Jason Brant's Blog, page 7

Decayed is Live

Decayed finally release today. This book way, way, way too long to come out. But it’s finally done. I’ll give more details on the results as the days go on, but for now I’ll leave you with some links. Hope everyone digs it.

EBOOK
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Apple
Smashwords
Google Play

PAPERBACK
Amazon

See ya tomorrow.

The post Decayed is Live appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 117 – One Day Left

The build to release (heh) is the best and worst. I hate all the work, but it’s exciting to have a new book run into the wild. Feels like I finished this novel months ago and I’ve been growing old waiting for this day.

Much of today was spent updating a ton of pricing on all my books, but with The Hunger in particular.

Devoured has been free for a really long time. At some point, I’ll go through the ways I’ve pushed The Hunger, including using free. But for now, just know that I made the book paid again, because free isn’t what it used to be.

Because Amazon doesn’t let you set the price to $0.00 permanently, you have to trick their system into doing it for you. Once you make the book free everywhere else, you can get Amazon to price match it. Then you’re good to go.

Devoured had been free for so long that it wasn’t moving many copies anymore. My plan for the series moving forward is to push paid sales on Devoured and have it trickle down through the rest.

One issue with free is that a lot of ‘buyers’ don’t actually read the book. A ton of people horde freebies they never get around to. So you have to giveaway a lot of copies to get a decent read through with the rest of the series.

When you’re advertising paid books, the read-through rate is much higher. But it’s expensive and tricky to do. We’ll see how it works. I’m also hoping the series gets a little bump from Amazon now that Devoured costs a few bucks, but I’m not expecting much.

I also had to rectify my messy pricing on Google Play. Until recently, Google always discounted the price of my books. If I wanted Devoured to cost $3.99, I had to price the book at $5.18 or so. After Google discounted it, the novel was set correctly. It was really annoying.

They changed that not too long ago, so all my books had bizarre pricing. My novels were five bucks and some change. The boxed sets were over ten. It was a mess and it hurt my sales. I spent a lot of time correcting that today. Looks like we’re all good. Or mostly good. Have a few shorts and West of Hell to fix yet.

Decayed, and all its links and images, is now on my website. That required me to update three pages and the menu. Not a huge deal, but takes a bit of time.

I also added Decayed to my Amazon Author page using Author Central. This site allows all my books to show up when you click on my name on Amazon. I have to do the same thing for my Amazon UK page.

Then I updated my Bookbub author profile with Decayed. Supposedly, they’re going to email my followers on Bookbub tomorrow to let them know about my new release. I’ve never used this service before, so I’m curious to see how it works. It’s free, so even if it doesn’t move any copies, it only cost me a few minutes of time.

Tomorrow is release day. That’s always a long one. Gotta send out a newsletter, spend a lot of time on social media, and then record Final Guys in the evening. Looking forward to it.

See ya tomorrow.

The post Day 117 – One Day Left appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 114-116 – Publishing

I spent the weekend out of state, so I obviously wasn’t able to update the blog. Not that I did anything worth updating about, but still.

Today, I drove five hours home in the morning so I could make the kickoff of the Steelers game. Wish I hadn’t gone through all that. Shit game.

My allergies, or some kind of summer cold, kicked me in the teeth all day. I feel like a turd stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. It isn’t conducive to getting a lot done, but I have a book coming out in two days, hopefully, so I had to suck it up.

Today was spent publishing Decayed to the various stores I sell in. That means a lot of manual BS that isn’t hard, but takes a significant amount of time. The book is processing at all the stores as I type this, so it should be available by Tuesday.

That’s the plan, anyway. Apple likes to take their sweet time, which delays half my releases. No idea why. It’s annoying.

Back to the grind tomorrow, assuming I manage to dislodge myself from the bottom of that damn shoe.

The post Day 114-116 – Publishing appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 113 – Book Descriptions

Finished the book description today, updated the website with the newest Final Guys episode, and did a bunch of little shit. I’m releasing on Tuesday, hopefully, so I’m taking care of tons of stuff.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to work on anything this weekend, so I’m cramming it all into tonight and then Sunday night. Monday and Tuesday are going to be shit shows, as usual. But it’s an exciting time. Can’t wait to get this sucker out there.

And let me just say… writing book descriptions sucks nads. It’s probably my least favorite thing about publishing my own work. That and asking people for reviews. Ugh. For the most part, I think I do a solid job with my descriptions, but it’s a royal pain in the ass.

Trying to distill an entire book into a few sentences, while keeping it enticing, but not giving away spoilers, is the worst. I also write my descriptions differently than the actual novels, which makes it a bit more challenging.

When it comes to my stories, I like to write in a fairly simple manner. The last thing I want is someone having to decipher a sentence or paragraph. Nothing pulls me out of a book faster than that. So I keep it pretty straightforward. Some of my reviewers would say that I keep it stupid.

I don’t use overly long sentences or dollar words where a nickel one will do. Not my style.

But in descriptions? Flowery language, never-ending sentences. I use more adverbs too. For whatever reason, doing a bit of wordsmithing in the description helps the book sell better. I don’t know if it makes people think the writing inside might not suck if the blurb is overwritten, but whatever it is… it works.

So write the hell out of that description.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I won’t be able to blog until Sunday night, and maybe not then if I’m too busy. Should be able to fit it in though.

See ya then.

The post Day 113 – Book Descriptions appeared first on Jason Brant.

Final Guys #120 – It Chapter 2

When IT made over $700 million at the box office, you knew the second chapter in the Stephen King adaptation won’t be far behind. The first movie took the horror world by storm, but will the second live up to its lofty expectations?

Our weekly horror reviews are The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Devils of Darkness, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Avengers: Endgame, Ma, Ghostkeeper, The Dark Half, and Manhunt: Unabomber.

Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.

The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.

Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn

Web ► https://www.finalguys.comFacebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguysJason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.comHunter ► http://www.huntershea.comMonster ► http://www.themonstermen.netTwitter ► @finalguysJack ► @backinjackJason ► @jason_brantHunter ► @huntershea1

*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.

The post Final Guys #120 – It Chapter 2 appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 112 – Done.

All the corrections are made, the issues fixed. Other than the shitty writing. What’re ya gonna do? I’ve sent the book to my early readers. So glad I’m moving onto the final few steps.

Over the next few days, I’ll write the description, format the paperback, and update my website with the book. This weekend, I’ll post the book to all the stores and wait for them to populate their digital shelves with my wares.

And then we’re rocking.

My plan after finishing those few tasks is to work on some advertising and get some words down in book 6. We’re in the rough spot before release where I’m busting my ass, but it looks like I’m not doing anything.

Oh, if you’re looking for my opinion on It Chapter 2, you can find it here:

See ya tomorrow.

The post Day 112 – Done. appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 111 – Final Touches

I’d hoped to get Decayed to my beta readers today, but didn’t get through all the notes of stuff to fix first. One mistake, the wrong character name, is proving hard to track down. I gotta find it before sending the novel out.

Getting these fixes done took up most of my day. Got a big workload tomorrow, where I hope to get this finished, format the ebook, send it to my beta readers, and blast out a newsletter teasing the release.

If I have time, I’ll work on the book description. Gotta get that done, so I can give it, and my page count, to my cover artist. She needs the exact page number to finish the paperback wrap.

I also need to take Devoured off permafree. The ads I’m planning to run will work much better if readers need to pay for the first book. A lot of people who get a freebie never go on to read the novel, let alone buy the sequels.

Permafree works in spurts now, but long term, it looks like spending cash on ads will be the best approach.

I also recorded, edited, and uploaded the newest Final Guys episode. I’ll post it here tomorrow, but you can find it on the Final Guys site now if you’re interested.

A written interview with yours truly just went live on Michael Henderson’s site today too. Check it out. Great questions and shitty answers. The usual with me.

See ya tomorrow.

The post Day 111 – Final Touches appeared first on Jason Brant.

Day 108-110 – Proofing is done.

As predicted, I wasn’t able to blog with the in-laws here, but it wasn’t a great loss. I didn’t have much to write about until last night. While watching football, I worked with my cover artist to come up with this:

Really happy with it. I also got the last of proofreader notes back, which I’m going through now. I’ll finish those tomorrow and send the book to my beta readers by the end of the night. Which means Decayed should release next week!

Finally. This freaking book has taken forever.

Yesterday, while the shitty Steelers game was on, I also finally got around to posting the new Final Guys episodes here on the side. I hadn’t done that for a month apparently, because I had to upload our episodes for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Haunting of Sharon Tate, Ready or Not, and The Banana Splits.

I also uploaded a new book review to Final Guys. It’s a great review for the anthology Twice Upon an Apocalypse: Lovecraftian Fairy Tales. W.S. Bradford wrote it, which we’re really great for. He’s sent us a bunch more that I’m slowly uploading, so check the site.

Before all this started, I managed to get 1400 words down on Saturday, but that was it. Tomorrow is a full day with all my prep work to publish Decayed. But I should have more time through the rest of the week to get a few thousand words down.

That’s it for now. See ya tomorrow.

The post Day 108-110 – Proofing is done. appeared first on Jason Brant.

Final Guys #119 – The Banana Splits

What do you do when a rival production company is making a Five Nights at Freddy’s adaptation? You option the rights to a 1960’s children’s television show that no one under 45 remembers and release it on the SyFy Channel.

Our weekly horror reviews are Ready or Not, Belzebuth, Brightburn, The Cleaning Lady, John Wick 3, Congo, The Curse of La Llorona, The Walking Dead #32, and The Final Winter by Iain Rob Wright.

Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.

The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.

Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn

Web ► https://www.finalguys.comFacebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguysJason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.comHunter ► http://www.huntershea.comMonster ► http://www.themonstermen.netTwitter ► @finalguysJack ► @backinjackJason ► @jason_brantHunter ► @huntershea1

*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.

The post Final Guys #119 – The Banana Splits appeared first on Jason Brant.

Final Guys #118 – Ready or Not

Samara Weaving continues to cement herself in the hearts of horror fans everywhere. Following on the heels of Mayhem and The Babysitter, she hits the big screen with Ready or Not. Does the Radio Silence helmed film live up to her other work?

Our weekly horror reviews are Eli Roth’s History of Horror, Slaughter Daughter, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Dybbuk Box – The Story of Chris Chambers, Quantum Break, and The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager.

Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.

The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.

Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn

Web ► https://www.finalguys.comFacebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguysJason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.comHunter ► http://www.huntershea.comMonster ► http://www.themonstermen.netTwitter ► @finalguysJack ► @backinjackJason ► @jason_brantHunter ► @huntershea1

*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.

The post Final Guys #118 – Ready or Not appeared first on Jason Brant.