Cool Charlotte Dent promotion, Wrong City in paperback, and a new Duranalysis

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It's a good book. I promise.
This whole independent publishing business, it's a tricky beast. In the fifteen months since forming Luft Books, I've published five novels: Bias Cut, Wrong City, Charlotte Dent and Lonely Satellite, all written by me (I'm not that prolific; I just had a swell backlog), plus A.K. Adler's excellent sci-fi novel Disconnected. I've stumbled into some good marketing strategies, and I've made some marketing mistakes. On the good side: Great merciful Zeus, Bias Cut has done well. It was an ABNA semi-finalist, and it won a silver medal at this year's IPPY awards. Earlier this month, I had a wildly successful giveaway of the Kindle version over at Amazon, during which it hit #2 on the bestsellers list in the entire free Kindle store and #1 on both the Mystery and Contemporary Fiction free bestsellers lists. Right now, it's got a whopping 66 reviews at Amazon, averaging 4.5 stars, and that number climbs daily.

On the flip side: Charlotte Dent.

Oh, Charlotte. Poor sweet, neglected Charlotte. Since I published it in April, Charlotte Dent has sold a whopping total of, ahem, fifteen copies.

There's no way to put a good spin on that. That's just dismal. Let's turn that around, shall we?


See, Charlotte Dent is a really good book (I say modestly). Like Bias Cut, it was an ABNA semi-finalist, back in 2008. Publishers Weekly, in a review for ABNA judging, called it "crisp" and "fun." It's got a great heroine, and it's filled with insights into the inner workings of the film industry. Set in Los Angeles, Vancouver, and London, it's well-written and funny and fast-paced and ultimately kind of poignant. If you liked Bias Cut, if you enjoy my Arrow recaps or my Teen Wolf musings or my Duranalyses here, if you like my writing style, odds are excellent you'll get a kick out of Charlotte. But I dropped the ball with marketing it at the start, and as a result, it doesn't have much of a profile at Amazon, and thus it never picked up momentum with readers.

For example: Since the monstrously successful Bias Cut giveaway, sales of both Lonely Satellite and Wrong City have picked up nicely. Charlotte Dent? One copy sold.

So I'm trying something new. From today until Thanksgiving, the Kindle version of Charlotte will be priced at 99 cents (it usually retails for $4.99) as part of Amazon's new Kindle Countdown Deals. This is a great chance to raise the book's profile a bit by getting it some fresh Amazon traffic and, hopefully, some more reviews. Got a dollar to spare? You can really help me out by downloading Charlotte at some point over the next seven days.

Also? Wrong City is now in paperback! It looks amazing in print -- Morgan Dodge's cover really pops. It's priced at Amazon at a very reasonable $11.00.

It's been a shamefully long time since I've done a Duranalysis (since April, which, coincidentally, was when I published Charlotte), so as a way to say thank you to everyone to what I'm hoping will be a successful promotion, I'll post a Duranalysis of Duran Duran's awesomely decadent "Falling Down" video here during the first week of December. (If you haven't seen the video, check it out here -- it's sleazy and fun.)

And, as always, a big thank you to everyone who has supported my writing by buying my books or writing reviews or giving me words of encouragement since I started this Luft Books nonsense. You are all very awesome.

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