Brian James Freeman and publisher Cemetery Dance continue to make waves with their recent marketing efforts for Freeman's new novel, The Painted Darkness. As I posted earlier, readers can visit this site and download the entire thing in eBook format - sans the Brian Keene introduction but laden with plenty of other extras - or listen to it in its entirety. Despite being inundated with interview requests, not to mention his regular workload as part of the Cemetery Dance staff, Brian was kind enough to answer a few questions about his unusual strategy.
BG: Your book won't be published until November, yet you're literally giving it away now. Why?
BJF: There are tens of millions of readers out there and you don't need all of them to like what you've written for your book to be successful. A tiny percentage will do the trick.
The problem is: how do you let the readers who will enjoy your work know it even exists?
We figured giving a book away for free was the easiest way. If you're a reader who likes this sort of book, why wouldn't you try it? What do you have to lose? You just might find you really enjoy my work and then we both win.
When you came up with this idea, did anyone try to talk you out of it, or ask you to consider modifying it by offering a small excerpt instead?
A few people thought I was crazy and this would kill my career, which I address in the afterword to the eBook edition. They felt that giving away the eBook would sabotage sales of the hardcover, which would cause publishers to lose interest in future books since your past sales are really important to securing a publishing deal these days.
What's the response been so far - both in downloads and in sales?
We hoped enough new readers would hear about the book thanks to the word of mouth to offset any potential loss in sales and so far that's definitely been the case. We've sold more copies in the first week than we thought we'd sell in a month (if we were lucky), and many of those sales were to readers who have never bought a book from Cemetery Dance before.
Every time I check the stats, people from all over the world are in the process of downloading the eBook or listening to the audio. It's been incredible to watch and the feedback has been amazing.
I understand you're planning to give away another eBook to subscribers to your e-mail list later this year. What can you tell us about that?
It will be a cool little "thank you" to all of the readers who liked my work enough to want to know when more of it is available. Anyone who signs up for my mailing list on my website will be eligible for the free eBook and, like The Painted Darkness, it will truly be free. Nothing to purchase, no hoops to jump through.
In addition to writing and working with Cemetery Dance, you've got your own press, Lonely Road Books. Can you give us an update on the next Lonely Road project, the Stephen King/Mick Garris dual book Riding the Bullet?
Riding the Bullet is going to be a beautiful deluxe edition. It really reminds me of some of the amazing collectible books that got me hooked on small press special editions as a teenager.
The book is oversized, slipcased, and full of terrific special features. We designed it like the old "Ace Doubles" so you can start at either end of the book and start reading. One side gets you King's original novella, the other side gets you the screenplay and some incredible material from the film's production that has never seen the light of day before.
Right now we're just waiting on an artist to finish signing the signature sheets and then it's off to the printer. You can see Alan Clark's amazing "double" cover artwork on our website. I think any Stephen King fan is going to be pleased with what we've put together.
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