The Book Marketing Network

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All Blog Posts Tagged 'write' (171)

Book Marketing Network Author's Article Chosen

I realize I'm not on this site much, but with writing 3 books, editing to help pay bills, 2 online art galleries and... well... please excuse me.

A few months ago, I put out a submission call for articles to be included in the mega-Volume II of my reference book, Write It Right - Tips for Authors. From submissions from a wide array of writer's sites, I have chosen 6 top articles. One of them was by a Book Marketing Network author. Congratulate her, she is:

Monica M.…

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Added by Mary Deal on September 20, 2012 at 7:00pm — No Comments

Ebooks are forever

Ebooks are forever. Think about this sentence for a moment. You write a novel, get it formatted, have a nice cover made up, get an ISBN, and then download it onto Kindle, or Smashwords, or any of the hundreds of ebook distributors, and poof, it’s available globally to anyone with an ereader. Not only that, it will be available until the end of time. That means fifty years from now if I want to show my great grandchild one of my books, all they’ll have to do is type in the title and, poof…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on September 20, 2012 at 12:30pm — No Comments

The Ebook Revolution

It used to be that an aspiring author would write a novel and then painstakingly send out SASE’s (remember them) hoping to land an agent. If the author did land an agent, then the author would hope for a publishing contract. If by miracle of miracles the agent actually sells the book, then eighteen months later it comes out in the bookstore (remember those) and the author starts doing a grueling schedule of signings hoping to recoup more money in sales than the advance received.

The…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on September 14, 2012 at 1:00pm — 1 Comment

As real as it gets

I recently read an article about a company that would give your book a review for a price. They claim that the reviews aren’t biased and the reviewer will be honest if they didn’t like the book. Now, I know hundreds if not thousands of these companies exist so I’m no dummy, but it seems to me that it would be bad business to give an author a bad paid review especially if the author has several books under his belt and may use the service again. This leads me to the conclusion that investing…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 30, 2012 at 1:18pm — No Comments

A real writer?

There comes a point in every artist’s career where he must decide what his talent is worth. When I started publishing on KDP I was just starting out in the ebook revolution and like many writers, thought nothing would come of it. People would scoff and say that I’m not a ‘real’ writer because I never published traditionally. Well let me tell them something, I had an agent and wasted four years trying to make it as a ‘real’ writer. Four years waiting for some suit to decide my future, hoping…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 27, 2012 at 1:04pm — No Comments

The secret

 

I’ve been thinking about hiring Smith Publicity when I’m finished writing IMAGINATION and have spent the last few days researching them and all they do. If I do sign with them it would mean huge exposure by the ways of television and radio interviews. For some authors they have gotten over fifty interviews. The question is will the royalties made by more exposure offset the costs of a major publicity firm? I haven’t contacted them yet so I don’t know what they charge but I’m…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 24, 2012 at 12:30pm — No Comments

When to give up?

Nobody ever said it would be easy. Nobody ever said it was always going to be fun. Nobody promised me that after spending twenty-plus years holed up in my office writing novels that anyone would ever read them. Nobody promised me anything would ever come of my writing and yet I still do it. Day after day, year after year, I sit in front of this keyboard and tap out the characters and worlds inside my mind. To date, I think I have more than sixty unique, fully-fleshed characters in all twelve…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 20, 2012 at 1:01pm — No Comments

Making a living

There is no greater personal satisfaction for me than watching the sales numbers for my books go up. It’s not even that I’m earning money from my art that excites me but that my books are actually being read by strangers. Lots of strangers. I know, I know, I’ve said that a thousand times, but it’s just so true. I’m still getting residual sales from the free promotion last week and that officially makes DROP OUT my biggest bestseller to date with well over a thousand paid sales. DEGENERATES…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 17, 2012 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Records may break

What a difference a month makes for my sales. From a lackluster July to a booming August. Sales of DROP OUT have skyrocketed over the last week as well as my other adult books. Right now I’m on par to break my all time sales month of last January. Strangely though, my sci-fi/fantasy books are not selling well this month. Perhaps, kids are gearing up for school and losing interest in spending their ‘endless summer’ reading fiction. I don’t know. I do know that more and more people are buying…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 12, 2012 at 11:51am — No Comments

Saying goodbye

As I say goodbye to KDP Select, I must say that it has been a good ride. My last two free promotions yielded a combined 5,764 books given away that resulted in a surge of paid sales that is still running with momentum. I am now down to the wire with giveaways because I only have one book left that still has promotion days and only two others that are still on KDP Select, and they are about to expire. One the flip side, Smashwords just announced a huge deal with libraries that will allow…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 9, 2012 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Agent – yes or no?

I was recently contacted by a prominent NY literary agency who shall remain nameless at this point about possible representation. They got wind of me because of my constant promotional efforts and then explored a little deeper into the kinds of books I write. They have not said they will definitely represent me but want to see more samples of my writing and my future projects. I am having a tough time trying to decide what to do about this sudden interest in me so I’ve listed the pros and…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 3, 2012 at 12:38pm — No Comments

What next?

I finally finished putting my hardcopy corrections of IMAGINATION onto the file version. It was a grueling seventeen hours of nothing but eyestrain and sore back and fingers, but alas, it was all worth it. Now, it’s smooth sailing until the manuscript is complete. I have four chapters that are outlined but need to be written and I have two characters that I have to flesh out their backgrounds a little more, but otherwise the basic book is done. It always feels strange to me when I’m nearing…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on August 2, 2012 at 10:00am — No Comments

Results!

The free promotion for DEGENERATES has ended and here are the results. Copies given away to U.S. and Canadian customers is 1,678. Copies given away to U.K. Kindle owners is: 586. Copies given away to all other countries that can purchase from Amazon: 48. Of my other seven books that are for sale right now, during the four day free promotion period I saw sales increase by an average of thirty-five percent. All in all, I’d say it was a successful promotion. Between that promotion and the…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 30, 2012 at 4:30pm — No Comments

Promotion

I’m in the midst of another free giveaway promotion, this time it’s for DEGENERATES. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FFN5LY This is the first time I’ve given away one of my thrillers and you know what? It’s flying off the shelves. It’s only the second day and the promotion goes until Sunday and I’ve already given away almost a thousand books. I’m happy to do it too, because I have two other thrillers FROSTPROOF and PULP that are written in the…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 27, 2012 at 12:47pm — No Comments

Winning

As I checked my email this morning I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my novel. DROP OUT http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005FX0K7U has won today’s Indie Book of the Day award. http://Indiebookoftheday.com . I’m not too familiar with the website but it seems like it has a lot of followers. I’m also not sure who nominated the book but if that person or persons reads this blog I’d like to say…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 23, 2012 at 11:30am — No Comments

Author freedom

I got another one of those terrifying e-mails from Kindle Direct publishing saying they have discovered INSECTLAND for sale at other online booksellers. And as anyone who publishes through this promotion knows, you have to be exclusive to Amazon.com for 90 days. Violating this can lead to the expulsion of your book not only from the promotion but also from Amazon and Kindle. That would be a huge blow to my market audience of Kindle and Kindle Fire owners. Worried I might lose this book, I…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 22, 2012 at 3:00pm — No Comments

We all die. But what happens after?

Now you can find out for free! For the next two days AFTER is absolutely free on Amazon.com! Thanks and enjoy.

AFTER

When Nick Murray dies mysteriously he enters an afterlife like nothing he had ever imagined. There are rules, regulations, and beings in positions of great power. The devil craves this power and will do anything to attain it, even use his evil influence to start a global war on Earth. The devil intends to collect billions of human souls and turn them into a…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 19, 2012 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Organizing the chapters

So begins one of my favorite aspects of writing a novel; organizing the chapters. This is when I take each separate character and their plotline and read it all in one string instead of being spaced out in the book. This allows me to flush out any inconsistencies and make sure the story stays true and along the proper path. I first did this when I wrote DEGENERATES http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FFN5LY. That book has so many characters and…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 16, 2012 at 12:53pm — No Comments

Word-of-Mouth

Okay, so here we are entering the second week of July and my sales have remained relatively stagnant since the Fourth of July. I’ve explored all the free promotion sites, and forums and threads. I’ve placed sponsorships with Kindle Nation Daily, Kindle Fire Department, Kindle Boards, and various smaller indie websites. I’ve manage to write on average three blog posts a week and have over 170 followers (thanks everyone) and almost 200,000 hits. I’m active on Authors Den, Goodreads, Shelfari,…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 11, 2012 at 1:10pm — No Comments

The future

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the future of writers in today’s high technology society. What will become of us and the books we write? Will the paperback go the way of the compact disk? Will publishing houses disappear the way most record labels have? Will the paperback book become a lost art? I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that there will always be writers and there will always be stories to tell. What is uncertain, is what medium will sell those stories. I have several theories…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on July 8, 2012 at 12:02pm — No Comments

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