Nicholas Rossis is a successful writer in his own right, author of a multitude of books, as can be seen on his Amazon author page. Most are available in both paper and Kindle editions. He also has been a great help to many fellow writers, sharing the marketing tips and more that he has learned as he publicizes his many works. Which is why we’re featuring him this issue. You will note, looking at his list of books, that several are intended for authors.

Before we get to that, let’s give a short intro to Rise of the Prince, the first of his Pearseus series to show you what the fiction he writes is like. Then we’ll add a couple samples from his blog, to give you an idea of how he helps other writers.  Finally, we’ll add a little bit from the bio on his author page, to encourage you to go there.

Three hundred years after humans crash land on Pearseus, Styx, the Capital’s cruel ruler, learns of a dark prophecy: Cyrus, a young boy, will one day slay her. She imprisons him, but days before his execution he escapes with the help of the First, the planet’s native inhabitants. On their way to safety, nightmarish monsters attack. Cyrus flees, scared and alone, until a pair of First warriors rescue him and spirit him away to the mysterious Old Woman.

 

All Cyrus wants is to reunite with his family. But the Old Woman insists Cyrus is the foretold instrument in the First’s ancient war against a shadowy enemy who will stop at nothing to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny. Heart and mind war within Cyrus as he must choose between rejoining his family and preventing humanity’s extinction.

In a recent blog post, Rossis discusses taking note of reading age demographics to consider in targeting book marketing.

“How much time do people of various ages spend reading? How true is the commonly held rule of thumb, that the older a person, the more they spend reading?

 

The answer can be found in a recent article by James Tozer published by 1843 (The Economist’s sister publication). It quotes data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), an annual survey run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to examine how leisure time has changed in the last 10 years.”

Read the blog post for details, but here’s his take:

What does all this mean for your marketing efforts? Studying the above data, I reached 3 conclusions:

The rule of thumb is true: the older a person, the more time they spend reading.

 

Youngsters spend more time reading on devices. Make your books available in both print and digital format to attract a younger audience.

 

The impression that youngsters no longer read is misleading. Young people and teens read on their devices and they read as many books as they did 10 years ago.

In an interesting post from back in January, Rossis offered these tips on “9 Hot Trends in Publishing for 2017. His commentary curates an article by Written Word Media.  Below are the bullet points. For the details, click on the link to see the full post from Rossis.

Here are the Written World Media’s predictions:

The Majority of Fiction Sales will Come from eBooks

Indie Authors and Small Presses will Dominate

Kindle Unlimited Readership will Continue to Grow

Crowding will Result in Increased Competition

Audiobooks will Gain in Popularity

Marketing will Determine the Winners

The Performance of Facebook Ads will Decline

Authors Will Band Together

From his Amazon author page, comes this description of Rossis:

Nicholas C. Rossis lives to write and does so from his cottage on the edge of a magical forest in Athens, Greece. When not composing epic fantasies or short sci-fi stories, he chats with fans and colleagues, writes blog posts, and enjoys the antics of two silly cats and his baby daughter, all of whom claim his lap as home. His books have won numerous awards, including the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award.

In addition to his best-selling series, Pearseus, he writes short science fiction/speculative fiction stories, many of which have appeared in various collections and anthologies. These include Infinite Waters, which was voted one of the best 50 Indie books of 2015.