news, local-news, horror, military horror, SNAFU, amazon, geoff brown, Bendigo, erin handley, stephen king

It’s a nightmare that would see even the king of horror fiction wake up drenched in a cold sweat. But for this Bendigo small-press publisher, it was a dream come true. Goeff Brown, editor-in-chief at Cohesion Press, put together a horror short story anthology that outranked the world’s most famous horror writer, Stephen King, on the bestseller list. For 28 glorious hours, Mr Brown’s book hit number one for pre-sales of horror short stories on Amazon, toppling King from his throne. He stayed up late watching the numbers climb. When he awoke, his book – SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest – was top of the list. In a 12 hour period, 250 copies sold. Mr Brown puts down his success to two things: social media and having big-name authors in the anthology. Mr Brown said he had specifically commissioned four well-known authors, Jeremy Robinson, Weston Ochse and S. D. Perry and Matt Hilton, knowing they would bring some star power to the edition. He then trawled through 1400 contributed stories, picking the best ones for the anthology of military horror stories. He said the current global climate, with the IS terrorism threat, played a role in the popularity of the genre. “Horror does reflect societal fears at the time,” he said. “There's always been a strong trend of horror representing certain times throughout. In the 50s when you had all the stories about giant radioactive creatures attacking people it's because people were worried about nuclear war.” Since the early success, the book hasn’t dipped below five on the list, and Mr Brown hopes people keep buying the anthology so he can turn a profit. He spent $8000 to pull it together and reckons he needs to sell 1900 copies. So far, sales have hit 1500 ebook copies. It is still sitting in the number four spot, with Stephen King back at number one. “It's great for any small press publisher, but being a Bendigo resident, I think it’s great for Bendigo,” he said.

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