Neil D. Ostroff's Blog, page 21

Humbling book review

Although this review came out yesterday on 9/11, I didn’t want to promote it until today. Because the book deals with 9/11 and its aftermath and one man’s struggle to come to grips with his loss, I felt awkward and didn’t want anyone to think I’d take such a tragedy and use the anniversary to sell books. http://voices.yahoo.com/drop-out-nove... Please check it out and check out my latest tips and advice for writers on my blog. Thank you and thanks to our troops for keeping us safe.
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Books and books

With a new month comes a new reset of sales figures. It always seems to hurt my ego just a little when I look at the KDP figures and they’re right back at zero (or were). I’ve sold a few dozen books so far this month. Still, for the last two weeks my heart twirled every time I brought up my sales page and saw all the numbers, the result of many, many hours of marketing and promotion. For the last four months every promotion I’ve done has been on free sites, word-of-mouth, and social networking, but that’s about to change. With Amazon’s announcement of the new Kindles, I foresee a huge boost in new readers and Kindle owners. In fact, I just received a few messages on Facebook from my friends who are going to buy the new Kindle. So, I believe it’s time to start booking paid sponsorships. I’ve already booked November 30th on Kindle Fire Department.com for DROP OUT and I am going to spend today booking a few more. I’ve been saving and have budgeted $500 for marketing this month. I know to some writers that may seem like a lot of money and to others not nearly enough if I want to hit it big time. For now, I’m going to experiment before I invest the really big bucks. Kindle Fire Department boasts that seventy percent of their sponsors earn their upfront money back in sales and another ten percent actually make money. If that’s the case with DROP OUT, then I will book repeated sponsorships until I don’t get that return. Last sponsorship with KFD sold about five dozen books that day and another three dozen the following days, with relatively steady sales for a few weeks after that. My hope is with all these new sponsorships that I’ll be able to build a much larger fan base for the release of IMAGINATION, plus I have my other books available if readers like my style. My other dilemma is whether I should raise my prices before I start all my paid sponsorships. I’ve been doing pretty well selling all my books for a flat rate of $1.99, however, that still keeps me in the 30% royalty rate instead of the 70%. I would have to raise my prices by a dollar to meet the criteria. But statistically, I would only have to sell one book at $2.99 to make as much royalty as three books at the $1.99 rate. This is one I’m going to have to think about. By the way, KFD rate for a one day sponsorship is $100. Doing the math, I need to sell 167 books to break even at $1.99 and only 49 books to break even at $2.99. My reviews for DROP OUT have all been from strangers and all have been five stars so I know my readers will enjoy the story, I just don’t know if they’ll be willing to spend their hard earned money on me, a relatively unknown author. Ugh! I hate these kinds of decisions.
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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 even one penny into these services is not worth it. Now, you may say well, who cares if the review is fake, if it’s favorable it will get more people to read your book. That may be true in the short term (very short term) but will most likely be detrimental in the end. Here’s why. Suppose you pay for ten different reviews that will be sent out across the web. These are, of course, glowing adorations of your work. Now, Amazon has a verified purchase deterrent from these kinds of fake reviews but that’s a whole other animal exclusive to Amazon. What about all the other sites the review will be on? Okay, so you have these ten amazing reviews of your masterpiece that the world is now discovering and reading. Suddenly, you see your sales numbers go up. “Ah,” you think to yourself, “the dream is happening. I’m going to be rich and famous.” And then, about two weeks later sales stop. You wonder why and Google your book to see what’s happening. That’s when, horror upon horrors, you see not only the ten glowing reviews of your book, but also dozens and dozens of bad reviews. So many bad reviews that the ten are eclipsed in a sea of negativity. “I’m ruined,” you think, and hang your head low. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t pay for fake reviews that only trap eager readers who will then turn against you when they realize your stuff is crap (if it is). With my books, I don’t have that many reviews yet but the reviews I do have are one hundred percent real and honest! Not one friend or family member has written anything on my behalf. And you know what? The good reviews keep coming and my sales keep increasing. Just check them out and you’ll see. How’s that for honesty?
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

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 for an advance large enough to justify the amount of hours I’ve spent sitting in front of a computer screen. All that time trying to break into traditional publishing just so I could tell everyone I was a real writer. That’s when I had an epiphany about people who label someone in the arts. What separates a real writer from someone who writes? Here are my criteria for calling oneself a true author. First, have you written a complete novel that can be sold to the general public? In my case, eight so far with another three on the way. Second, do people actually read the book whether they paid for it or got it free. Again, I can answer yes to that one because to date over 12,000 of my books have been downloaded. Third, is writing something that you do on a daily basis and feel disconnected and out-of-sorts if you don’t put something down on the page? I write a minimum of two hours a day nearly every day of the year (travel days excluded). And the final criteria by which I judge someone to be a real writer is the obvious, do you make money off your books even if it’s just a few bucks a year? That one for me answers itself. So, there you have it. If you can say yes to these questions than I would say that you’re for real and should be proud to be a writer and anyone who disagrees is an ***. As I’ve posted before, I believe traditional publishing is dead and we are in the midst of a new indie revolution that will conquer tradition. I’m proud to be a part of it.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

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 assuming it’s in the thousands. The other question is whether I am ready to actually do interviews? Now, I’m not a novice at these things and have done more than a dozen blog interviews and writer’s site interviews, so I have a pretty good idea of what to say and even have a few catch phrases that come in handy. The difference is those were written interviews so I had time to think about my answers. Live is a whole different story. I might even have to shave and cut my hair if I go on TV. Hiring a commercial publicist is a huge risk if my books don’t sell but I think it may be worth it. I’ve reached a level where just posting my blog and self-promoting on writer’s sites isn’t hitting the mass audience I’ve been hoping to acquire. With enough five star reviews of my books from strangers I know my stuff is good, but I know I’m not reaching my full potential of readers. And if I read one more time in the KDP newsletter about an indie author selling thousands of books a day I’m going to scream. One thing those author’s never reveal in their interviews is how they managed to gain that kind of an audience. Sure, they say they spend hours a day marketing but they never tell you in detail what they do. Can someone please tell me the secret to success if there is one? Working hard and perseverance aren’t doing it quickly enough.
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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 of my novels. In my books, I’ve been to other planets, experienced other dimensions, felt unimaginable loss, murdered, loved, hated, been promiscuous; I’ve done just about everything I’ve always wanted to do without ever leaving this room. And yet, nobody ever promised me that anything would ever come of this “hobby”. Did I ever think of giving up? If you’re a real writer than the answer is of course, most certainly not! Telling a writer to give up and stop the craft is like telling a person with the most cataclysmic bout of diarrhea to stop pooping (thank you Stephen King for that analogy). There is no giving up and there is no stopping an artist with the drive to create. If the digital revolution had never happened and I never had made a dime off of my books would I still be spending hour after hour day after day in front of my keyboard? Absolutely! Writing is a habit I can’t stop and I don’t know any other way to live my life. For more than two decades I have not given up and have not stopped writing and as a result this week I sold over 150 books in five countries and samples and promo’s have been downloaded more than 4,000 times. None of this would have ever happen if I had just taken the easy route and given up. Never!
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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 is coming in at a close second. Both these books had a four day free promotion at KDP Select which threw them over the top in sales compared to my other novels. AFTER is still selling a few copies a day, but as I said in past posts, my other sci-fi/fantasy books have gone a little stagnant. I’m hoping it’s because of school beginning and all the distractions of that hot mess. Now that my KDP Select contract is winding down I’m going to have to find other ways to give my sales a boost. I’m thinking of doing another paid promotion and I am researching the best sites to place an ad. I’ve also come across this little gem. 45 Places to Promote Your Ebook. http://www.forextrading.lionbrokers.c... I’m going to start at the beginning and do one a day, and hopefully in 45 days I’ll have my books on all these sites. I will admit that it is time consuming to join the site and then download all my info, but if it results in more exposure than it’s worth it. All in all, this had been a tremendous month for my sales and we still have two weeks left. My hope now, is that I’ll start getting reviews (hopefully good ones) and then I can start to promote those in my blurbs. Though it’s been nearly two years since I left my agent and went indie, it seems my dues are beginning to pay and I’m edging ever closer to making a living as a full-time novelist.
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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 quickly checked the stats. I had enrolled the book in early March and had hit the automatic renewal button. It showed a new start date of June 7th. Fine, I thought, my 90 day exclusive was up nearly two months ago. I have nothing to worry about. Then yesterday, I got another email from KDP saying that INSECTLAND was still on other websites and that it would be withdrawn from the promotion. I was a little flabbergasted and a little pissed. I read the rules and had followed them. I didn’t publish my books anywhere else until I was certain the 90 day period was up losing who knows how many Nook and Kobo sales? I bit the bullet because I believed that KND Select along with publishing for Nook and various other ereaders would turn out to be the best bet in the long run. I didn’t understand what was going on so I decide to post the question of why, after my 90 day exclusive is up that I’m getting my book pulled from the program, on the KDP forum to see if anyone else was having this difficulty. I got two great responses and here they are:

If you are enrolled with kdp select the conditions are that they have exclusivity. You cannot publish any other e versions of your book until the 90 day period has finished. By auto renewing you are agreeing to another 90 day exclusivity!

You said you renewed? Then you start all over with the 90 day exclusivity. The only way to get out of the exclusivity clause is to non-renew on your bookshelf.

There’s the reason. Whereas I thought after my first 90 days were up I’d have free reign to do what I wanted. Finding this out was very disappointing, mainly, like I said before, because I wasted three months on exclusivity instead of marketing to everyone. Though, every author has their own individual goals on who they want to sell to and how, I decided to withdrawal all of my books from the Select program. I want my books out there all over the world and available on everything with a screen. I know not having the free giveaways option may make me have to market harder, but I still think author freedom is worth it.
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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 plotlines that it was nearly impossible to keep track of everything. I literally wrote seven separate stories, one for each character, before melding them together to form a coherent novel. This is what I’m doing right now for IMAGINATION. Once I get the characters in order, it’s just a matter of connecting them with a few key intro sentences and, wallah, the book is nearly complete. Why do I say “nearly”? Because I still do two more final reads. The first final, I’ll read half the book in one sitting at a relatively slow pace looking for any mistakes or errors no matter minute or insignificant. The next sitting, I will read the second half, looking for the same things. Then I put the book aside for one week give or take a day and concentrate on marketing and promoting, putting the manuscript totally out of my mind. Then comes the final read day. I’ll plan it on a day when I know I won’t be disturbed and have nothing pressing to do outside of the house. I’ll wake up early, get a steaming cup of coffee, settle into my comfy chair in the sunroom, place my laptop computer on my thighs, and read as much as I can before my eyes bug out or I stop for lunch. I’ll read the book like someone who bought the book; fast and looking to be entertained. I’ll only pause if something really terrible stops me. If I do have to rewrite a paragraph and shift some things around during this phase, I will start the entire process over again, reading from page one. I’ll do this until I can read the entire book in one sitting without stopping to fix anything. Sound like a long process? It is. I’ve written entire drafts of novels faster than it took me to consider the book finished after re-reads. You might say I’m a perfectionist, but I’m really not. For me, finishing a book is like setting a child out into the world. I want the book/child to be the best it can be and shine far above all the other competition. So, as I take another sip of coffee and look over these pages, I won’t know if IMAGINATION will be done in a week or a year. Let’s hope it’s the previous, I’ve got lots more new books to write.
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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, The Book Marketing Network, and various other websites for writers. I participate on Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Booktown, Bookblogs, and numerous other social media outlets… so what do I do now to boost sales? Pray to the book buying Gods to make me go viral? Pay thousands of dollars for a publicist and go forth unto the living and market directly to humans? Or simply keep doing what I’m doing and hope that eventually my dues will be collected and it all will pay off. I’m at the point in my writing career where the biggest book buying will probably come from word-of-mouth. With eight books out there now and three more on the way within a year, I can only hope that word-of-mouth will propel sales. I’ve gotten nothing but rave reviews for my novels and these are from actual unbiased buying customers that I don’t know. My friends who do buy my books also tell me how much they enjoy them. I get emails and comments from total strangers who love my stuff and style. So, what do I do now? The agony of word-of-mouth promotion is that it can take a long time for it to gain momentum. But then suddenly, poof, you go viral and everyone wants your stuff. Suddenly, you’re rich beyond your wildest dreams and selling tens of thousands of books a day. You buy vacation homes, and boats, and fast cars. You sit in a big house overlooking the ocean and tap out stories, happy beyond your wildest dreams. Yep, that’s what the right word-of-mouth can get you. Now, if I only knew how to get people talking. Any ideas? Check me out on Indie Spotlight today! Of course they got the wrong cover so that’s not good. That’s free advertising for ya. http://www.theindiespotlight.com/
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