Neil D. Ostroff's Blog, page 22

The future

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the future of writers in today’s high technology society. What will become of us and the books we write? Will the paperback go the way of the compact disk? Will publishing houses disappear the way most record labels have? Will the paperback book become a lost art? I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that there will always be writers and there will always be stories to tell. What is uncertain, is what medium will sell those stories. I have several theories on what may happen in the not-to-distant future. One, and something we can all agree upon, is that ebooks will replace traditional books to a large degree. People will carry libraries of their favorites in a nearly weightless ereader the size of a sheet of paper or less. And we all know how easy it is to pirate a book and place it for free all over the internet. So, how will a writer make money? I’m nearly certain that book advances by major publishers will be non-existent within five years. I have two theories. My first, is that authors will have websites that people can join and then read the author’s books. For instance, I would charge say, 99 cents a month to read all the books I have and continue to put out. No one would really own the books but they could read them everywhere and on all types of devices. This would work extremely well if you had a large following. Imagine thousands if not tens of thousands of people paying .99 cents a month. That’s a lot of scratch. My second theory on the future of authors and their books is perhaps an author will offer their ebooks for free on websites or even as stand alone novels. The twist, there would be ads on both the site and in the book. The product would be free to the reader, but companies would pay to advertise alongside or in between the pages. This could generate quite a bit of revenue if the book became big. Imagine charging a certain sum for advertising per month and then switching it up between advertisers. Again, that’s a lot of scratch. As I see it, the traditional book industry of buying a single paperback from a single author through a bookstore or website will soon become ancient history. But for the author, this opens up a whole new way of getting the world to notice you. We’ll see what the future holds.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Don’t get discouraged

I’ve been reading a lot of posts on KND and KDP about how July sales have started out slowly. It’s not surprising considering the Fourth of July holiday. As I said in my last post, I made the biggest mistake of all by booking a sponsorship during this week. People are out having fun and spending time looking to buy ebooks takes away from some of that fun. Although I’ve sold a bunch of books already this month, I’m not going to base my monthly average on this week’s sales. Otherwise, I might get discouraged. In my never ending quest to sell more books I’ve decided to start concentrating on selling to Nook. Nook is lowering their price and has great features like backlighting for night reading. I’ve joined the Nook Boards (which allows you to promote your books on their author’s forum) and already have all eight of my books in the Smashwords premium catalog. Smashwords offers a much higher royalty than Kindle, and for each $1.99 book I sell I get to keep $1.40 compared to about sixty cents from Kindle. As most authors know, Smashwords also makes your book available to all other ereader devices except for Kindle, though I’ve heard a merger just may be in the works. I’ve got my books up on Smashwords and in the Nook store, but until recently I paid little attention to marketing for those devices. Until I saw that Smashwords has paid out more than ten million in royalties this past year. I want a piece of that. I have sold a few dozens copies to Nook and Kobo and have seen the royalty deposited right into my bank account so I know the machine is primed for selling. If I do this right, and join the correct forums and websites for Nook readers, I should double my sales within a few months. Nook or Kindle, it doesn’t matter to me which ereader is better and I have no loyalties to one or the other. I just want everyone in the world to read my books.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Not so good

So once again, I’ve made a blunder (I think) in my sponsorship ads. Last Friday, DROP OUT was Kindle Nation Daily’s sponsor. http://kindlenationdaily.com/2012/06/... According to their own estimates more than 150,000 readers were exposed through their means. I probably exposed the link to another twenty or thirty thousand people through my promotional efforts. I figured it was a good day to place the sponsorship because of the upcoming Fourth of July. I assumed readers would be anxious for some holiday reading by the poolside or on the beach. I, myself, was at the beach all last week at Wildwood Crest New Jersey. Our checkout date just happened to be the Friday of my sponsorship. So, after posting notice and the link on all my writer’s sites and blog in the morning, I merrily packed the car and headed home, thrilled to check my sales numbers when I arrived. I cruised out of the island pretty easily, but then we got to the expressway. Oh my God! Traffic was backed up for miles and miles. It was crazy. People honking. People getting out of their cars and looking down the street. People scratching their heads in frustration. Thankfully, the cars were all going toward the beaches and not away, like I was. So, as I drove onward relieved that I wasn’t involved in that mess, it suddenly occurred to me that today was a HUGE travel day. People weren’t going to be lounging around poolside or scanning their Kindles for books. They were going to be traveling. I had booked a sponsorship on a day when most people won’t be reading anything. The last sponsorship for DROP OUT was a few months ago with Kindle Fire Department, and that yielded impressive results. With that hopeful thought in mind I tried to put sales out of my head and concentrate on driving. Three hours later, tired and hungry, I pulled into my driveway. Not one for suspense, I went straight into my office, turned on my computer, and waited with tingles along my spine for the machine to boot. After what seemed like an eternity, the screen flickered to life and I was online. Fingers trembling, I typed into my account. I looked at a few sales of my other books and then lowered my eyes to DROP OUT’s numbers. It felt like a lead weight had dropped into my stomach. My biggest fear materialized into truth. My sales for DROP OUT after the sponsorship were hardly affected, just a few more than normal. I sighed with disgust at my own stupidity for booking the date. If nothing else, I’ve learned this about sponsorship. Don’t sponsor on the weekends even though most people say you should. I’ve discovered most sales come during the week when people are bored at work and fiddle around online to pass the time. That’s when they discover you. Don’t book sponsorships on sites with less than 10,000 hits a day. The percentages against making enough sales to cover the cost run against you. And the hard lesson for me, never book a sponsorship on a known travel day. Hopefully, sales will magically increase and I can put a plus on the income side of this sponsorship instead of a negative.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Changing the world

So it finally happened, ebooks have surpassed regular books in sales for the first time ever! What does that mean to the 21st century writer? It means that the future of reading is here. It means that the stigma of reading ebooks has passed. It means a world-wide audience can download a book in seconds. It also means we will probably be seeing the end of traditional bookstores. Though it had been a lifelong dream of mine to see the cover of one of my books prominently displayed on Borders new release shelf, I’m gladly trading that dream for thousands of sales across the globe. Probably, the most significant drawback to ebooks is that an author cannot sign the copy. There won’t be any more book signing events or author appearances to sell books. There won’t be any more small author headshots on the back cover showing a proud and smiling writer. Authors as recognizable faces will most likely disappear and all writers will be known by name only. I for one am willing to forgo those ego boosts and live my life anonymously in exchange for more readers and a bigger audience. And speaking of a bigger audience, I’ve discovered a few things that may save time for authors trying to promote their books. Number one, though I once praised posting on threads that offer free promotion I now recommend against it. After many months of close observation and record keeping I discovered almost no relationship between posting and sales. Though it did make me feel good thinking I was doing something to get the word out, in actuality, it did almost nothing. I probably spent more than fifty hours posting summaries and taglines and can maybe actually account for five sales that are directly related to those efforts. That’s ten hours work posting per sale at a sixty cent royalty. You do the math. I have discovered that posting regularly on Author’s Den, Linkedin, Kindle Boards, Kindle Direct Publishing community, and Bookblogs has yielded the best results. Also, starting your own blog is a must. As you can see, this blog is nearing 190,000 hits, that’s a lot of exposure. All in all, ebooks are the future and I am excited to be a part of this new author revolution in publishing. It inspires me to write “outside the box” and create characters and storylines far from the mainstream without fear of what a publisher would think is WORTHY of being given a chance to show the public. It allows me to be more creative in ways that were never acceptable before. To think that without ebooks and the new acceptance of indie writers, nearly 12,000 people that have read my books would never have even gotten the chance if the big three publishing houses had their way. My advice is to write whatever kind of story you want, get a good editor, get a good cover artist, and publish away. Let the public decide if you’ve got talent, not some corporate tie-wearer who’s more worried about making his sales numbers than the story you’ve got to tell.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Experience the weird

Just wanted to announce that PULP is officially an ebook and available globally as of right now! I started the first draft of PULP back in 2002 after receiving a rejection notice for my other new ebook release FROSTPROOF. The agent liked FROSTPROOF but said he was looking for something a little weirder and more pulpy in style. Fueled by the adrenaline of rejection I started writing. I wanted to create a story that would keep people turning the page, not so much because of non-stop action, but more because of non-stop weirdness. I finished the book about a year later and sent it off to agents. I got several full-length requests and sent those. Funny thing, the agents all said the same thing. The story was great but a little too weird for the mainstream public. In response, I rewrote the novel making it even more bizarre and unpredictable. I figured, if its strength is in its uniqueness, then why not expound on that. To all my readers, I hope you enjoy PULP. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008B7RNFY

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Worst ever!

My newest KND sponsorship for SILENT INVASION was a total disaster. http://bit.ly/LQTPrL. As I predicted after I booked it, having a sponsorship for a middle grade novel the week schools let out was a HUGE mistake. The sponsorship yielded almost no increase over my usual daily sales. If I can offer any advice to promotional efforts for books is to make sure you take into account the world’s events when you schedule. I do have another sponsorship on Kindle Nation Daily for DROP OUT on June 29th. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005FX0K7U. My logic for that date is because it is the Fourth of July weekend and many people will be on vacation at the beach, or needing something to read by the pool, or on a plane. DROP OUT is a literary adult novel so I’m chancing on an entirely different genre and audience. It will either be a big success or another waste of promotional money. I still recommend that all indie authors use sponsorship to get themselves out there. Even though I chalk this latest sponsorship as the worst ever, my book was still exposed to about 150,000 people through the KND site and their Facebook page and Twitter. And the link will be on the internet forever, so who knows what the future holds. I also just got an email from http://wherewritersmeet.proboards.com/ that they like the covers to my books so much that they placed them on display on their site. All unsolicited and free! Exposure! Exposure! Exposure! That’s what it’s all about.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Part strange

Part strange

One of the strangest things about being a writer is people’s reaction when you tell them that you are. Most of the time there’s a slight admiration followed by the general expression that “yeah, everyone says they’re a writer”. But then when I tell them to Google my name and see what comes up, the admiration becomes real. Here’s what I’ve discovered about the nature of the arts and you can feel free to disagree with me, because like I say, these are only my biased opinions. Most people can paint a picture and most people can draw a picture and most people can play an instrument. I’ll also say that most people can write a story and most people can create a sculpture from clay. But when it comes to writing novels; that is an art form that most people can’t do. And it is not because of a lack of talent or differentiation of talent that separates these art forms. All require great skills. But unlike writing a novel: a song, painting, sculpture, short story, etc., can be composed, drawn, or molded in one day, or at least the majority of it if the artist is talented. There are numerous stories of hit music written in fifteen minutes or a painting that a great artist completed in one day. But with novel writing, I dare you to find anyone who can write a novel in one day. What separates novelist from all other arts is the time needed to create a great work. There are no fifteen minute hits, but there can be fifteen-year-in-the-making novels that hit it big. I think people are fascinated by novelists because of the commitment it takes to write several hundred pages that make coherent sense and tell a great story. The seclusion and isolation novelist must endure to create their masterpiece. It usually takes me about eight months to complete a book. That’s a lot of hours alone.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Future is now

As I watch the price of ereaders drop, I feel the excitement of a bright future for indie authors much the way musicians must have felt when the first Sony Walkman came into existence (I know I’m showing my age). Readers can now take thousands of books with them anywhere they go; on vacation, in a plane, in a car. And now with Nook and Kindle introducing the backlight, people can read in bed while their significant other sleeps with the lights out. Just a few short years ago, seeing someone reading off an electronic device seemed odd. Many people said they’d never buy an ereader because they liked the feel of paper and the texture of a book. Now, those same people are realizing the convenience of carrying copies of their favorites in a small, lightweight device. And with airlines charging fees for baggage, readers are fully realizing how much space and weight they’re saving buy not lugging around their written entertainment. Now, when I see someone reading from a Kindle or Nook, I don’t do a double take because it is an unusual sight. Now, when I see someone reading off an electronic device I smile, knowing my potential audience is growing. And speaking of audience, AFTER is still free until midnight tonight. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0050Q8D8U
Right now, I’ve had close to four hundred downloads from three countries and sales of my other books are getting a little kick, too.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Becoming the character

I’m very happy with my new cover for PULP. I’ve contacted my editor and formatter, so the process is underway for my eighth novel to be published electronically. It’s been a long, twenty-year road to get these books complete but now that I’m nearing the end of my backlist of previously written novels, I can now concentrate on future projects, namely my latest, IMAGINATION. It’s been seven months of work and I’m about seventy percent complete. The book is written and the characters and plot are flushed out. Now begins the part I like best when writing a novel, creating the back story for the characters. This is when I get to create personalities and live vicariously through them. There are six main characters in IMAGINATION ranging from a dying old man, to an innocent man convicted of a hideous murder, to a downtrodden rabbi whose faith is renewed as he starts experiencing visions. I still have three chapters at the end of the book that need to be written, but I can only finish those after I’ve sorted out character details. I’m anticipating an early fall completion of the book and to have it on the market by the holiday season. After that, I will probably spend a little time tweaking my YA literary novel, WASTED and then decide if it is worthy of publishing. And after that… who knows? But I do have a manila folder stuffed with ideas for novels that I’ve been keeping for over two decades. Maybe I’ll break into it and see what’s there. Also, I’m running another promotion on Amazon right now. AFTER is free!!! That’s right, free! Until Sunday night. Here’s a chance to sample the type of novels I write for free! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0050Q8D8U If you like it, please check out my other books. One more thing, I’m going to be adding a link on my blog to buy my books on devices other than Kindle. My exclusive contract has expired and it’s time to start marketing to all devices. I had almost 1000 sample downloads and more than 100 sales through Kobo and Nook before I went Kindle exclusive so it’s time to open up new floodgates. We’ll see what happens.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com

Back then

It was announced that Amazon.com has acquired Avalon books. While this move by Amazon proves that the digital publishing revolution is gaining strength, it hits me personally for two reasons. One, I think it will give new respect to indie writers who are publishing through Amazon, and two, I almost had a publishing deal with Avalon many years back. Well, kinda. It was for my novel, FROSTPROOF and it was a very exciting time. The internet had just begun to develop into the huge creature it has become, cell phones were still too expensive for most people to own, and the ereader hadn’t even been invented yet. Those days I used to hand address and sign each individual query letter. There were no mass emails. When a publisher or agent was interested in a book they would call you personally, at home, to speak with the author about the book. Back then, research required a trip to the library and most people still used typewriters. I remember the day I got that phone call from Avalon. I was out in my garden picking tomatoes when I heard the phone ring. Rather than run in and answer it, I let the answering machine (remember those) pick it up. Well, when I finally played the message of (I can’t even remember his name) at Avalon Publishing is very interested in reading the full manuscript of FROSTPROOF, I nearly exploded. Right then, I printed out a copy, replayed the message to get the address correct, and zipped off to the post office in my 1998 Nissan Sentra. Every day I checked the mailbox for a reply and would literally jump out of my skin when the telephone rang. Finally, it came. My self-addressed-stamped-envelope. I read the first paragraph about how much ( Mr. ?) enjoyed the book and how talented he thought I was. My hands started to shake. Then I read the next paragraph about how with a few changes and a bit of editing I’d have a real winner. I nearly screeched with joy. Then I read the third paragraph and my whole world collapsed. Although he loved the book he didn’t think he could champion it through all the hurdles it takes to publish a bestseller. I was crushed but elated at the same time. His reply held hope that someday my books would find readers and an audience. In that rejection there was encouragement and enthusiasm for my work. I never forgot that moment.
http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com