Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 18
August 22, 2014
Annual Writer’s Digest Magazine Issue for Getting an Agent
On the one hand I am pleased to have such a trusted source of information on agents interested in taking on new clients in particular genres. On the other hand I am uneasy over how many more rejections I’ll be getting to add to my already monstrous rejection pile.
Yes, I know I could stop the pain by refusing to continue submitting. Yet in my heart I believe that some of my fiction and nonfiction deserve wide distribution.
In fact, my women’s friendship novel MRS. LIEUTENANT got its share of rejections before, in the midst of self-publishing the book, MRS. LIEUTENANT was chosen as an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist. This recognition certainly supported my belief that there was an interested audience for this story. And subsequent reviews of the novel on Amazon continue to support this belief.
That said, I want much wider distribution for MRS. LIEUTENANT — including reaching the military families who had or are having similar experiences as well as the non-military families who could better appreciate the military life if they read the novel.
Thus I am submitting MRS. LIEUTENANT to agents now in the hopes of a traditional publishing deal. (I feel MRS. LIEUTENANT does for American military wives during the Vietnam War what Helen Bryan‘s popular WAR BRIDES does for British military wives during WWII.)
Submitting self-published books?
After reading the information in Writer’s Digest, via Twitter I asked Jessica Strawser (@JessicaStrawser) — editor of Writer’s Digest magazine — if it would be possible for next year’s issue to include in the agent bios which agents will consider self-published books.
She replied that I might be able to get insight on this question now by asking Chuck Sambuchino (@ChuckSambuchino), author of the agent feature in this year’s magazine as well as editor of the annual GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS and CHILDREN’S WRITER’S & ILLUSTRATOR’S MARKET plus author of CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM and GET AN AGENT.
His tweeted reply: “If an agent does not specify they are NOT, then assume they are open, to some degree. Query & hope for best.”
Thus I trudge on, believing that somewhere beyond the next horizon I will find the agent who is interested in the particular book project that I have pitched to him or her.
After all, what else can an author do?
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY, as well as newly written books not yet published. She can be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com
August 17, 2014
Self-Published Authors Get New KDP Benefit
This is a benefit previously available for traditionally published authors that is now being extended to self-published authors for their Kindle ebooks.
According to the announcement:
[Y]ou can create a pre-order page up to 90 days in advance of your book’s release date — your pre-order product page will be created within 24 hours.
When you make your book available for pre-order, customers can order the book anytime leading up to the release date you set. We will deliver it to them on that date.
The announcement went on to explain:
One advantage of using pre-order is that you can start promoting your Kindle book pre-order page on Author Central, Goodreads, your personal website, and other places ahead of its release to help build excitement for your book.
Also, pre-orders will contribute toward sales rank and other Kindle Store merchandising ahead of release, which can help more readers discover your book.
Authors published via KDP can go to their KDP bookshelf to set up a new book for pre-order.
And while we wait to see how much of a benefit this is for self-published authors, I’d like to put in a request to Amazon to separate out the KU and KOLL figures in the KDP dashboard, which would make these reported numbers more informative. (KU is the new Kindle monthly subscription service — click here to read more about this.)
P.S. If you have a few seconds, check out my Slipps for three of my projects on Wattpad:
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
August 10, 2014
New Opportunities for Online Marketing
I like to try new things that might be helpful for online marketing efforts.
Snip.ly
One new format I have learned about is Snip.ly, which has free and paid subscriptions.
Here is the basic idea:
You find an article you want to share with others on the Internet. You copy the link to the article (I used a Wall Street Journal article link for sharing on Twitter) and paste that into your Snip.ly account.
Then after you enter that link, you can attach to the article you are sharing a link of your own along with a message and link text for your link.
When you share the Snip.ly created link, you are sharing both the original article and content of your own. And presumably, you share content of your own that relates to the original article.
Look at this Snip.ly that I tweeted after creating it — and then click on the link to my blog post that “fits” the topic of the shared Wall Street Journal article:
Data scientists are being sought: http://snip.ly/YLl
To learn more about Snip.ly, click here.
Kindle Unlimited and Slipp
Two other new opportunities for book authors to promote their blogs or books are Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited and Slipp. Check out my explanation of these two opportunities on Ask PZM August 2014 on Joylene Butler’s blog at http://budurl.com/AskPZMAug2014
P.S. Here is the Snip.ly I created for this blog post after I published the post — http://snip.ly/NeO
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
July 25, 2014
The Internet of Things: The Future
This week I attended three different events focusing on data and the internet, with the last one being about the internet of things. This means actual physical things, for example your home’s thermostat, connecting to the internet for a variety of reasons, such as early detection of a malfunction.
As a digital marketer interested in data analysis as well as a book author, I know this future holds many positive opportunities for us and some less positive issues.
Let’s take an example:
Imagine that Amazon reported to authors each time a reader has stopped reading a downloaded Kindle book of ours. (Leave aside how long the interval of non-reading would be before reporting.) If we saw that many readers stopped reading at the same point, we could consider revising our books to keep reader interest.
Yet on the possible negative side, Amazon’s algorithms could “punish” our books for causing readers to stop at a certain point by making those books less likely to turn up in the Kindle store search. And this negative action could continue even after we uploaded a revised version of our books.
While I am not suggesting we become Luddites — many of the things promised in the very near future can even be life-saving — we should consider the trade-offs before we wholeheartedly embrace each new data connection.
And for those of us writing sci fi stories that take place in the near future (such as my dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSintro), the future may be catching up to us very quickly.
P.S. If you are interested in data analysis for advertising purposes, see my blog post “OMMA and MediaPost Advertising Conference: Mad Men Becoming Math Men” on Linkedin at http://budurl.com/mpomma
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
July 18, 2014
Amazon Launches Subscription Service in U.S. for Books
I first learned of this from an email to authors explaining that all books enrolled in KDP Select with U.S. rights are automatically included in Kindle Unlimited. Then I went to the home page of Amazon.com to watch the very brief video about this new service being offered for $9.99 a month with a free 30-day trial.
Watching the video and checking out the Kindle Unlimited page on Amazon, I was confused. Many very popular books are being offered, and these books cannot be on KDP Select. This is because an author who has a book on KDP Select for a 90-day period is committed to that ebook only being sold on Amazon for that period.
In other words, although all KDP Select books are automatically enrolled, more than just KDP Select books appear to be available on this subscription service. Thus I’m assuming Amazon made deals with major book publishers to include their books.
For KDP Select authors there is an interesting caveat to being included and earning money each time someone downloads their books: There is no fund payment unless the person reads more than 10% of the book. (If a reader gets 10% into a book a second time, there is no additional payment.)
This is different from a payout that KDP Select authors get when their books are downloaded as part of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (KOLL) with over 500,000 titles — available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Japan for Amazon Prime customers.
In the case of a book being borrowed, the author gets paid simply for the download regardless of whether the book is read. (Note that Amazon Prime members only get one free ebook download a month. For big ebook readers, an unlimited monthly subscription may be a much better deal.)
Another difference is that books borrowed from KOLL can only be read on Kindle devices, while books read via Kindle Unlimited can supposedly be read on any device.
Read more now at amazon.com/kindleunlimited
P.S. Besides an increased revenue stream, Kindle Unlimited offers authors’ books a way to find new fans. And new fans are very important. This week I was given a kick in the pants by two fans of my work-in-progress dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE, which is on Wattpad. The fans asked when I was going to add new chapters, and I obliged by writing more and posting on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSintro
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
July 8, 2014
What I Learned About Amazon Reviews From Attending the R Conference
While the sessions I attended were usually very technical (and often more advanced than I am currently in my ability to understand R), I did have a very enlightening conversation with someone about the unfairness of Amazon book reviews and what a possible program using R could do about this.
Let me explain:
For example, someone left a three-star review for one of my books stating she had not yet read the book but was giving it a three-star review and hoped to remember to come back if she did read the book.
Meanwhile, her three-star review pulls down the overall average of that book’s rating on Amazon.
My informant at the conference said that it might be possible to develop a filtering program using R that could find and eliminate such nonsensical reviews, thus helping to protect a book’s rating.
Of course, Amazon would have to utilize such a program. But as a book author, the idea that authors could be somewhat protected from such unfair reviews is very powerful.
At the same conference I heard a representative from Activision talk about the use of R to find players of the Activision online game CALL OF DUTY who, while not breaking any stated rules, were engaging in unfair maneuvers. Apparently once Activision data analysts find such maneuvers, the players are notified.
Taking these two ideas together, perhaps R could also be used on Amazon to identify reviewers who consistently attack books in very hateful words. Again, while this might not be breaking any stated rules on Amazon, it is behavior that is harmful to the spirit of reviewing.
If any of you reading this blog post have connections with Amazon people, perhaps you could share this blog post with them. I’m sure there are tons of R data scientists who would love to create such filtering programs for Amazon.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
June 25, 2014
Truth and Fiction About the Impact of PTSD on Entire Families
Then this week, on a Department of Defense’s Bloggers Roundtable, I learned about the organization Give An Hour — www.giveanhour.org — that provides clinicians free of charge to military personnel and their loved ones.
While visiting the site, this article headline caught my attention: “How Did a 7-Year-Old Boy Catch His Father’s PTSD?”
I clicked through to the article and read Roxanne Patel Shepelavy’s compelling article on the impact an entire family experienced from the father’s combat-induced PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
How ironic, I thought, that my imaginary boy is seven-years-old, and the severe impact described in the article started when the real-life boy was seven.
Click here to read the compelling article about this boy’s family.
Click here to read SOLOMON’S JUSTICE: A PTSD SHORT STORY for free on Wattpad.
Click here to buy the Kindle ebook SOLOMON’S JUSTICE on Amazon.
Check out the links on www.SolomonsJustice.com for more compelling articles about PTSD and TBI.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
June 23, 2014
High School Graduation: Looking Ahead to College and Beyond
Yet with all the activities that high school students have to undertake — including applying to college, the military or jobs — preparation for successfully navigating the next stage sometimes gets overlook.
That is why the second book in my HOW TO SUCCEED series is for students entering college. Below is an excerpt from the book about effective communication:
The college years offer numerous opportunities for learning about the path you may want to take in your adult life. Before we talk about specifics, we are first going to be discussing effective communication.
Why? Because effective communication is very important for life, including interviewing for internships, summer jobs, foreign study programs, etc.
Did you really hear what I said — or did you hear what you think I said?
When you meet someone in person, do you do well in informational meetings and in interviews?
Effective communication takes practice:
For this discussion we are assuming you have a firm handshake, good body posture, and all the other things we talked about in HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL, including an appropriate volume level for your voice. What we are getting at here is the actual words you say — or do not say.
One afternoon at a Los Angeles-area Starbucks I overheard a medical sales person meeting with his regional manager. He seemed so eager to please and to agree with the regional manager that he did not close his mouth. He talked and talked and talked.
The regional manager did get some words of advice in edgewise. Yet if the young man had talked less and listened more, he might have learned valuable insights of how to improve his job performance.
Practice being a good listener:
The skill of a balanced conversation is not a natural skill. Most of us have to practice letting the other person have equal time and also — this is most important — actually listening to what the other person is saying.
Usually, when we appear to be listening, we are actually occupied formulating what we are going to say in response to the other person’s words. This means that we frequently do not truly hear what the other person is saying.
The first step is to become aware of how you or others might be hogging the conversation. If you are not able to notice this while talking, consider recording a conversation between you and a friend. (Ask permission for the recording.)
Go over the recording and note:
How much time you each take of the total conversation
How often you do not answer a question or stay on the topic but rather ignore a question or switch the
topic
Do you step on the other person’s line?
Do you finish the other person’s story for him/her?
Common weaknesses:
Starting each sentence with “well” or “you know”
Using the other person’s name frequently in conversation, which can be misinterpreted as trying to be too friendly
Name dropping — you drop other people’s names (especially the names of important people) into the conversation where the references are needless or actually interfere with the flow of the conversation
Record additional conversations with friends (with their permission) to check whether you are improving.
Take a second to think before answering hard questions:
You do NOT have to answer as if you are the first horse out of the gate. Take a second (the count of one thousand and one) to think before answering a difficult question so that you can better formulate your reply.
What is wrong with a “yes” or “no”?
When you have an informational meeting — that is, someone gives you 10-15 minutes for you to learn about a particular job or career, you want to get the most out of your allotted time.
If you ask only questions to which a person can answer yes or no, you may not learn very much.
It is better to ask questions requiring a thoughtful response.
For example, it is not a good idea to ask: “Do you like your job?”
It is better to ask: “What aspects of your job do you find especially rewarding?”
A simple yes or no gives no real information and can stop the conversation cold. An answer about the rewarding aspects can be valuable information plus give you a lead-in to the next question. (You can also ask which aspects of the job does the person find least rewarding.)
Avoid giving yes and no answers yourself:
Also avoid giving yes/no answers in an interview someone conducts to get to know you:
It is not a good idea to answer questions with a simple yes or no.
It is better to explain briefly to give the interviewer a better sense of your answer.
And if the interviewer asks you if you have any questions for him/her, ask questions that require a more in-depth answer than yes or no.
If you know of someone entering or already in college who might benefit from this advice, click here to get the ebook HOW TO SUCCEED IN COLLEGE AND PREP FOR BEYOND COLLEGE now on Amazon at http://amzn.to/L2AGTQ
P.S. And for a gift for those students entering or already in high school, in either paperback or ebook on Amazon, see HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE at http://amzn.to/MAsw5v
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
June 6, 2014
Visit in 1972 to the Normandy Beaches of the D-Day Landing
Mitch and I stood at the site of the Allied D-Day invasion during World War II — the audacious landing in Normandy that began on June 6, 1944, and eventually led to the end of the war.
We were the only ones here on this windswept French landscape, the five landing beaches spread below us as Mitch explained the invasion to me.
When we reached Pointe du Hoc, a 100-foot cliff with Nazi concrete gun batteries still visible at the top, I gasped.
“To get off the landing boats and face this cliff, they had to know they would die,” I said.
Mitch nodded. “Tremendous casualties here.”
Then he added, “By the time my father landed in France, Normandy was already secured.”
The enormity of this military operation was almost too much to imagine, especially as the surrounding landscape was now so barren.
Equally disquieting was the thought that the success of the invasion did not immediately end the war. The Allied forces had to fight the Nazis for 11 more months after D-Day.
And the ultimate victory was not soon enough to save Anne Frank, whose hiding place in a secret annex Mitch and I had just visited in Amsterdam.
Betrayed by an informer, Anne and the others had been arrested two months after the D-Day invasion, on August 4, 1944. Then Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, weeks before the British liberated the camp and two months before the Nazi surrender.
Mitch and I turned away from the desolate landscape.
Click here to read the entire Cold War memoir for free on Wattpad now.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
May 25, 2014
Honoring Our Troops Today and Every Day: Military Films for Memorial Day
Click on the name of each film to see a video clip if available along with information about the film:
Film Documentaries
“American Widow Project” Documentary
“Brats: Our Journey Home” Documentary
“Fighting for Life” Documentary
“Hallowed Grounds” Documentary
“Striking a Chord” Documentary
“The Invisible War” Documentary
“The Way We Get By” Documentary
“War Dogs of the Pacific” Documentary
“Wartorn 1861-2010″ Documentary
Feature Films
“The Hurt Locker” Feature Film
“The Landscaper’s Daughter” Short Feature Film
Television Documentaries
“The Real World Presents: Return to Duty” Documentary
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
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