Cracking the Thriller Market

by Raya Kuzyk, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 7/1/2005

In a summer promotion designed to upgrade the sales of four C-list suspense writers who all have books coming out this week, HarperCollins and William Morrow have priced the authors' new thrillers at $16.95. So far, the result has been as straightforward as the strategy: orders for the books are roughly double those for each author's previous one, on average, bringing their first printings up to the low five figures.

"If you downprice one book, it's hard to get it to stand out," said HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham. "With four, it's a lot easier." Harper contributes Reed Arvin's third legal thriller, Blood of Angels, and Chuck Logan's Homefront, the fifth in a series and a followup to last summer's After the Rain. The two Morrow titles are G.M. Ford's No Man's Land, the fifth to feature his Seattle crime writer protaganist, and Mark Billingham's fourth novel about a London police detective, The Burning Girl.

The gambit has paid off at Barnes & Noble, where mystery buyer Dan Mayer made chainwide buys for the four authors, whose books will appear in a 12-copy mixed floor display and 16-copy pre-pack. "Several of these authors do quite well regionally. The low price point may act to break them out wider," he said.

Two of the authors will also combine forces on the book tour front. On July 7, 8 and 14, authors Chuck Logan and Reed Arvin made joint appearances in Nashville and Minneapolis (the authors' respective hometowns), as well as in Oregon.

Burnham, for his part, is betting against a one-trick pony. If the sell-though is anything like the orders, he'd be willing to try it again.