All Blog Posts Tagged 'spaceships' (87)

At this very moment, I am sitting on a veranda in Summerland Key Florida staring out at a vast expanse of glacial-clear, maroon-colored, water while whispering palm fronds provides the backdrop to seagull cries, and yet I cannot write. Well, that’s not exactly true because I am writing this, but I can’t seem to concentrate on my current novel. Perhaps, I’m too relaxed? Too contented? With the knowledge that my books are selling, I no longer feel that intense pressure to create for hours on…

Here is the link to my author spotlight on Kindle Nation Daily. It will be posted on Kids Corner's Facebook and Twitter this afternoon and on KND's Facebook and Twitter this evening. This interview will also be featured in the Kindle Daily Digest. I can’t wait to see what will happen to sales.

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My Kindle ebook of the week sponsorship for the kid’s corner has begun. Sales are slow however, I’m guessing because of the Easter holiday. Perhaps, they will pick up more when my author spotlight interview comes out. That’s right, I was chosen for author spotlight on Kindle Nation Daily. This is a great FREE promotion offered by Kindle for me. They will post an interview, a picture of my book SILENT INVASION, links to buy the book, and links to my blog, all for nothing. They claim the…

“A sleeper hit”, that’s what the reviewer on Kindle Fire Department said about DROP OUT. Well, when is it going to wake up? Seriously, the Kindle Fire sponsorship has been the only sponsorship so far that has made back its cost. I’ve also achieved half of my sales goals for the month of April and it’s only the 5^th. I’m not sure what made this sponsorship such a success but I think it has to do with my previous notion that not enough kids own Kindles, yet. DROP OUT is an adult book…

Well, my second free promotion for INSECTLAND didn’t go hardly how I thought. I only sold a measly 75 copies for the giveaway, which leads me to wonder if the rumors are true about the KDP select free promotions; that mostly book hoarders download the books and not read them. And that the same few hundred book hoarders download whatever becomes available. It would explain the low numbers. The last free promotion for INSECTLAND yielded hundreds and hundreds of downloads. I’ll guess I’ll never…

Just wanted to let everyone know that my sci-fi adventure INSECTLAND is now free until Monday. And if you like it please check out my blog and other books for sale. Thanks. http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Imagine a world where humans are pests and insect-like aliens rule over them. Imagine that world is Earth.

INSECTLAND

Be frightened! Be very frightened! Tiny, dragon-like creatures hiding in our…

Just about everybody has lottery fever right now with Mega Millions jackpot over $500,000,000 dollars. And just like everybody else, I’ve been daydreaming all morning about what I’d do if I win. (I’ve got $20 in quick picks). I could fulfill every dream I ever had. Buy big houses, a yacht, a private jet. Eat the best food prepared by master chefs. Would that make me happy? Of course. But what if I had all that and stopped writing? What if having every desired fulfilled drained me of the…

Continuing my series on effective query letters that got interest in my books by industry professionals, I’m posting the original query letter for DEGENERATES that drew huge interest several years ago before anyone had heard of Kindle and ebooks. I had several agents request the entire manuscript from this query and it is this query that got my first power agent Gary Heidt really interested in my work. As I’ve posted before, Gary eventually signed me after reading the query for SILENT…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…