Last week a new American classic exploded and I must confess its success is Greek to me. Author Suzanne Collins and the marketplace would agree.
The Amazon sales page for The Hunger Games calls it dystopian literature, so I grabbed my Oxford dictionary. That word’s not there. However, I found out that dis means the reverse of, deprivation of, or expulsion from something. Utopia means a…
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Added by Margaret Kell Virany on March 25, 2012 at 11:19am —
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I woke up this morning and like every morning, the first thing I did after brushing my teeth and washing my face is go down to my office, wake my computer, and check my sales on KDP. Lo and behold, AFTER is moving copies. I also sold a few copies of INSECTLAND, DROP OUT, and SILENT INVASION, but AFTER is the winner today by far. So, I started thinking what I could have done differently the last few days that attracted the extra attention. I really haven’t been concentrating much on AFTER…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 24, 2012 at 10:48am —
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Okay, for all my new followers, here’s the raw deal of what I’ve done in the way of promotions in the last four months and what the results are. First were the fiver ads on fiver.com. For five bucks people put your books and links on their blogs and websites. I did about fifteen different blogs with little result. My advice; don’t waste that hard earned five bucks. Then I did the article service where an article is ghost-written for you and then sent to thousands of journal sites and logs.…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 22, 2012 at 2:23pm —
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With all the hoopla surrounding my KDP select issue I almost forgot that one of my sponsorships started today. Here is the link for SILENT INVASION’s Frugal Ereader Book of the Day. http://thefrugalereader.com/2012/03/20/the-frugal-find-of-the-day-silent-invasion-neil-ostroff-1-99-or-borrow-free-with-prime/ I signed up for this sponsorship because it…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 20, 2012 at 2:40pm —
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Well, I got my issue with KDP select solved… kinda. In a panic over the email I received, I quickly unpublished all my books from Smashwords, including my six that are in the premium catalog. I figured the trade-off was worth it considering I sell about five times as many books through Amazon. I also de-selected the automatic renewal for KDP select just in case any heat came down about my books being on Smashwords. Here’s the kicker. I got an email earlier today from KDP informing me that…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 18, 2012 at 2:05pm —
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I just received a form email from KDP informing me that my titles on the select program were also discovered being sold by about a half a dozen different outlets, including Kobo and Nook. They gave me the sites to check out, which actually is pretty cool that my books are so readily available now, but also informed me that I was not following the policy. Now, I absolutely do not want to piss off Amazon and it’s too late to have Smashwords remove all my titles from all the sites, so I figured…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 16, 2012 at 1:27pm —
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Right now, as I sit inside my house and write this, it’s 75 degrees and beautiful sunshine here in Penssylvania. A perfect day. So, why am in front of my computer writing this blog post? Because that’s the only way I’m going to sell books. And if I sell enough books I can enjoy the nice days for the rest of my life. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet, so here I am making my presence known. Sometimes, I think I’m wasting away my life sitting in this office writing stories. Truth is, I…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 14, 2012 at 2:23pm —
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Just a quick reminder that INSECTLAND is free today on Kindle and deeply discounted on Smashwords. Get your copy now! Thanks
INSECTLAND
Imagine a world where humans are pests and insect-like aliens rule over them. Imagine that world is Earth.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005P81J48
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005P81J48…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 11, 2012 at 12:30pm —
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Best self promotion!
It’s been a while since I posted all the sites I use to market and promote my books. I figured since I have so many new blog followers (I’m up to 111 so far; thanks all for following) it would help anyone looking for greats sites to promote on. I’m just going to list them in no particular order. They’re easy to sign up and have friendly people in their forums. I recommend you download all your books to these sites for the exposure. I also post my blog on…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 10, 2012 at 11:25am —
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Okay, I admit it. I made a boo boo. I posted on the U.K. Amazon readers site by mistake. What I did was confuse the codes Kindle Boards uses to create a picture of the cover. I posted on the U.K. site that I was conducting an experiment to see if this worked and posted along with the links. Well, let me tell you what happened. I got so many vicious replies, people accusing me of trying to sneak in self promotion (as if that’s punishable by death), people reading the book samples and then…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 8, 2012 at 2:15pm —
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Just a quick post to announce that I’ve put all my books up for Smashwords read an ebook a day promotion. Since I’ve been spending almost all of my time promoting Kindle and Amazon, this opens up a whole new readership with Nook and many other ereader devices. I’ve got a great author site where you can get my books on these devices for 25% off during this week! Just use the coupon posted on the site.…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 5, 2012 at 12:23pm —
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I just checked KDP unit sales and I sold nine books yesterday. Four in the U.S. and five in the U.K. Three months ago, I’d be thrilled at those numbers, but after the last two months of relatively heavy sales, these seem kind of low. Now, my depression will set in until those numbers get back up into the twenties. Lately, I’ve noticed a building obsession with checking my sales throughout the day. Having the ability to see books downloaded in real time is an amazing tool for keeping track…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 3, 2012 at 11:26am —
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The ebook version of DEGENERATES is finally live! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FFN5LY
Yeah! Now, comes the tedious part of releasing a new book. First, I have to place the cover, description, and link to purchase on all my author/writer sites of which I’m currently on thirty-two. (I will place a list of all the sites I belong to on a future post for reference.) Then, I’ve got to announce the book on all these sites plus another twelve…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 1, 2012 at 12:14pm —
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“It’s not happening fast enough! It’s not happening fast enough!” Those were the complaints of Jim Morrison during the early days of the 1960’s rock band The Doors concerts. They had been together as a group for a mere seven months and Jim was getting antsy for them to get discovered. “Relax Jim,” Ray Manzareck (The keyboardist and discoverer of Jim’s song writing ability) replied. “All great things take time.”
Within the year the group was world famous and Jim Morrison became one of…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 27, 2012 at 12:29pm —
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Find out for FREE! That’s right! Right now until Sunday night DREAM TRAVELER is absolutely free on Kindle! Get you copy now! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006F2AGUQ
Okay, now that the promotion is done, I’m also happy to write that I just finished the first draft of my new book IMAGINATION, my noir thriller, DEGENERATES is coming out in ebook format next week, and this blog is nearing 100,000 hits. Whew! The Fugal ereader book of the day…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 25, 2012 at 9:43am —
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In a move that may be smart or may be dumb, I’ve raised the prices of my books to $1.99. This, after reading several threads and discussions on the matter of pricing. Here’s the gist of my reasoning. There are a lot of ebooks out there nowadays, and as I’ve heard in many discussion groups, a good number are not well-written, not formatted correctly, and have covers that look homemade. These authors want to sell their books (we all do) so they price them at the lowest cost allowed by Amazon,…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 23, 2012 at 1:30pm —
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I’ve been going sponsorship crazy and just booked three more sponsorships for KND and my newest discovery, Kindle Fire Department. Kindle Fire Department is a site for Kindle Fire owners, that is growing by leaps and bounds. Sponsorship is easy and relatively cheap (about $50). By getting in now, I locked in dates for sponsorship in May. I also booked sponsorship for SILENT INVASION on The frugal ereader.com ($50). I’m waiting to hear the date on that one. Some of the best sites like Pixels…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 21, 2012 at 11:24am —
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My Kindle Nation Daily, ebook of the day sponsorship is over and I must say, it wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped. However, sales did increase and as I said before, I also got lots of exposure. So, I decided to buy two more sponsorships. One for DROP OUT and one for SILENT INVASION. Since KND now allows you to pick your dates I figured I can’t lose. This last sponsorship was on a Thursday, but the new ones I have booked are for Friday June 16th, which I figure will be the very…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 18, 2012 at 10:07am —
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I’m excited to announce that AFTER is today’s daily sponsor on Kindle Nation Daily and sales are already increasing. Please check it out!
Kindle Nation Daily
Today’s Kindle Daily Deal — Thursday, February 16 – Save 72% on Michael Sims’ collection of the best vampire stories of the Victorian era, Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories, plus … Neil Ostroff’s AFTER (Today’s Sponsor)…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 16, 2012 at 9:45am —
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Tomorrow begins my much anticipated Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship for AFTER. I bought this sponsorship nearly three months ago before the whole KND frenzy began. Since then, they have incorporated a new sponsorship ad page that makes it much easier for authors to sponsor. http://indie.kindlenationdaily.com/?page_id=642 The benefits of sponsorship are many, including the possibility of the book going viral and thousands of copies…
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Added by Neil Ostroff on February 15, 2012 at 12:06pm —
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