Black Friday blowout sale for Epertase

Got a kindle or kindle app? Looking for something to read? Check out the biggest blowout sale ever for my fantasy trilogy, The Light of Epertase. For under 3 bucks you can own the entire trilogy for your kindle or for the kindle of someone you love. This is a one day only sale so get it now. http://amzn.to/1iiFFS5 Enjoy

Free Death Alarm

That's right. My horror short story collection, Death Alarm, is free for the kindle this week. No strings attached. Just click here and download it to your kindle. It includes three stories as well as a 3-chapter preview of Tamed. Also available as a paperback. Here's the cover by the incredible Steve Murphy:

 

 

Remember to leave me a review. I personally think the story Skelwaller Lane is the best of the three but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Remember to leave a review at Amazon.

 

Synopsis:

 

Death Alarm is Douglas R. Brown's twisted tales of the macabre. In this three-story collection, Douglas explores the devastating depths of mental illness, the evil that burns within men who kill, and angels who aren't always what they seem.

In the title story, Death Alarm, Douglas uses his real-life experiences as a career firefighter to explore the consequences when those who go to the rescue become those most at risk. When pure evil battles the noblest of professions, the blood will flow like water from the very hydrants that firemen use every day.

Following the title story is a psychological tale entitled Janitor. Working the nightshift in a run-down factory, Jeb quickly realizes he may not be alone. What does the man dressed in black want with him? And can Jeb keep his sanity long enough to find out?

Closing out the collection is a brutal story titled Skelwaller Lane where sometimes even the most horrible behavior can be justified if only you listen to how the true story begins.

In addition, Douglas has included an exclusive 3-chapter preview of his break-through novel, Tamed, where werewolves are sold as pets. Recently called, "the Jurassic Park of werewolf stories," Douglas is excited to give you a peek with this free preview.

In the Death Alarm short stories, Douglas grabs you by your arms.

And then he chops them off.

 

Sensitive stomachs need not continue.

 

Death Alarm

 

Lemons into Lemonade

As I begin the re-launch of my books (see my announcement about Rhemalda closing here), one of my first orders of business is changing the covers in my Epertase trilogy a bit. Thanks to Steve Murphy, I couldn't be happier with the results. Here is a look at Epertase covers 2.0.

Next, I will be getting the ebooks up and running so that I can keep the reviews and rankings at Amazon and others. I'm also using this re-launch opportunity to revisit Legends Reborn and tweak it a bit, because I feel my writing has gotten smoother in the years since I wrote it. I'm like George Lucas except that I'm making my trilogy better. (Yes, that was a shot across the "Greedo shoots first" bow.) Legends Reborn won't change much, just some of the flow. I'm also fixing a couple minor inconsistencies that had been missed during the first run.

Short of the covers, I'm not changing A Kingdom's Fall or The Rise of Cridon at all. I'm happy with them. The paperback versions of all my books should be available in a month or so.

As far as Tamed goes, the cover will be identical minus the Rhemalda logo, but I may tweak the interior a bit on it as well. That'll be next week's project. I'm overwhelmed with work, but once it's finished it'll be worth it. Keep an eye on this space for more.

Big Sale on Tamed

Ever heard of Bookbub.com? It's a site that sends emails to subscribers about big sales on books that are in the reader's preferred genres to read. It's not a spam site because you actually sign up for only the notifications of books you might be interested in reading. Anyway, this isn't an advertisement for bookbub as much as a gratuitous ad for Tamed. With bookbub, an author or publisher applies to have their book featured in Bookbub's email and if they accept, the author and publisher have a chance at a lot of sales. The hope is to sell enough copies that the book's rankings improve and the book continues  to sell after the deal. As of today, Tamed will be featured in their email and is now on sale for . . . wait for it . . . $1.99 for ebook or $11.99 (Amazon) for a super cool paperback edition (remember those?) Heck, Tamed is even on audiobook. This is your chance to try my werewolf tale with a twist for under two bucks. If you enjoy werewolves, or someone in your family enjoys the furry beasts, then I would enthusiastically recommend that you try Tamed. How's that for over-the-top promotion? Here's the back cover copy.

Werewolves are real.

And they make excellent pets.

Owning one of the legendary creatures is the latest fad. The WereHouse insists their werepets are loyal, docile, and 100% safe, but what happens when these gentle giants turn on their masters?

While on a routine EMS call, paramedic Christine Alt is attacked by a rogue werepet. She escapes with her life, but the encounter leaves her with more than just scars. As her body begins to change, she discovers the WereHouse is hiding a terrible secret, and they will stop at nothing to keep her from exposing them.

Check Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the IBookstore, or Kobo for the deal. I mean, what's two bucks for a cool story among friends? Enjoy your reading.

Contest Time ($50 Amazon Gift Card)

In celebration of the release of A Kingdom's Fall, my second installment in my Epertase trilogy, I am giving away a copy of Tamed along with a $50 Amazon Gift card. That's right 50 smackers. Oh yeah, and Tamed. All you have to do to enter is click on the widget at the bottom of this post and sign up. That's it.

But wait, there's more. For this contest, I am using a service called raffle copter. What that means is I am giving you more chances to enter your name for a greater chance to win. It's completely up to you how many times your name is entered. With raffle copter, you can gain additional entries by completing various tasks. Some of the ways to increase your chances are as simple as following this blog or following me on twitter. Other ways to increase your chances include tweeting this blog page (which you can do once a day for more and more points) or reading Epertase 1 or 2 or both where you could receive a ton of points by posting a review on Goodreads or Amazon or Barnes and Noble or all three. Just follow the simple instructions through the widget.

At the end of Oct., raffle copter will randomly choose a winner which is why the more times your name is entered, the better. Have fun with this contest and I wish you a bunch of luck.

And last but not least, if you manage to complete every task in the contest, Rhemalda has agreed to give you an ebook of your choice from their catalogue of great books.

So, how's that for a fun and worthwhile contest? You don't have to do anything to enter but sign up. And you can increase your chances with as little or as much effort as you want to put into it. What do you say, everyone, help me spread this contest? Share this on your FB page and twitter and give me a little love.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tamed hits 20,000 Kindle downloads in first 3 months

Tamed hits 20,000 Kindle downloads in first 3 months

Moses Lake, WA (PRBuzz.com) April 18, 2012 -- Rhemalda Publishing and author Douglas R. Brown are excited to announce that Tamed has surpassed 20,000 ebook downloads. This is Douglas' most successful book to date and he is excited to share his work with so many readers.

Released on January 26th 2012, Tamed has been met with high praise for its originality with Cherie Reich calling Tamed, "The Jurassic Park of werewolf stories." Author Ashley Knight said Tamed is "Viciously brilliant." Rhemalda Publishing believes Tamed is a werewolf book unlike any other with werewolves being sold as pets.

The idea for Tamed came from Douglas' desire to change how people view werewolf stories much in the way HBO's True Blood changed how people view vampires. While brainstorming for a unique idea to accomplish that goal, Douglas was inspired by his 95-LB. Doberman Pinscher. The idea that such a powerful creature could be so docile and tame gave him the original idea he needed.

Now that the first 20,000 readers are enjoying Douglas' writing and sharing their views, he is looking forward to the next 20,000 and what they think.

Douglas R. Brown is a fantasy and horror writer living in Pataskala, Ohio. He began writing as a cathartic way of dealing with the day-to-day stresses of life as a firefighter/paramedic in Columbus, Ohio. Now he focuses his writing on fantasy, where he can draw from his lifelong love of the genre. Douglas R. Brown's website is at http://www.epertase.com. Tamed can be purchased from Rhemalda Publishing, your local bookstore, or your favorite online retailer (Amazon).

Tamed ISBN: 978-1-936850-70-9
Legends Reborn; The Light of Epertase ISBN: 978-1-936850-10-5

Rhemalda Publishing
PO Box 1790, Moses Lake, WA 98837
marketing@rhemalda.com
www.rhemalda.com

KDP Select and My Experience (Plus tips you can use)

Amazon has a program called KDP Select (not to be confused with KDP as the two are different programs. The select is Amazon exclusive and the other isn't.) With KDP Select, authors and publishers offer their books to Amazon for 90 days exclusively. In exchange for the exclusivity, they allow a 5-day window where the book can be offered for free.

Now, that doesn't sound like such a great deal for anyone aside from Amazon, but it actually is. By offering the ebook for free, the author or publisher gets to use Amazon's marketing muscle by way of their ranking system. Also, the more people who download the book, the more the book shows up in Amazon's "customers who bought this book also bought x" section. That gets the book in front of more people which, of course, is the whole goal of marketing. On top of that, if the book does well enough, it's ranking gets better, in turn gaining more exposure. The hope with this process is that the book goes semi viral and becomes self-sustaining in the downloads during the 5 free days.

I'll tell you my experience and a few tricks that I felt helped my success with the program. My first foray into the program was a collection of horror short stories called Death Alarm that I self-published as a way to test the waters. I had a nice cover created by cover artist, Steve Murphy, and started my 5 free days. I did a bit of promoting, but not a lot. My final numbers were 344 total downloads and 0 paid downloads after the 5 free days. Other than the fact that my work was now in the hands of 344 people who may never have seen it otherwise, the program was basically a failure for me considering the amount of work put into the project.

So, when Rhemalda approached me about using the promotion for Tamed, I was highly skeptical. Rhemalda had been seeing different results with a few of their books and felt Tamed had a chance to be far more successful than my short story collection, Death Alarm.

After a bit of convincing on Rhemalda's part, I gave in. Boy, was I wrong to be skeptical. At the end of the first day, Rhemalda told me Tamed was being downloaded at a rate of 750 per hour. It hit 10,000 downloads in the first 24 hours or so. Yeah, I'd say that was successful.

In the Amazon free store, Tamed rose to number 1 in horror and number 1 in contemporary fantasy. It held those rankings throughout the promotion which meant it was still being downloaded at a pretty good clip. OK, it dropped to number 3 in horror on the last day, but still. During the 5 days, Tamed hovered between 17 and 49 in the overall rankings (top 100 should be your goal) which I was pretty happy about.

My final downward numbers were 21,466. In addition to that many downloads, I received 3 unsolicited reviews and about 25 likes. The reviews were (2) 5-star and (1) 3-star. Pretty exciting start. On a side note: The 3-star reviewer liked the story and characters but complained about the editing. I wonder if that person received a corrupted file because he/she said sentences ended in the middle as part of her complaint and that wasn't something anyone else had complained about.

You probably are asking if this promotion has translated into sales and the answer is a big yes. When the free promotion ended about 24 hours ago, my ranking was 324,000. My current overall ranking is 8,809. Plus, Rhemalda has told me that Tamed is selling pretty steadily in the UK right now as well.

A lot of the success for the KDP promotion has to do with genre, cover art, synopsis and luck. I believe there are few things the author or publisher can do to help, but there are some. For me, I put a ton of promotion into the first day in hopes of having enough downloads that the self sustaining aspect of Amazon took over and that is what happened. Did my promotional work help? Who knows, but I'll tell you what I did and you can decide.

First, I sought out as many Facebook groups that posted free ebook deals as I could. (Simply type kindle, ebook, or free ebook in the FB search.) Be sure to go to their websites and read their instructions ahead of time because some groups want 5 days notice. If there are no instructions just post your book on the day it becomes free.

Next, and I think this helped the most, was tweeting. A lot. Remember, you aren't trying to get your followers to download your book as much as using keywords to expose your book to a ton more people. I had a fortunate Twitter thing happen on day one and it might help you with your tweets. Once I started tweeting, a couple of my tweets were picked up by several werewolf fans and retweeted because, unbeknownst to me, Wednesday is werewolfwednesday. I then added that tag to my tweets. Though I got lucky, you can make your own luck in the same way. Research Twitter with different keywords relating to your book to see if anything is trending and include that word in your tweets. For instance, the word werewolves seemed more popular than werewolf or lycan so my tweets included the word werewolves. I found that you should also include #freeebook #freekindle #Kindle and whatever else you can think of. Also, use bitly.com to shorten your Amazon link to your book so you have more room to tweet. Because Twitter is such a good avenue, I used twuffer.com to schedule tweets throughout the 5 days so that I always had stuff going out.

Next, blog about your giveaway, post to all of your FB groups, and have all of your friends download your book even if they already have it a paperback or whatever. Also, be visible on the Goodreads forums and kindle boards (you can directly promote in the Kindle Board Book Bazaar section). Other than in the Book Bazaar, don't flat out promote your book. Join in on the conversations and have a link to your book in your signature. People who troll those boards often click on your signature and check out what you have. The other thing I did was to create an event to your Goodreads friends. After you do all of these things, cross your fingers and hope for some action.

I realize some people have had equal success with the program without doing any of this, but I like to increase my odds, even if just a bit.

So, good luck everyone.