RARA-AVIS: New Web page for Hard Case Crime

From: Charles Ardai ( charles@winterfall.com)
Date: 20 Feb 2004


[Apologies if this appears twice -- I tried to send it yesterday, but had a technical glitch.]

Folks,

Last August I announced on this list that my partner and I were working on a project to revive the sort of old-fashioned paperback crime novel we all love -- the sort made famous by Gold Medal, Dell, Avon, Popular Library, Lion, Graphic, et. al. A number of you were extremely helpful, making suggestions for possible reprints, submitting possible originals, or just offering words of support, all of which was much appreciated. I promised to keep everyone posted as things progressed, and we now have a little bit of progress to report.

While we're still seven months away from the publication of our first books, as of a few days ago we launched an early version of our Web site: www.hardcasecrime.com. Ultimately, you'll be able to order the books there, but that's still some way off. You can already take a look at our first four covers, though, and get a bit of information about the first six books we'll be publishing. We're pretty excited about the line -- I hope you guys like it, too.

A couple of things that aren't mentioned on the Web site yet:

1) All the books will be mass market paperbacks. (Just like in the old days -- no fancy, oversized trade pbs for us. If you can't fit it in your back pocket, it's not a proper paperback...) The price of each book is likely to be $6.99. (Yeah, I was hoping to sell them for 25 cents, but for some reason the publisher nixed that idea.)

2) You should be able to find the books on Amazon.com and other online sites when the time comes; if things work out the way we hope, we should also be available in most bookstores, truckstops, military PXs, and (as they say) "anywhere books are sold."

3) One of the books I'm most excited about publishing is an original slated for an early 2005 release: KISS HER GOODBYE by RARA-AVIS's own Al Guthrie! It's a fantastic book, extremely well written, with memorable characters, an unfamiliar setting, and a very satisfying hardboiled story to tell. More on this as we get closer to the pub date, but I wanted to congratulate Al and start spreading the word in a way he might be too modest to do for himself.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, let me know. In particular, any ideas you have for things we can do (when the time comes) to get the word out about the existence of these books would be great...

Best, Charles

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