PRESS RELEASE
JOY ELLIS and JOFFE BOOKS
CELEBRATE 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD
Independent publisher Joffe Books is delighted to announce author Joy Ellis has achieved book sales of 1 million copies with a further 214 million pages read in Kindle Unlimited, the equivalent to another million sales. This is the publisher’s first author to hit 1 million copies.
Ellis’s first title with Joffe Books in June 2016 was Crime on the Fens - Book 1 of the Nikki Galena series. Since then Joffe have published a further 13 books by Ellis, including Beware the Past with 132,000 copies already sold in just 3 months. In total, Ellis has achieved on Kindle 3 consecutive UK No.1’s, 11 UK Top 20’s and 2 USA TOP 10’s bestsellers. Her books have been translated into Italian by Newton Compton and released as audio books by Audible and Tantor.
The Guilty Ones, Book 4 of the Jackman & Evans series, was released 14th March.
Joy Ellis grew up and lived in Kent, trained in floristry in Mayfair and ran her own highly successful floristry business in Weybridge for many years. The 1990s recession led her to withdraw from that business and she followed her lifelong love of books, firstly by working for WH Smith until finally managing an independent bookshop in Leatherhead, Surrey.
Joy’s writing career began after she attended a course, tutored by Sue Townsend, at the Skyros Institute in the mid-nineties. She retired a few years later around the same time as her partner, Jacqueline, who had been a highly decorated police officer with Surrey police. Looking for a new home together with their two Springer spaniels, they fell under the spell of the Lincolnshire Fens, settling in a village just outside Boston.
Joy’s happy home life is far removed from her storylines, however, and while she loves living in the misty Fens, the area is steeped in superstition and provides a remote and eerie backdrop to her novels. Joy is also able to add the authenticity vital to any crime thriller by drawing on Jacqueline’s inside knowledge, to confirm procedures and the reality of tackling brutal crime and criminals in a modern police force.
Joy says, “A million sales? That comes into the category of Beyond my Wildest Dreams. How do I feel about it? Simply amazed. After decades of writing, and getting nowhere, but being too driven, or maybe too damned obstinate, to give up: this is more than special. It is also very humbling. The fact that people all over the world are reading my books and taking the time to get in contact, is a very emotional thing. And the stories they tell you, make you understand exactly why you write, and why you want to go on writing.
I always wanted to write a bestseller, surely every fiction writer does? But I never looked at the finished product from the reader/writer point of view. Now I know that my books fill someone’s lonely night, or accompany them into a hospital waiting room, or take them away (just for a little while) from something bad going on in their lives, now I know that, I feel very different, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.
The support that I have been given, especially from my incredible publisher Joffe Books, is nothing less that inspirational and so much of this success is down to them. I’ve had so much help too from Jacqueline, my partner and in-house police procedural advisor, (and tea-maker!) And on top of that, I now have the friendship of the other wonderful authors in our ‘stable’, and that of all the tireless bloggers and reviewers that carry us along and buoy us up. This One Million is not just about me, it’s about all of us... and all of you.”
Jasper Joffe, founder of Joffe Books, says, ”Joy's a phenomenon. She is wonderful to work with and she's always writing. It's amazing how her books really strike a chord with readers and a million sales is a testament to her hard work and dedication to writing brilliant mysteries. We're proud to publish her."
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT HANNAH CORBETT
Hannah@hannahcorbett.co.uk / Mob. 07711 797 792
