All Blog Posts Tagged 'books' (796)

So, you married yourself a writer, eh? You bought into the romantic notion of the two of you sitting fireside, drinking glasses of pinot noir while your significant other sits beside you writing the next great American novel. The only sound is the crackling fire and the tapping of the keyboard as they belt out their genius.

Every once in a while your significant other looks up from their masterpiece and flashes you a smile that makes you feel like you’re the most special person in the…

I’ve spent the last few weeks doing a lot of marketing and promotion for my nine novels and it has paid off. My main blog, ALWAYS WRITING has reached a milestone 250,000 + page views, and the other sites that I post blog articles have reached a combined 150,000 + page views. Not bad for the twenty months they have been in existence.

Now that I’ve reached a comfortable level of exposure it’s time to get back to the business of writing books. I did manage a 20,000 word outline…

Two years ago, after amicably parting ways with my literary agent of four years, I decide to take destiny into my own hands and publish my books in eformat. I had a huge collection of completed and professionally edited novels and decided that publishing one every three months seemed feasible. So, that’s what I did.

Little did I know I was on the cusp of an indie publishing revolution. My books were available at the right time, for the right audience, and at the right price. Kindles…

I’ve been writing 50,000-70,000 word novels for a while now and to do it properly takes a lot of time. My fastest writing ever was last year when I finished a 60,000 word novel in eight months. And I do believe there will always be readers who want to immerse themselves in a long, detailed story. However, I also believe that a new wave of reading experiences will take over the future. What are these, you ask?

As our lives become busier and busier, it’s harder to find time to sit and…

I just got back from a three day trip to the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I brought my laptop but got little creative writing done. I did pretty well playing at the blackjack tables and also threw a few bucks into the slot machines. It was while playing the progressive machine that my mind began to imagine ‘the what if’s’.

The jackpot was for 1.2 million dollars. What if I suddenly hit it big? What if all the right symbols lined up and bells start ringing? How would…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a writer better. Certainly, you have to be creative, that’s a given, and you have to love stories and reading. But what is that will make you better? Here’s my answer; time.

What do I mean by that?

With the exception of a few very talented people, most writers take years to hone their skills. Some writer’s like Stephen King say that a writer’s schooling is never finished. That writer’s always have something more to learn about…

I’m nearing the end of my sponsorship blitz, but I’m at the point where I can start posting my views on the whole ebook selling phenomenon. First of all, unless you’re already famous, have a strong following, or the most amazing title and cover art ever, don’t bother with expensive sponsorships. My results have been pretty much the same in extra sales whether the sponsorship I ran was $10 or $300.

If you’re going to place a sponsorship, I recommend the Kindle Fire Department.com,…

Just wanted to remind all my followers that my latest mind-bending trip is now available on Kindle. Thanks so much and spread the word.

What if everything we perceive, all we experience, is just a figment of someone else’s imagination? And what if that someone is dying?

IMAGINATION

A botched military mission finds new recruit Christopher Parker in a hostile prison camp. His life has become pain. To escape the prolonged misery of torture, Christopher…

With my marketing efforts underway and my books uploaded on all the major writer’s sites, I am about ready to start my quest to write three novellas in the next year. I’m leaning toward the Dystopian genre, with a little sci-fi fantasy thrown in. I’m going to try and do a series, building on the plot book after book. I do have a few ideas that have been swimming around in my head for a few years and I recently pulled the “ideas” file from my cabinet. This file was thick with scraps of paper…

The New Year is here and I’m sure everyone plans on making 2013 better than 2012. And hopefully it will be for all of us. My free pre-release promotion for IMAGINATION has ended and the results were pretty much what I had expected due to the lack of my announcing it; a total of 857 downloads. My intention wasn’t to give away tens of thousands of books but to expose the book to heavy readers who would then ‘like, tag, and review’ the book before I rolled out the big guns and shared the link…

This is the last day to get my new mind-bending release, IMAGINATION for free!!. Please enjoy this complimentary copy and check out my other books.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATFC3JM

blog: http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com…

My promotion blitz is going well, sales are slowly increasing, and I’m getting a lot of email from people reading my books. All this is good. However, as one of the emails pointed out, I’m not certain what exactly is generating the increase. I’ve got a lot of blog ads running simultaneously right now at a cost of anywhere from $5.00 for two weeks to $300.00 for the same two weeks, depending on the amount of traffic the blog receives. However, I have no way of knowing which ads are generating…

Free until Sunday!

IMAGINATION

A botched military mission finds new recruit Christopher Parker in a hostile prison camp. His life has become pain. To escape the prolonged misery of torture, Christopher journeys deep into his own memories and imagination, reliving his life in extreme detail. Imagery is so precise the people who occupy these memories believe they are living real lives. As each character explores ever-shifting landscapes of Christopher’s imagination they uncover a…

FREE ON KINDLE: Click Here:http://amzn.to/TThwRe 

- For every child who struggles with doubt, for

every kid who has been bullied, for every teen who comes from a broken home, and for every…

Here I go! I just spent the most ever on a huge promotion blitz for SILENT INVASION and DROP OUT (my two best sellers). I did it through blogads.com. I’ve read other posts about the effectiveness of such ads and most said that author’s sales increased because of them. I booked on nine different sites with a combined reach of 312,000 avid readers. These are people who actively read the blogs. My ads will feature the cover, a blurb, and the link to buy the book. The blitz will run on all sites…

My latest novel is off to my formatter and should be ready for sale in a few days. I’m ready to go with publicizing it once it is live and plan on doing all that right after Christmas. It’s been nearly a full week that I haven’t written any new fiction material. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing (I wrote the back jacket copy for IMAGINATION and I am posting this blog) just not doing the kind of writing I love most. Though I have been marketing and will continue to reserve…