Neil Ostroff's Blog – February 2012 Archive (12)

“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…

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…

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,…

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…

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 16^th, which I figure will be the very…

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)…

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…

I think I may have discovered why my sales increased so dramatically the other day. It has nothing to do with a marketing promo suddenly taking off or someone posting a rave review and recommendation. I believe my increase in sales was due to Kindle error. I posted a few notes on the KDP forum about my jump in sales and it seems that I’m not the only author that this happened to. It appears Kindle had made some mistakes in their counters and the recent jump in numbers was them finally…

The free promotion of SILENT INVASION seems to have worked. I don’t know if someone put it as a recommendation on their website, or if someone posted a blog about it, or that people who have read my other books liked them and now want to read this one. But last night in a period of about two hours I sold nearly 80 copies in the U.S. and U.K. combined. At one point my Amazon ranking fell below the 5,000 mark. It’s now back up into the 20,000 range. It is quite a rush to see the sales numbers…

I’m heading off to Atlantic City tomorrow to play blackjack and have some serious fun. Of course, I’m bringing my laptop so I can do a little writing while I’m not gambling. There’s nothing like looking at the ocean from twenty stories up for a little inspiration. My next novel, IMAGINATION is coming along nicely.

I’ve decided to release DEGENERATES in Kindle format. Right now, it’s the only noir thriller I have that’s not available. My other noir thrillers are through iuniverse and…

SILENT INVASION

They are here! They are hidden among us! They will stop at nothing to destroy us!

Thirteen-year-old Tim Madison’s life turns upside down when a strange visitor takes him aboard a magnificent spaceship to train for a future alien invasion. Returned home with new skills and this terrible knowledge, he confides in his two best friends about his experience. Now, they’re in a race against time to prevent an all-out attack on Earth. Can they stop ruthless,…

I happened to pass a mirror the other day when the sun was at its brightest and shining through our living room window like a yellow spotlight. I was not so thrilled with what I saw. I’m 42, I workout daily, I eat properly, and I don’t smoke, but still, one cannot hide the years of living and experience etched into my epidermis. I cannot stop the slow regression of my hairline or the increasing aches and pains I experience at the end of each day and when I wake in the morning. I can only dye…