I didn’t think this through, did I? But who knew I’d be this big in Germany!
My funny mystery novel Who Knew Tasmanian Tigers Eat Apples! went permafree on Amazon a week or so ago, which propelled it to near the top of the free satire charts in the US and Australia. That came as a pleasant surprise.
But what came as a bigger surprise to me was I got a scheiße-load of downloads from amazon.de too — so much so that for some days my novel was No. 1 on the in-English humor books charts in Germany.
The awkward thing about this is Who Knew Tasmanian Tigers Eat Apples! is the first of a series of three books in my Windy Mountain.
My strategy is hardly original. By giving the first book away for nothing, I hope to get people who enjoyed that one, buying No. 2 and No. 3.
Who Knew Tasmanian Tigers Eat Apples! (No.1 ) and Lie of the Tiger (No.2) probably aren’t going to offend any Germans.
But I AM worried about Blokes on a Plane (No. 3) because the villain of that story goes by the name of Messerschmidt, he has a German shepherd called Adolf, and he lives in Hillstrasse.
Honestly, I never foresaw this problem.
I can’t even employ the Basil Fawlty defence. He mentioned the war but thought he got away with it. If I get read-through, I have my ‘oops’ moment to come!
JOHN MARTIN 