All Blog Posts Tagged 'Publish' (131)

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.…

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?…

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…

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…

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, though…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Once again, I’ve reach the elusive milestone of finishing a book. My latest novel (my eleventh to date) is now complete and awaiting the formatting process. The novel took exactly 374 days from first sentence until the final read. A lot has happened in the past year and a lot of changes have taken place both in my life and the world. So, as I sit here on this first day of non-novel writing I find myself feeling quite odd and at a loss of how I should spend my morning. I could market…

Fellow/author and fan from the U.K. is promoting me on her blog. Please check it out and also check out her books.

http://amymahvampire.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/neil-ostroff-drop-out-degenerates.html

I’m posting the results for my Kindle Boards book of the day sponsorship. One sale of SILENT INVASION. Yep, that’s right. One sale. But, all is not lost. Strangely enough, sales of my other books went up. I even sold a few copies of PULP, my ultra-noir thriller. I also got invited to promote SILENT INVASION for free on a few blogs and two websites. So, that’s good. I have another Kindle Boards sponsorship tomorrow for AFTER so we’ll see how that goes. All in all, the Kindle Boards…

Please check out SILENT INVASION as Kindle Boards book of the day. Enjoy a great sci-fi adventure!

http://www.kindleboards.com/…

If you read my blog you know I’ve been dealing with some family health issues related to the dreaded C. Doing my final read for IMAGINATION has helped ease the boredom of fifteen-hour hospital room waits. Of course, waiting is nothing compared to what the patient must endure. It was during one of these interminable waits that I had my sudden, ‘ah ha’ moment. I realized, as my wrist and fingers grew sore from typing on my laptop sitting literally on my lap, that I’ve spent my life…

Now that my Kindle Fire Department.com sponsorship has officially ended I can now look back on it as a success. I sold enough copies of DROP OUT to break even but what most important is that so many new people have now been exposed to my stuff. It also got my ranking down below 10,000 which according to the Amazon algorithms, means that the site will give me a little more promotion than a book that hasn’t sold so well. As of this post I’m still below the 20,000 rank. As I’ve mentioned…

Please check out my latest novel. It's book of the day on Kindle Fire Department.

Thanks.

http://fireapps.blogspot.com/2012/11/drop-out-kindle-book-of-day-1130.html…

I’m at the absolute most fun time in the novel writing process for me. The plot of IMAGINATION is complete and tight and coherent. The characters have all been fleshed out and the settings are all detailed. Now, I spend the next few days reading fast and tweaking the tiniest details. Once that is complete I give one final, very quick read and send it off to my editor/formatter. I just contacted my cover artist and we are about to begin the process of designing a cover. I have a tagline for…