Rob Steiner's Blog, page 11
February 26, 2012
Review for ASPECT OF PALE NIGHT
I just got a nice review of my mystery novel ASPECT OF PALE NIGHT from the Good Book Alert review site. An excerpt:
Rob Steiner describes mystery ASPECT OF PALE NIGHT as having a similar voice to Stephanie Plum, which drew my interest right away. Plum is a quirky character with a lot of spice and a big heart. Steiner's Toni did not disappoint either….Honestly, it was hard to believe a guy wrote this. Steiner did a fabulous job of writing emotions from a female perspective. Absolutely, no cheese dripped from the heart of his main character, Toni, very genuine.
February 16, 2012
Ebook Pricing Wars: Episode 1,209,843
Zoe Winters wrote a thoughtful and reasoned post on ebook pricing yesterday that's worth the read for all you indie publishers struggling with the pricing question. An excerpt:
I am bolding this next part because if you don't hear any of the rest of this, please hear this:
99 cent and free ebooks are not glutting the ebook market. They are glutting the BARGAIN ebook market.
If you are selling to that market or you are a reader in that market, it's very easy to imagine it's the only market and OMG we all have to price at 99 cents because other people are MAKING US with their low-priced ebooks.
Not so.
My own experience corroborates Zoe here. I almost fell into this trap last year when I considered tinkering with the price of my fantasy novel, THE LAST KEY.
Should I go high or should I go low?
If I go high, I thought, why would anyone pay $4.99 for my book with all the 99-cent/free books out there?
But then I wondered, If I go low, how would anyone notice my book with all the 99-cent/free books out there?
I decided to go high and priced THE LAST KEY at $4.99 (a common price-point for novels with 75,000+ words). Since I did that in December, my sales rates have…stayed the same.
And that's good. It means I'm getting the same number of sales and making more money than when the book was priced lower. I may not be tapping into the BARGAIN market, but I am getting noticed by a different market. I like to think it's the LOVERS OF HIGH QUALITY FANTASY market…
February 1, 2012
Han? Chewie?
Treasure hunters recently took a sonar image of a strange object on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. It's 197 feet in diameter and looks like the Millennium Falcon.
January 25, 2012
The longest-running experiment ever
The pitch-drop experiment at the University of Queensland in Australia has been running for 85 years. There's even a live webcam where you can watch the pitch drop at a blazing one drop every 10.6 years.
January 18, 2012
New short stories!
I published two short stories as ebooks back in December without announcing it to anyone, just to see what would happen. Would I get sales through sheer discovery, or would my stories sit online in undiscovered limbo?
I haven't checked my January sales (one of my New Year's resolutions is to only check my book sales on the last day of the month), but my December sales were a delightful surprise. Seems to validate many indie publishing theories that a unique title, interesting premise, and attention-grabbing cover do more to bring in sales than constant Facebook/Twitter blasts.
Now time for the next phase of my experiment — what kind of sales spike (if any) will I get from a blog/Facebook/Twitter blast? I'll let you know on 1/31/12.
A Goblin Seeks a Career Change
What's a poor goblin to do when a life of pillaging, barn burning, and general mayhem has lost its luster? Find out in this short story about Gorko, a goblin who wants to discover the world outside his Cave and Kin.
My attempt to see how well YA e-short stories sell. Verdict — I ain't gonna get rich, but better than I expected for a short story from a no-name author who didn't market the thing.
Kindle | Nook | Smashwords (all e-formats)
About Those Probes…
A short story with a humorous and somewhat insensitive take on alien abductions. Harry Hindman has been repeatedly abducted by aliens since he was sixteen. Now, with the end of the world approaching, he finds out just what was up with those probes…
This one is really popular with the Nook crowd. Not so much with Kindle and Smashwords readers. Do Nookers just have a sicker sense of humor than Kindlers and Smashies?
January 17, 2012
Book Review: Lacuna: Demons of the Void by David Adams
Just posted my review of Lacuna: Demons of the Void by David Adams on the New Podler Review of Books. Fans of straight-forward alien invasion stories will like this one. I liked it, too, despite some copy editing issues and dubious economics. Here's an excerpt from the review:
Adams has written an action-packed story that doesn't get bogged down in detailed descriptions of the science behind his contraptions. To many SF readers, that's a bug and not a feature. But I'm among the SF fans who feel story trumps gadgets, and Lacuna does that with just enough plausible science when it's appropriate to the story.
