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Neil Ostroff's Blog – March 2012 Archive (15)

Nothing to do this weekend? How about a free adventure?

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…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 31, 2012 at 10:12am — No Comments

Millions upon millions

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…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 30, 2012 at 12:10pm — No Comments

Ye Old Query

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…

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Added by Neil Ostroff on March 27, 2012 at 2:11pm — No Comments

How’d this happen?

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 — No Comments

The raw deal

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 — No Comments

Sponsorship

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 — No Comments

KDP select solved!

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 — No Comments

KDP select blues

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 — No Comments

So freaking nice!

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 — 1 Comment

Free today and tomorrow!

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 — No Comments

Best self promotion!

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 — No Comments

A warning

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 — No Comments

Doubling my audience

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 — No Comments

Numbers torture me

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 — No Comments

Degenerates live!

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 — No Comments

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