire present economic climate! 

How about that for a shot in the arm for self-published novels in this time of dire economic recession!

13th December 2011

Excellent new review of Doomsday Genie on the Thule Enterprise Science fiction review site.  See

http://english.netmassimo.com/2011/12/13/the-doomsday-genie-by-frank-p-ryan/