We extend the “linearly exponential” bound for the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of a graded ideal in a polynomial ring K[x1, . . . , xr] over a field (established by Galligo and Giusti in characteristic 0 and recently, by Caviglia-Sbarra for abitrary K) to graded submodules of a graded module over a homogeneous Cohen-Macaulay ring R = ⊕n≥0Rn with artinian local base ring R0. As an application we get a “linearly exponential” bound for the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of a graded R-module M in terms of the degrees which occur in a minimal free presentation of M.