I’m very pleased to announce that WOWIO.com has made my new novella, The Painted Darkness, their free eBook of the Month for October. (The hardcover will be shipping in November.)
To kick off the promotion, they sent an email to their mailing list of 87,000 readers and the book will be one of the featured items on their front page for the entire month. They have some great publicity plans in place to raise awareness of the book, and I think the landing page on their site is awesome:
http://www.wowio.com/book-of-the-month
If you didn’t download the free version of The Painted Darkness posted by Cemetery Dance back in July, please feel free to download this one. It’s a quick read, and the more downloads the merrier!
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For immediate release
FREE DOWNLOAD ON WOWIO REMINISCENT OF CLASSIC STEPHEN KING STYLE
LOS ANGELES, October 5, 2010 – WOWIO, Inc., an established market leader with an online destination (www.wowio.com) that provides access to rich digital media content and eBooks, is excited to announce that it is offering free PDF downloads of The Painted Darkness, by Brian James Freeman, for the month of October. The book has received praise from New York Times bestselling authors such as Stewart O’Nan, author of The Night Country and A Prayer for the Dying, who said, “The tone and building dread reminds me of classic Stephen King. Great velocity and impact, and super creepy.” David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Shimmer and creator of Rambo said, “Freeman’s evocative tale about the dark corners of an artist’s imagination is elegant and haunting.”
Each month WOWIO chooses one title to be the “Book of the Month.” This program enables publishers and authors to get their titles into the hands of thousands of readers who might not have come across their books otherwise. With approximately 300,000 new titles published annually in the US alone, obscurity is the biggest challenge authors and publishers face. “Our goal at WOWIO is to help publishers stand out by selling their titles on our site. From time to time we are also able to offer them for free to our readers via our sponsorship program where publishers get paid for every free download. What sets us apart is that we work hard promoting them virally through various channels such as social media sites and our own web channel, Pop Galaxy,” Kristin Ellison, Editorial Director of WOWIO explains.
“With The Painted Darkness in the horror genre, we knew it would be a fantastic fit for our October Book of the Month. When there’s an opportunity to play on a theme, in this case Halloween, it makes the promotion that much more fun for our readers and for fans of this genre,” Ellison said.
“This really is a wonderful program because it allows WOWIO to provide a platform for a small press, such as Cemetery Dance, to further their reach to new audiences while our customers get exposure to one of our new publishing partners,” said Brian Altounian, CEO and President of WOWIO. “The Book of the Month is a great way to build a relationship between publishers and readers, and we love being able to provide the tools to do so.”
Altounian continued, “The publishing market’s rapid transformation into the digital realm has opened up countless opportunities to both promote and merge various types of media relating to a particular title. At WOWIO, we see authors as brands and want to deliver to our readers who follow them all manner of related content including audio, video, other titles, links to their blogs etc. thus creating a richer experience. In this WOWIO-exclusive edition of The Painted Darkness, we’ve embedded an audio file of Mark Justice of Horrorworld.org reading the first chapter. This is just the beginning of these types of initiatives and in the coming months, readers can expect to see our content library and eBooks deepen across the board.”
Cemetery Dance publisher Richard Chizmar said, “This is an experiment about getting The Painted Darkness into the hands of as many readers as possible by making it as easy as possible for them to give it a try, and we’re excited that WOWIO shares our vision in doing this. We think this promotion will only help generate more word of mouth for this terrific book, which will in turn sell more copies of the hardcover.”
WOWIO is continually looking to work with new publishers producing titles across all categories. To learn more, please contact editorial director Kristin Ellison at editorial@wowio.com.
About WOWIO
WOWIO is an online destination that provides users with the opportunity to share and consume digital media content, such as eComics and eBooks, while providing revenue generating opportunities for creators and publishers through advertising and merchandising programs. WOWIO, Inc. is an Alliance Acquisitions, Inc. portfolio company headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
About Cemetery Dance Publications
Cemetery Dance Publications recently published the World’s First Edition of “Blockade Billy” by Stephen King, announced a deluxe special edition of “The Passage” by Justin Cronin, and is widely considered the world’s leading specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. The hardcover imprint has published more than 200 affordable and collectible Limited Edition hardcover books from the genre’s most acclaimed authors, including Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Ray Bradbury, William Peter Blatty, Peter Straub, Graham Masterton, Richard Laymon, Michael Slade, Douglas Clegg, Jack Ketchum, William F. Nolan, Joe R. Lansdale and hundreds of others, along with the best new writers in the genre.
Lots of exciting news today so let’s get right to it:
