Checking out DarkFuse
Summary: Information about DarkFuse - The Kindle Book Club
I did something new reading-oriented at the end of last month.
For the first time in 30+ years of reading horror I joined a paid subscription book club. It's a Kindle ebook club specializing in dark fiction, horror, thrillers and suspense. It's called DarkFuse and cost me $59.98 for the year. For joining I will receive:
- (12 total) 1 novel every calendar month between the 1st and 9th of the month
- (12 total) 1 novella every calendar month toward the end of the month
- 5 bonus free ebooks chosen from their DarkFuse shop
- 6-12+ various bonus ebooks throughout the year
- access to the members-only area where other subscribers and DarkFuse authors are hanging out and interacting
- the ability to vote in the DarkFuse Reader's Choice Awards
A few weeks after joining I posted some details of my members experience in a (free) Horror group I frequent at Goodreads. Here are the details, plus some new experiences:
- PayPal is used for the subscription and it is setup to automatically renew one year from the date you signup. You can cancel the subscription through PayPal any time. If you were gifted the subscription, I saw somebody asking about that and the answer is you would need to signup again next year when it renews with your own PayPal subscription.
- when I signed up I received an email (the email that is associated with my PayPal account) within hours asking me to reply with my five free titles. You can choose any from their shop page listed here:
http://www.shop.darkfuse.com/
The five titles I chose were:
Fangboy by Jeff Strand
Benjamin's Parasite by Jeff Strand
Long Black Coffin by Tim Curran
Cherry Hill by James A. Moore
The Bleeding Season by Greg F. Gifune
- The five 'free' titles were delivered to me within 24 hours of paying of signing up via Amazon Person Document Delivery. As such, they don't show on my normal Kindle bookshelf, nor do they have cover art displayed in the carousel, which kind of bummed me out a bit. Also, I have to manually bookmark the pages of these books because my Kindle Fire seems to lose the places in documents.
- I received one additional bonus ebook (a short story, actually) Restoration, sent the same way as the five free books. This one does have cover art, oddly enough, but it doesn't show up in the books area either :(
- I received an email explaining that every month for 12 months I'll receive a new Darkfuse novel ($2.99 value) from the 1st-9th of the month as a gift and a novella ($1.99 value) toward the end of the month. These will come from Amazon as a gift.
- On February 1st, I received my first novel delivery. It was Season of the Wolf. This came as an Amazon gift ($2.99). I accepted the gift via the link on Amazon and this book appeared in my books area with cover art (woot!) :)
- there is a somewhat active messageboard inside the members-only area with some knowledgeable horror and thriller readers. Some are also members of Horror Afficiandos :)
- you need at least 25 posts on the messageboard in order to enter raffles for additional stuff. The first item for raffle is a very nice prize. I found this requirement easy to do within a few days, as there are enough threads on the board already. A more ambitious forum hound could probably meet this posting requirement in a day or less.
- you also need X number of posts to download additional short stories in the download area. I haven't used this part of the site yet, but I think it is five posts per download (it might be five after each download?). There are a couple dozen short stories and two novellas, all by Darkfuse authors and/or the publisher. There are no novels in this area as of this writing.
So, to summarize, I paid $60 USD for the subscription and so far have received six novels (five free + February novel). I am scheduled to receive 11 more novels (@ $2.99 each) and 12 novellas (@ $1.99 each).
Since the regular cost of their novels in Kindle Format is $4.99 (the $2.99 is only on the release day, I believe) and the novellas are $2.99 (released at $1.99 for short time), the savings is good versus NOT being in the club and buying directly from Amazon. If you miss buying when the books come out, you'll pay the higher price. I suppose there is a possibility you could catch some of these cheaper on a promotion, but certainly not all of them.
Assuming the release day pricing, here is what I'll receive:
12 novels @ 2.99 = 35.88
12 novellas @ 1.99 = 23.88
5 'free' novels @ 2.99 = 14.95
------
= $74.71 (+ tax not included, if I buy through Amazon, I'm charged sales tax on every book purchase)
Note: this does NOT include promised "bonus" books to be delivered over the next year.
Clearly, this is a *GREAT* deal for horror and thriller fans, as the quality of Darkfuse titles seems to be pretty high from what I've read so far. Especially for those planning to read most/all of the books.
I've only been disappointed with one title out of sixteen read as of this blog post. That's a pretty strong ratio.
Oh, and I've also bought the following DarkFuse books since being in the club (the first three were five star reads):
The Mourning House by Ronald Malfi - $2.99 (novella)
Snowblind by Michael McBride - $2.99 (novella)
Fear Me by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
The Underdwelling by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
Puppet Graveyard by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
Clockwork Dolls by William Miekle - $2.99 (novella)
When We Join Jesus in Hell by Lee Thompson - $2.99 (novella)
Fevered Hills by Keith Deininger - $2.99 (novella)
Without Purpose, Without Pity by Brian Hodge - $2.99 (novella)
Since I will definitely be buying more Darkfuse titles that aren't part of my subscription, they have found a good, repeat sale customer.
Hope this answers any insider questions folks might have and if you do join the club, please list my name, Todd Russell, as the person who referred you and, yes, I'll get $$ referral $$ credit. You are welcome to hit me up with any questions about the club below and I'll try my best to answer them.
I did something new reading-oriented at the end of last month.
For the first time in 30+ years of reading horror I joined a paid subscription book club. It's a Kindle ebook club specializing in dark fiction, horror, thrillers and suspense. It's called DarkFuse and cost me $59.98 for the year. For joining I will receive:
- (12 total) 1 novel every calendar month between the 1st and 9th of the month
- (12 total) 1 novella every calendar month toward the end of the month
- 5 bonus free ebooks chosen from their DarkFuse shop
- 6-12+ various bonus ebooks throughout the year
- access to the members-only area where other subscribers and DarkFuse authors are hanging out and interacting
- the ability to vote in the DarkFuse Reader's Choice Awards
A few weeks after joining I posted some details of my members experience in a (free) Horror group I frequent at Goodreads. Here are the details, plus some new experiences:
- PayPal is used for the subscription and it is setup to automatically renew one year from the date you signup. You can cancel the subscription through PayPal any time. If you were gifted the subscription, I saw somebody asking about that and the answer is you would need to signup again next year when it renews with your own PayPal subscription.
- when I signed up I received an email (the email that is associated with my PayPal account) within hours asking me to reply with my five free titles. You can choose any from their shop page listed here:
http://www.shop.darkfuse.com/
The five titles I chose were:
Fangboy by Jeff Strand
Benjamin's Parasite by Jeff Strand
Long Black Coffin by Tim Curran
Cherry Hill by James A. Moore
The Bleeding Season by Greg F. Gifune
- The five 'free' titles were delivered to me within 24 hours of paying of signing up via Amazon Person Document Delivery. As such, they don't show on my normal Kindle bookshelf, nor do they have cover art displayed in the carousel, which kind of bummed me out a bit. Also, I have to manually bookmark the pages of these books because my Kindle Fire seems to lose the places in documents.
- I received one additional bonus ebook (a short story, actually) Restoration, sent the same way as the five free books. This one does have cover art, oddly enough, but it doesn't show up in the books area either :(
- I received an email explaining that every month for 12 months I'll receive a new Darkfuse novel ($2.99 value) from the 1st-9th of the month as a gift and a novella ($1.99 value) toward the end of the month. These will come from Amazon as a gift.
- On February 1st, I received my first novel delivery. It was Season of the Wolf. This came as an Amazon gift ($2.99). I accepted the gift via the link on Amazon and this book appeared in my books area with cover art (woot!) :)
- there is a somewhat active messageboard inside the members-only area with some knowledgeable horror and thriller readers. Some are also members of Horror Afficiandos :)
- you need at least 25 posts on the messageboard in order to enter raffles for additional stuff. The first item for raffle is a very nice prize. I found this requirement easy to do within a few days, as there are enough threads on the board already. A more ambitious forum hound could probably meet this posting requirement in a day or less.
- you also need X number of posts to download additional short stories in the download area. I haven't used this part of the site yet, but I think it is five posts per download (it might be five after each download?). There are a couple dozen short stories and two novellas, all by Darkfuse authors and/or the publisher. There are no novels in this area as of this writing.
So, to summarize, I paid $60 USD for the subscription and so far have received six novels (five free + February novel). I am scheduled to receive 11 more novels (@ $2.99 each) and 12 novellas (@ $1.99 each).
Since the regular cost of their novels in Kindle Format is $4.99 (the $2.99 is only on the release day, I believe) and the novellas are $2.99 (released at $1.99 for short time), the savings is good versus NOT being in the club and buying directly from Amazon. If you miss buying when the books come out, you'll pay the higher price. I suppose there is a possibility you could catch some of these cheaper on a promotion, but certainly not all of them.
Assuming the release day pricing, here is what I'll receive:
12 novels @ 2.99 = 35.88
12 novellas @ 1.99 = 23.88
5 'free' novels @ 2.99 = 14.95
------
= $74.71 (+ tax not included, if I buy through Amazon, I'm charged sales tax on every book purchase)
Note: this does NOT include promised "bonus" books to be delivered over the next year.
Clearly, this is a *GREAT* deal for horror and thriller fans, as the quality of Darkfuse titles seems to be pretty high from what I've read so far. Especially for those planning to read most/all of the books.
I've only been disappointed with one title out of sixteen read as of this blog post. That's a pretty strong ratio.
Oh, and I've also bought the following DarkFuse books since being in the club (the first three were five star reads):
The Mourning House by Ronald Malfi - $2.99 (novella)
Snowblind by Michael McBride - $2.99 (novella)
Fear Me by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
The Underdwelling by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
Puppet Graveyard by Tim Curran - $2.99 (novella)
Clockwork Dolls by William Miekle - $2.99 (novella)
When We Join Jesus in Hell by Lee Thompson - $2.99 (novella)
Fevered Hills by Keith Deininger - $2.99 (novella)
Without Purpose, Without Pity by Brian Hodge - $2.99 (novella)
Since I will definitely be buying more Darkfuse titles that aren't part of my subscription, they have found a good, repeat sale customer.
Hope this answers any insider questions folks might have and if you do join the club, please list my name, Todd Russell, as the person who referred you and, yes, I'll get $$ referral $$ credit. You are welcome to hit me up with any questions about the club below and I'll try my best to answer them.
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