Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 24
August 18, 2013
Update on Wattpad Experiment: Introducing a Cold War Memoir
I have discovered very good reasons for doing this since I began the experiment on Wattpad with my dystopian fiction novel THE MOTHER SIEGE. (Click on the dropdown table of contents to read the short chapters published so far.)
This commitment sets a prompt for me to actually write chapters of a work-in-progress. I personally have so many writing projects and this way I have created an external expectation to continue writing this book.
I am hoping to build an interested fan readership before the book is published.
And there is always the possibility that a book agent or publisher will stumble upon the work-in-progress and become interested in acquiring it.
There are other sites besides Wattpad on which to undertake a similar experiment. I chose Wattpad because I had recently read good things about Wattpad and then discovered that I had actually joined the site some time ago.
Now I have been so pleased with my external commitment to writing chapters of THE MOTHER SIEGE — an imaginative future novel — that I have decided to simultaneously try the experiment for a nonfiction telling of the historical past — TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY: A COLD WAR MEMOIR.
I have all the original documents from when my husband Mitch and I were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972. In the future I will be sharing some of these documents here on my author website.
And while many of the true tales I will be telling in my Cold War memoir are humorous, underlying everything is the very real concern that, without American troops stationed in Germany, the Soviets could have marched over the border between East and West Germany to expand their sphere of Communism.
Click here to read the beginning of TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY.
P.S. Thanks to Yael K. Miller for creating the terrific cover for TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY.
© 2013 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 13, 2013
Book Marketing: You Get What You Pay For
In my continuing book marketing experiments I decided to personally submit the upcoming KDP Select free days for my women’s friendship novel MRS. LIEUTENANT to sites that have listings for Kindle free days.
Although I have submitted myself in the past, more recently I have hired someone to submit my books. And I have thought the investment in saved time and effort well worth it.
Now I have realized that, probably due to Amazon’s associate program changes, many of the listing sites have undergone revisions. And, as I checked out the sites, many of these require a small payment to have a guaranteed listing.
I can understand this requirement because these sites may receive so many listings for any one day that requiring a small payment helps manage the submissions.
Therefore I am taking the money I would have spent on someone else submitting for me and am using this marketing expenditure for some guaranteed listings.
And, yes, it is very time consuming to do this.
One thing I’m grateful for is using the free submission list to be found at Author Marketing Club — these links go directly to the free submission page on a site rather than the home page.
This saves time because I have often found, when coming to a site’s home page, it is not always easy to find the tab for the free submission listing.
While you can join Author Marketing Club for free to get access to the direct submission pages of numerous sites, you might want to benefit from the yearly membership fee that includes the Amazon Reviewer Grabber System and the Amazon Enhanced Description Maker.
(If you are interested in benefiting from these and other Author Marketing Club tools, click here to check out this premium program — note that this is an affiliate link.)
Bottom line in submitting for your free book listings? You get what you pay for.
If you hire someone to submit your books for you, unless that person also has the authority to pay for the guaranteed listings, you are missing many of these opportunities (unless you personally return to these sites and pay for the guaranteed listing).
While this is a tradeoff of your time and money, it is an important consideration when planning your book promotional strategies.
P.S. If you read dystopian fiction, I hope you will check out my work-in-progress — THE MOTHER SIEGE — on Wattpad. Click on the dropdown table of contents to read the short chapters published so far.
© 2013 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 12, 2013
Trying Out the Beta Book Promo Site Bublish
I am trying out a new book promotion site — Bublish.com — and I think it is a very interesting concept.
As I have had several questions, I am also pleased that the founder Kathy Meis has been very prompt at answering my emails and helping me to get started on the site.
The idea behind the site is that, after uploading your ebook in epub format (see info below), you can use the site tools to create excerpts in “bubbles” and add notes about these excerpts.
Below is the link to the first one I created — taking the short prologue of romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY and writing a note about the STASI — the East German State Security Police.
Click here to see my first bubble and check out this new site.
Note there is a link from the bubble to the author’s choice of online retailers. There are also links to the Bublish author bio, the Bublish synopsis and the author website on the excerpt page. Plus the bubble can be shared to Facebook and Twitter from the excerpt page
The required epub format: I asked Kathy why Kindle’s mobi format was not an upload option. She explained that, outside Kindle, epub is the mass market ebook format and thus Bublish has chosen to use this format for uploading. Luckily I have an epub format for three of my books, so I could try the site.
P.S. If you read dystopian fiction, I hope you will check out my work-in-progress — THE MOTHER SIEGE — on Wattpad. Click on the dropdown table of contents to read the short chapters published so far.
© 2013 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 8, 2013
Book Promotion Tips
Goodreads vs. LibraryThing giveaways:
I am continuing my exploration of online book promotion opportunities, and I have now posted an ebook for giveaway on Library Thing. The experience is quite different than posting a giveaway for a physical book on Goodreads.
For one thing, Goodreads provides a widget to use on your website to promote your giveaway. Plus there is a URL that you can share through Twitter, etc. for people to click through to sign up to win your book.
To the best of my knowledge — and I searched! — there is no way to share the link to my giveaway on Library Thing. Yes, I could share the link to the entire list, but not to my own book. And definitely no widget.
Plus I had not noticed the statement that self-published books were not looked upon favorably for a LibraryThing giveaway. As I had submitted my nonfiction book HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE and it was accepted, I am assuming that the subject matter helped. (I have not noticed such a statement for Goodreads giveaways.)
Of course, a big advantage is that LibraryThing accepts ebooks as giveaways. I like this because I plan to gift the winners the ebook via Amazon, which should help my book in its popularity list ranking. (See David Gaughran’s book LET’S GET VISIBLE for explanation of the popularity list vs. the bestseller list.)
Fiverr gigs:
Then I have finally joined the ranks of people who appreciate the site Fiverr. I had resisted for a long time because the thought of only paying someone $5 for doing something bothered me. It turns out that the first $5 is just the base — and there are usually options to add on “extras” (including a rush fee) for additional $5 increments.
First, Bonnie B. Latino (author of award-winning novel YOUR GIFT TO ME) shared a Fiverr link with me to get a 14-second video, which I did for CIA FALL GUY. (Scroll down the sidebar to the right to see this video.)
Then, while I was in the midst of a three-day KDP Select free promotion for CIA FALL GUY, I read Jeff Bennington’s The Writing Bomb blog post about Fiverr. Knowing who Jeff is as I had read his ebook THE INDIE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE, I immediately hired him via Fiverr to promote CIA FALL GUY on Twitter.
At the same time I discovered Jeff has a second book that I also immediately bought — WINNING WITH KDP SELECT: 5 STEPS TO HIT #1 IN THE AMAZON FREE STORE — and am now reading.
Jeff over-delivered what I hired him to do via Fiverr and there are other services he offers that interest me. Click here to check out his Fiverr gig page. (Note: This is NOT an affiliate link.)
Bargain book campaigns:
Next week I start experimenting with bargain book campaigns in which a Kindle ebook of mine will be priced on Amazon at 99 cents for three days.
I am very pleased so far with my connection with sister sites Pixelscroll and Bargain eBook Hunter. By paying for a guaranteed listing for each of the three books via Bargain eBook Hunter, I could add the guaranteed listing at half-price on Pixelscroll. (Click here for Bargain eBook Hunter book listing info — also NOT an affiliate link.)
P.S. If you read dystopian fiction, I hope you will check out my work-in-progress — THE MOTHER SIEGE — on Wattpad. Click on the dropdown table of contents to read the short chapters published so far.
© 2013 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 6, 2013
Amazon Book Marketing Update
Amazon Author Central profiles:
I now have three separate Amazon Author Central profiles — one for my fiction books, one for my non-fiction books, and one “placeholder” for my works-in-progress children’s picture books. (My YA short story is “holding” this third Amazon Author Central profile.)
To learn why I did this — click here to read my Ask PZM August guest post at author Joylene Butler’s blog.
You can see the three different profiles at:
www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
www.amazon.com/author/phylliszmiller
www.amazon.com/author/pzmiller
Amazon algorithms:
David Gaughran’s informative May 2013 book LET’S GET VISIBLE recommends a blog post by Phoenix Sullivan written in August 2012. Apparently the post is still correct about Amazon algorithms in regards to the popularity and bestseller lists.
This blog post is the most succinct explanation of the popularity and bestseller lists that I have read. Of particular note is that the popularity list rank does not display anywhere except in the list itself while the bestseller rank is the rank found on a book’s product page.
Read Sullivan’s entire Amazon algorithm post now.
P.S. If you read dystopian fiction, I hope you will check out my work-in-progress — THE MOTHER SIEGE — on Wattpad. Click on the dropdown table of contents to read the short chapters published so far.
© 2013 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 23, 2013
Interesting Question About Amazon Reviewer Weight in Algorithms
These are important as social proof to encourage prospective readers to buy the book as well as possibly fitting into some of Amazon’s secret algorithms that help books get found on the site.
Recently I joined the Author Marketing Club’s premium program for the special offer price of one year, and I have used and liked the Amazon Enhanced Description Maker.
Until yesterday, though, I had not tried the club’s Amazon Reviewer Grabber System, which is quite cleverly put together.
Amazon ranks its citizen-reviewers (these are not paid and anyone who has an Amazon account can review any thing on the site) with the lower the ranking the more prolific the reviewer.
Thanks to the Amazon Review Grabber System I had identified for my cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE a rather popular reviewer whose Amazon profile says she loves cozy mysteries. Unfortunately, she is so popular that her website announces her book review “card” is filled through November of this year.
This got me thinking.
Is there any reason due to Amazon’s secret algorithms to try to get reviewers who are highly ranked by Amazon? Do their reviews get more weight in the algorithms than a less highly ranked reviewer?
In other words, if this is not true, why beat my head against the door trying to get reviews from highly ranked reviewers? Why not simply find reviewers who like the genre of my book and who may have much less of a review backlog because they are not so highly ranked?
Anyone know the answer to this question? Or is it another Amazon secret?
In any case, this appears excellent food for thought as we authors try to optimize the time we spend on book marketing in comparison to book writing.
And speaking of food for thought, I am reading some articles from the July 23rd Wall Street Journal about genetic testing and digital diagnosis. Then I plan to write a short post about these topics on my new Tumblr blog, whose purpose is to record my thoughts about the ongoing dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE that I’m writing on Wattpad.
Click here to see the short Tumblr posts, (although I admit I have not yet figured out how to take full advantage of all the options).
And if you like dystopian thrillers, I have now posted the fifth installment of THE MOTHER SIEGE on Wattpad. Click here for the dropdown Table of Contents and start reading the story now (comments appreciated at the end of the short chapters).
P.S. Guest post on popular blog Marketing Tips for Authors: Click here to check out my “Tips for Authors on Amazon” now.
(If you are interested in benefiting from these and other author tools in the Author Marketing Club, click here to check out this premium program — note that this is an affiliate link.)
And if you are a Goodreads member, click here now to sign up to win a paperback copy of my cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.
© 2013 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 story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
July 17, 2013
More Book Marketing Tidbits
And now for new book marketing tidbits:
Amazon browse categories:
In my continuing efforts to choose the best categories for my Kindle ebooks, I came across a very interesting explanation from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). The idea is that you should have the same keywords uploaded to your ebook’s KDP dashboard as are in the sub-categories you have for the book.
The two examples given are for romance and science fiction/fantasy. When I wrote KDP for the information for other categories, I was told that was not available.
In addition, I am in the midst of reading David Gaughran’s ebook LET’S GET VISIBLE: HOW TO GET NOTICED AND SELL MORE BOOKS, and he has some very important information to share on categories and rankings on Amazon.
Book marketing tips from author Bonnie Bartel Latino:
Bonnie recommends that authors NOT have KDP Select free days on holidays. For example, if you are a romance writer, do not do these on Valentine’s Day. Do the free promotion before or after, otherwise you are competing with the other 900,000+ romance writers! Another example is avoiding military holidays for military books.
(Bonnie is about to do a 99-cent special for her very popular novel YOUR GIFT TO ME, and she has chosen the dates based on when she could get ad space to support this promotion, which is a very smart book marketing strategy.)
New Goodreads giveaway:
I just started a new Goodreads giveaway — this time for the paperback of the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE (which includes 3 kosher recipes). If you are a Goodreads member, click here before July 30 to sign up to win a copy.
Debut author tips:
I wrote the guest post “Top 5 Mistakes That Debut Authors Make” for the site ReadWave. Click here to read this post now.
© 2013 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 story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
July 12, 2013
Twitter Hashtag Helps Authors Identify Agents and Editors
And, wait, there’s more. An enterprising person (whose name I haven’t yet discovered) has compiled these tweets on a blog on Tumblr — http://agentandeditorwishlist.tumblr.com/ — and you can even search by genre. (For FAQs: http://agentandeditorwishlist.tumblr.com/about)
Now everything is not done for you. You still have to play detective, finding the book submission info by first finding the agent or editor’s site via the Twitter account of the person tweeting or a Google search or the like.
And, of course, you have to follow the individual submission instructions, write a good email, send a good writing sample, etc. Then usually wait weeks for an answer.
Still, I have found the info in these tweets usually more informative than the website info that lists an agent’s interests or an editor’s interests.
I have been using this information to query agents regarding my work-in-progress, the dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE. Here is the beginning of the pitch I am currently using in my query emails:
Imagine the future of 2049 and the government has just decreed that, in 30 days, all children from the ages of six months to 18 years will be removed to group homes. And as a mother you are already a subversive — having falsified the death of one of your children at birth to avoid the child being “eliminated.”
If you want to read the beginning chapters of this novel, you can do so on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSWattpad (and comments are appreciated).
© 2013 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 story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
Twitter Hashtag Helps Authors Identify Agents and Publishers
And, wait, there’s more. An enterprising person (whose name I haven’t yet discovered) has compiled these tweets on a blog on Tumblr — http://agentandeditorwishlist.tumblr.com/ — and you can even search by genre. (For FAQs: http://agentandeditorwishlist.tumblr.com/about)
Now everything is not done for you. You still have to play detective, finding the book submission info by first finding the agent or publisher’s site via the Twitter account of the person tweeting or a Google search or the like.
And, of course, you have to follow the individual submission instructions, write a good email, send a good writing sample, etc. Then you often wait weeks for an answer.
Still, I have found the info in these tweets usually more informative than the website info that lists an agent’s interests or an editor’s interests.
I have been using this information to query agents regarding my work-in-progress, the dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE. Here is the beginning of the pitch I am currently using in my query emails:
Imagine the future of 2049 and the government has just decreed that, in 30 days, all children from the ages of six months to 18 years will be removed to group homes. And as a mother you are already a subversive — having falsified the death of one of your children at birth to avoid the child being “eliminated.”
If you want to read the beginning chapters of this novel, you can do so on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSWattpad (and comments are appreciated).
© 2013 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 story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
July 8, 2013
Evaluating Book Marketing Efforts
This is such an important topic because most authors have to juggle their writing time with their promotion time — and if you are like me, you find this an ongoing juggling act.
Perhaps more difficult than doing the marketing is evaluating how effective our promotion efforts are. In the Joylene Butler blog post I offer some recommendations for this.
Then I read an incredibly detailed account by author J.C. Mells (see link below) of promoting a self-published ebook. This author even made the effort to check the sites where she had submitted her KDP Select free book listing to see if the listing was actually carried. (I admit this is something I have never done, but I think it is a very smart move.)
She had also joined the Author Marketing Club’s premium program for the special offer price of one year, which I had already done. She really likes the Amazon Reviewer Grabber System (that I haven’t used yet) and I really like the Amazon Enhanced Description Maker (that I have already used).
(If you are interested in benefiting from these and other author tools, click here to check out this premium program — note that this is an affiliate link.)
While I do not necessarily agree with everything in the article, it does contain a great deal of valuable information as well as food for thought.
Click here to read the entire J.C. Mells article.
And if you like dystopian thrillers, consider reading the first two short chapters of my work-in-progress THE MOTHER SIEGE on Wattpad (comments appreciated):
Chapter 2 of THE MOTHER SIEGE
© 2013 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 story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
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