Sponsorship again!

Please check out my paranormal, sci-fi experience AFTER. It’s Kindle Boards book of the day! Thanks!

http://www.kindleboards.com/

Results!

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 sponsorship was way less effective than the Kindle Fire Department which has proven for me to draw the most sales. I do believe that Kindle Boards was worth it for the added exposure, but I’m not expecting any great results from my next sponsorship tomorrow. As for my latest, IMAGINATION, the cover is complete and I’m finishing the last and final edit. I’m excited to see how far this book goes, since I am preparing a massive publicity assault. I believe it is my best book to date and expect pretty solid sales considering the following of readers that I’ve developed over the years, which includes nearing the 250,000 hit mark on my blog. All I need is a good back-jacket blurb and I’m ready to go. One more thing, I’ve noticed my foreign sales have plummeted for absolutely no reason. A few months back I had more sales in the U.K. than in the U.S. and now plooey. Don’t know what that’s all about, but as I’ve mentioned before, this new year 2013 is my year to market and I’ll be spending plenty of time promoting on Amazon U.K. and other foreign book sites.

KB Book of the Day

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

http://www.kindleboards.com/

The ‘ah ha’ moment!

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 writing novels which have gotten great reviews and moderate sales, but I have put forth minimal effort to really hit it big. I’ve done all the free promotion sites you can think of and even purchased a few sponsorships (the last yielding fairly good results) but I’ve never taken the gut-tossing risk that is so necessary for an individual to rise above the crowd and get noticed. I’ve never gone to a book signing, or given a speech at a school assembly, or rented a booth at a book convention; I’ve never gotten aggressive in selling my books. That’s all about to change! Sitting in that hospital waiting room hour after hour I realized that life is too short. I want my books to get read! I want to get noticed! I’ve decided the time has come to risk nearly everything on my talent. Therefore, I dedicate 2013 as my year to hit it big. I’ve already booked two full weeks of sponsorships with KND and Kindle Boards for various books and I plan on booking several more once I get out of this waiting room and can figure a schedule to promote the sponsorships. And once IMAGINATION hits the world in a few weeks, I plan a huge budget on that one. Am I going to risk my life savings? No. But I am going to give promoting my books everything I’ve got for one solid year. No more wasting time idly waiting for it to happen. Time is too precious.

Sponsorship success!

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 before, I’m raising the price of my books on Jan 1^st to $2.99. At that price I can take advantage of Amazon’s 70% royalty program. If the results of my sponsorship were the same at that price I would have nearly doubled my investment. I plan on devoting the entire month of January to marketing my newest novel and booking sponsorships galore, most with KFD.com. I’ve done a few with Kindle Nation Daily and Kindle Boards, but none has achieved the result of this last sponsorship. Here’s the link again so prospective authors can see what KFD does for the money. http://fireapps.blogspot.com/2012/11/drop-out-kindle-book-of-day-1130.html Besides this page, KFD also blast the link out to Facebook, Twitter, and various other social media. I also think KFD is a good site for sponsorship because the Kindle Fire ereader was the most searched item on the internet on Black Friday, which means millions of new Kindle owners; that’s gold to us indie authors. DROP OUT is also garnering attention because of promotion provided by fans of the book. Here’s another link to free promotion. http://www.rickiwilson.com/4/post/2012/11/indie-spotlight-on-drop-out-by-neil-d-ostroff-neilostroff.html Thanks to all who purchased the book and maybe next time I can get my ranking under 1,000.

It's working!

Just wanted to give an update on my Kindle Fire Department.com sponsorship. It seems to be paying off since I'm now ranked at 7, 069 in paid Amazon sales. Wonder how far it will go?

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