So yesterday, I noticed that The Cleansing Flames ebook had been reduced to £1.65. Today the same thing has happened to A Vengeful Longing, my 2008 CWA Gold-Dagger-nominated novel. (Actually the Gold Dagger was called the Duncan Lawrie Dagger that year, because of a deal the CWA did with the devil, I mean the sponsor. But I’m sure Frances Fyfield, who won it, will tell you it’s the same thing.)
This is the book of which Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said: “Morris captures this world with expert strokes… this novel stands out from a number of fine czarist-era mysteries-by Russians and foreigners alike-like a Fabergé egg at a yard sale.”
The CWA judges described it as “A brilliant reinvention of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment…” noting the “very sympathetic Russian-set investigator and a vivid, pungently-evoked sense of 19th century St Petersburg.”
New York Magazine, in choosing it as the runner-up in their thriller of the year award, said “reads like an episode of Columbo, but with feverish Russian psychology and the filthy overflowing canals of 1868 St. Petersburg.”
It’s £1.65, people. A Fabergé egg of a book for £1.65. Welcome to the yard sale.
An OUTRAGEOUS bargain.
I’m interested in kindle pricing at the mo. My book had been flying high for six months but started to droop so we made it ultra cheap and it flew back up to the top. Most of the books at the very top of the fiction chart are 20p or less than a pound. Then I make it more expensive again, and it drops. So what do we do? Let it disappear from the charts or contribute to the devaluing of fiction like everyone else is doing? A tricky one……
Thanks for your comment, Fiona. It’s a tough one. I do feel there is a sense of devaluing our efforts. And the prices on these particular books aren’t set by me. But if dropping the price results in more readers, then that’s obviously a good thing. Which is why I have decided to tell people about it, despite my mixed feelings about the bargain basement attitude it sets up.