First Time Novelist Uses Internet To Hit The Bestsellers List

Posted on October 9, 1997

Peter Lance is used to controversy. As a five time Emmy award-winning investigative correspondent for ABC News who conducted major probes of the JFK Assassination, the Pershing II Missile Crisis and Iran-Contra, he's played hardball for years. So, it was no surprise when he made the cover of the Wall Street Journal for the controversial way he's marketed his first novel, First Degree Burn.

Released July 1st, First Degree Burn has all but sold out of its first 55,000 copies, a rare occurrence for a first-time author. On Sept. 15, twelve weeks after publication, Burn was No. 35 on The A-List: The Top 50 Requested Titles in Mystery-Detective Fiction, just below James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential. This bestsellers list compiled by Ingram, America's largest book wholesaler, is made up of hard covers and paperbacks by mystery giants like Cornwell, Grisham and Spillane.

"The fact that an unknown book made this list is pretty amazing," says Lance who mounted a six state, self-financed signing tour after his publisher, Berkley, refused to support the book. He attributes the runaway word-of-mouth success of Burn to a marketing blitz mounted almost entirely on The Internet.

"1,000 new titles hit the bookstores each week," says Lance. Publishers rarely get behind first novels and Berkley, a subsidiary of the giant Pearson-Penguin-Putnam media conglomerate, did nothing to help. So I knew that I had to jump-start the launch. With little money and few resources that meant The Net."

Brett Wilcox of Spydurweb Internet Design set up a web site with Lance at firstdegreeburn.com. The author then hired first-time book publicist Hay Tanning and they put together a list of 155 mystery critics utilizing Dorothy L, an Internet discussion group of 3500 mystery authors, readers and booksellers.

Lance sent out Burn to every critic on the list and the results were immediate. Publishers Weekly gave the paperback original a starred review, calling it "a smashing debut." The Wall Street Journal then interviewed Lance about his web-based marketing campaign and published a page-one story Sept. 2nd with the headline: "Mystery 'First Degree Burn' Should Catch Fire Soon At Bookstores Everywhere."

Next, Lance put together a signing tour of 97 bookstores. "We booked the tour from the desk in my kids' room and I used up all my frequent flyer points," says the author, whose "day-job" is screenwriting. He's just written a two-hour pilot (BLACKJACK) to be directed this month in Toronto by John Woo (FACEOFF).

By August, Lance was selling hundreds of signed copies of "BURN" through his website. "Then the demand got so great that we couldn't keep up with the orders." So he turned to internet bookseller Amazon.com. But there was a problem. Within weeks of publication, 51,000 copies had been sold and the wholesalers were out of stock.

So Lance wrote to wunderkind Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, and asked for his help. Bezos had his staff contact Berkley directly and soon copies of First Degree Burn were available for sale with a 24-hour shipping turnaround. Amazon.com listed the book as one of its top 15 recommended thrillers for August.

First Degree Burn is a film-noir-like thriller. It begins when a lost WPA mural is discovered, then torched by an arsonist who kills a young art restorer in New York's Soho. To break the case, FDNY Fire Marshal Eddie Burke enlists the help of Dr. Caroline Drexel, a beautiful art professor and heiress from Sutton Place. As they peel back the layers and more people die, they discover that there was a terrifying secret locked in that mural. The ticking clock tale of deceit and betrayal races to a climax in an abandoned subway station.

First Degree Burn is "a hard-boiled detective novel reminiscent of the classic works of Hammett and Chandler," raves the four-star review in BookPage. "I couldn't put it down", says Stephen J. Cannell, Emmy winning TV producer and best-selling author of FINAL VICTIM and KING CON. "Eddie Burke is the most fascinating new hero of the nineties. He blisters the pages. Smell the smoke. Feel the heat," says Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and mystery author Edna Buchanan. Negotiations are now underway for the film rights to the book.

The few remaining copies of First Degree Burn can be purchased through Amazon.com, at bookstores, and via the author's website.