Promotion wrap-up

Okay, the trumpets sounded and my first free promotion is over. I broke through my arbitrary goal of 100 downloads over 5 days, reaching 114. I celebrated by eating a donut. Though if I had failed to reach my goal, I would have consoled myself by eating a donut, so I win either way.

The daily download breakdown was as follows:

Day 1:  43 downloads

Day 2:  30

Day 3:  18

Day 4:  13

Day 5:  6

So a pretty consistent ~40% decline each day until the last, where it dropped 60%. Barbarian fatigue at the end? Or maybe it was just Sunday.

How did I do in the rankings? Amazon separates the charts for free books and paid books. At the peak, A Barbarian for Dinner reached number 83 on the Swords and Sorcery chart, and 48 on the General Humor chart. It was the 4,504 ‘bestselling’ free book at its height.

A number of downloads came from non-US markets:  32

UK led the way with 20. (I wonder if my mention of the popular Brit-show One Foot in the Grave in the summary had anything to do with it).

Germany came in with 9.

Canada had 3.

So the effect? I now have some nice reviews that resulted from the promotion, and spread my memes all over the world.

I did not pay to advertise the promotion, but did list it on a number of free sites and forums, and a few kind peers in my writing group spread the word. Thanks everyone for buying, plugging, and/or reading the book. I appreciate it.

One Foot in the Grave and and A Barbarian for Dinner

The BBC show One Foot in the Grave never hit it big in the States, and, inexplicably, it almost never pops up on any of the 9000 cable channels over here. But somehow I managed to find it, latch onto it, and absorb it into my bloodstream. The ease in which the show's humor runs from absurdity to darkness to rants and to sight gags amazes me. But what I like most is how many episodes set up various threads and ideas that you don't realize are important into they're recalled at some climatic point. It's sort of like 'mystery' humor, where the ideas are clues that you don't realize fit together until the payoff.

It's the sort of humor I tried to use in my book A Barbarian for Dinner. A lot of plotting went into trying to make various ideas work and be funny in the short term, but also come together in larger ways in the long. Writing the book, I kept searching what I had written for even the smallest idea that I could extend and recall and meld with some other idea later on.

I'm in the show's debt for giving me a framework on how to think of humor in 'mystery' terms.

One Foot in the Grave

A Barbarian for Dinner

Two books. .99 cents each.

From May 22 to May 28, my scary-fun novel Invasive Species is on Amazon's countdown deal, meaning that it costs only 99 cents, which is a savings of $200,000 (if you were planning to instead buy a mid-size house in certain areas of the US).

Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZ6ZMJS

Also, my short story and sundries collection Book by Author is always only 99 cents. Here's some praise for two of the stories contained within:

I received over a hundred entries, which was great, but it took me much longer than expected to read them all. I was overwhelmed by the high quality of the submissions, which made it tough to choose the winner. After weeks of excruciating deliberation, I finally went with the quirkiest entry I received. The fifty dollar prize goes to Mike Mayer for his story “Boundary Line,” a gripping tale of a kidnapping gone horribly wrong. 
-JA Konrath, author of the Jack Daniel Mystery series 

…the editor of BioMedNet's News & Comment section love it so much, she laughed out loud and demanded I tell you she read it to her children during dinner time. 
-Laurie A. Zamprelli Pasiuk, fiction Editor HMS Beagle (in regards to There's More to Life the Biology) 

Find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDQKX0S

And if you don't like discounts or short stories, you can buy my comic-fantasy novel A Barbarian for Dinner for its normal (though highly reasonable) price. What's the book about? To find out, use this equation: "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" PLUS "One Foot in the Grave" TIMES the classic fantasy genre EQUALS "A Barbarian for Dinner." 

Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Barbarian-Dinner-Mike-Mayer-ebook/dp/B00JVBL404/ref=la_B00KEXRB7I_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400785878&sr=1-2

A Barbarian for Dinner -- trailer

Edward, the king's champion, has just knocked off a legendary dragon, a fine end to a fine career. Now it's time for the knight to journey home, be a hero to his people, and to marry a chaste lady of the court. Only one thing stands in his way—a hairy, half-naked barbarian named Gvundjar. Gvundjar thinks he's found a friend in "Eddie" and does his best to help the knight find his way back home. But it's always one step forward and ten thousands steps back, and what should be a simple journey turns into a comical ordeal.

A Barbarian for Dinner by Mike Mayer

Buy it on Amazon. Available: 4/24/2014

A Barbarian for Dinner -- Cover!

Here's the likely cover to my upcoming comedic fantasy novel: