Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 29

February 17, 2013

Inspired by Actual Events: CIA FALL GUY

book cover of CIA Fall Guy

Driving around Los Angeles I have spotted a billboard for a movie “inspired by actual events.” I like this expression because it can be applied to my romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.

My husband and I were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972. Mitch was an intelligence officer for the 18th Military Intelligence Battalion, and I eventually got got a security clearance and worked as a civilian for the 66th Military Intelligence Group.


(Click here to read about Mitch’s and my experience in an attempted spy recruitment.)


After I wrote the blog post about the attempted spy recruitment, an online friend emailed me to ask whether I had considered a nonfiction book. And indeed I have.



The Cold War in 1970 was very real, and Mitch and I had a number of interesting experiences because of this.



One such experience is that we all knew it was the Russian spy who stood in the cold outside the Officers Club in Munich on New Year’s Day. He stood alone watching all the officers and their spouses attend the mandatory New Year’s Day reception.


Mitch and I had to abide by numerous travel restrictions to prevent the Russians from capturing us. Mind you, we really knew nothing, but we were still considered in danger. Thus, for example, we had to fly to West Berlin instead of taking the duty train from Frankfurt. (The train could have been stopped during its transit of East Germany and we removed from the train.)


Once in Berlin we could not visit East Berlin as other U.S. military personnel could. We could only stand at Checkpoint Charlie and peer into East Berlin. (At least in Munich we did not have to burn our personal mail the way another officer and his wife we knew who were stationed in Berlin had to do.)



What most importantly formed the “inspired by actual events” for CIA FALL GUY is the bombing of the Frankfurt Officers Club on the day we passed through Frankfurt en route back to the U.S.


Click here for an earlier blog post that describes how, through Facebook, I “met” the woman whose husband was the first on the scene after that bombing in May of 1972.


P.S. On Wednesday there will be good news from an official announcement concerning the cover design of CIA FALL GUY, which was submitted to a book cover design contest.


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 17, 2013 18:04

February 14, 2013

Romance in Fiction: All Over the Map

Paper Heart

Award-winning author Bonnie B. Latino (whose romance novel YOUR GIFT TO ME written with Bob Vale is free on Kindle on Feb. 14 and 15) got me thinking — when she mentioned that hers is not a “bodice ripper” — about what makes a romance novel.



This is when I realized that romance in fiction is all over the map, from the really steamy to what may be called chaste. And there are different targeted readers for all the variations.


Yet probably the bottom line for all romance in fiction (no matter where on the map) is whether the readers care whether the two people get together. If readers could care less, then the romance element of a story is not working.


Thus the question becomes: What elements in romance help readers care?


A typical romantic comedy in the film arena has a woman and man “meeting cute,” often in conflict, eventually appearing to get together, then something happens and all seems lost, and finally they get together for real.



In my romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY,
Beth Parsons first encounters David Ward in a non-traditional “meeting.” There is conflict throughout much of the story, although Beth gradually learns to trust David, the man who may have been responsible for the death of Beth’s husband years earlier.


Then CIA FALL GUY has an element often used in romance — the fear of one or both people to commit to the relationship. Finally comes the realization that the commitment is worth the risk of being hurt (or whatever the fear is).


(Bonnie says YOUR GIFT TO ME is better described as a military love story. This term could also be applied to my 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist MRS. LIEUTENANT.)


While Valentine’s Day may be a Hallmark holiday, reading romantic stories can be very enjoyable (for both men and women). Click here to check out YOUR GIFT TO ME.


Also click here to check out CIA FALL GUY.


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 14, 2013 14:41

February 13, 2013

Sharing My Own Spy “Recruitment” Story

Eiffel Tower

For those of you who have read my romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY, you know that I wrote about intelligence matters that took place in West Germany under U.S. military occupation.



I’d like to share here what actually happened to me after my security clearance finally came through in the summer of 1971.


I was now qualified for a GS-3 secretarial position at the 66th Military Intelligence Group. (My husband and I were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, where Mitch was an officer with the 18th Military Intelligence Battalion.)



My new job begins with a spy story. Sounds good, right?



I sign my life away concerning the military intelligence secrets I will be typing. It is the Cold War — and suspicions run high. I am under the same restrictions that Mitch is:



Cannot enter East Berlin or take the U.S. Army duty train through East Germany to Berlin
Cannot visit any Eastern European countries
Must always be on the alert for any attempt to get me to work for THE OTHER SIDE

Before I start, Mitch and I go off for a week in Copenhagen to make up for our disastrous attempt to get to Copenhagen a year earlier.


(The occasion when we were dumped off the train late at night between Germany and Denmark because we had the wrong papers and Mitch might be trying to go AWOL. No, it did not do any good to explain that officers do not go AWOL from Germany.)


And since I made peanuts at my previous job at the Army-Air Force Motion Picture Service typing movie lists for the U.S. soldiers stationed on mountain tops in Italy, we can only afford to eat at Arthur Frommer’s suggested cheap places.


Picture this. It’s September 1971. Most of the American summer tourists have already gone home. Mitch’s hair is cut so short he broadcasts ARMY. And we are eating fish sandwiches in some second floor Frommer “special” where only Americans advised by Frommer would eat.


An older man with grey hair sits down next to us. In English he says, “I’ve just returned from visiting Russia. The people there are so nice. Serious. Not like the fun-loving Danes.”


Now the normal American tourist would shrug this guy off. A nut case. Mitch and I know better.


We touch knees under the table. A classic spy recruitment pick-up attempt. Right out of the pages of the military intelligence manual I had to read before signing my life away.


We gulp down our sandwiches and flee out of there. Where to? What if he follows? Quick. To Tivoli Gardens. We can get lost there among the amusement park rides and food offerings. Just like in the spy movies.


We run the three or four blocks and thrust our admittance money at the ticket taker.


For good measure, once inside Tivoli we dash hither and thither among the fun-loving Danes to ensure escape.


By the time we get back to Munich we do not report the incident as required. A week with the fun-loving Danes has clouded our judgment. Was it really a pick-up attempt? Maybe the guy was just a nut case.



I report to my new job. An American serviceman has gone missing, presumed recruited to THE OTHER SIDE.




My new boss — a GS-12 — jiggles the coins in his pocket and waits for news from the Austrian border with the East. This is not a case where no news is good news. There is no news.



I sit in a room with six men, two warrant officers and four civilians. Or perhaps it is the other way around, I cannot remember. My men are monitoring important activities, reports of which I type. Six copies — requiring five pieces of carbon paper — are disseminated, including one to the Munich branch of the CIA.


When I am not typing this important information that keeps Europe safe from communism, I am allowed to read.


Then the new colonel arrives. He reorganizes.


Two of the men and I are swept into a large room with an assortment of other men. The other four men in our unit are swept, for all I know, into a dustbin.


The fun begins. The highest-ranking man in the room is a GS-13. He spends his entire time discussing whether it was Taiwan in ’64 or Honduras in ’58 where civilians were required to wear uniforms.


Otherwise he allocates the Christmas gifts to friendly German nationals — liquor and perfume. These decisions take him an entire year.


One day he fires me. Just like that. No warning. Nothing. He is not even my boss. But my boss cannot save me because he is only a GS-12.


I need the money. I still have not gotten to the Eiffel Tower. I throw myself on the mercy of the artillery major who has just joined the group of merry men who sit in the large room with me.


(He is horrified that we paperclip our secret and confidential documents rather than stapling these as is done in artillery. He astutely points out that a secret document could accidentally get attached by paperclip under a non-classified document.)


With prodding from the major, the GS-l3 condescends to tell me why he has fired me.


“You do not answer my telephone.” The one that rings only on his desk, certainly not on mine.


“Heidelberg might be calling” — he means the GS-l4 who outranks him — “and I should have a secretary to talk to his secretary.” Mind you, he hasn’t asked me to answer his bloody telephone.


“And besides, when you have nothing to do, you read. How does that look for me if you are not busy?”


Ah, now we come down to the nitty gritty. We must keep up the appearance that allotting Christmas gifts takes all year. (Remember, taxpayers are paying his salary.)


The major negotiates a truce. I will answer the GS-l2′s phone and look busy. I am to read the army manuals when I have nothing else to do. (I can just manage to slip The New Yorker under the manuals.)


And I am to type the weekly report to the colonel perfectly. I cannot correct an error. Every time I make a mistake I must start the page over. Now I am a good typist, but not perfect. Typing the weekly report fills a great deal of time.


Also I smile at the GS-12. I say “good morning, sir” and other such “polite” nonsense.


And two months before Mitch is due to get out of the army, I resign so we can use up our remaining leave.


On a tight budget we finally tour Western Europe, including the Eiffel Tower, and stay in a Paris hotel that turns out to be a brothel.


P.S. Click here to see CIA FALL GUY on Kindle.


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 13, 2013 19:57

February 12, 2013

Addition to After Action Report for CIA FALL GUY Free Day on Kindle

Photo of thank you

For those of you who have already read my blog post “After Action Report for CIA FALL GUY Free Day on Kindle” I wanted to post additional information that may also help you.

Again, there is no statistical way to prove how much the following actions helped. But they are worth sharing.


I wrote the blog post “After Action Report for CIA FALL GUY Free Day on Kindle” on this author site two days after the free day. Because I am part of Triberr.com, other bloggers shared the link to the post over the following days. When these people did share the link on Twitter, I thanked them on Twitter and again included the post link. (And I want to say thank you to them here also!)


In addition, per the rules on Examiner.com and Business2community.com, I also published the post on my National Internet Business Examiner column and as a guest blogger on Business2community, respectively.


Coincidentally, a book brief I wrote for IndiesUnlimited.com went live three days after the free day. Click here to read this CIA FALL GUY book brief.


I had support from others on Twitter, especially author Bonnie B. Latino, whose compelling novel YOUR GIFT TO ME will be free for Valentine’s Day on February 14th and 15 on Kindle. (Click here to see this award-winning book now on Amazon.)


Also a special thanks to my business partner Yael K. Miller who helped out on Twitter as well as created the terrific cover for CIA FALL GUY.


Finally, thanks to all the people who downloaded CIA FALL GUY for free and for all the people who have now bought the ebook or borrowed it through Amazon Prime membership. (I am now working on the sequel — CIA SPY GUY.)


In conclusion, as I said in the previous blog post, I am very pleased with the BookBuzzr submission service, the Digital Book Today ad and The Kindle Book Review ad. All of these efforts added to the successful free day of romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to read the Amazon reviews for CIA FALL GUY. I especially like this new one from Jerry Jensen (who I do not know):

I enjoyed this story and the character development. I read a lot of fiction and as of 02/11/13 this is number 1 on my list for 2013. Clean, no gratuitous sex, language or violence.

© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 12, 2013 16:32

February 9, 2013

After Action Report for CIA FALL GUY Free Day on Kindle

book cover of CIA FALL GUY

While I have used the free day option of Amazon’s KDP Select several times before, I did some things differently this time and I’d like to share this information.

First, instead of submitting my free day information myself, BookBuzzr.com did this for me. Why? Because my romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY was the guinea pig for BookBuzzr trying out this potential service for authors.


BookBuzzr submitted the free day information to several sites that require submission before the free day as well as submitting to sites that require submission only on the free day itself.


My opinion? It was wonderful that someone else did all this work for me. I really appreciated the efforts of BookBuzzr — especially the emails keeping me informed of what had been done.


While BookBuzzr has not yet decided whether it will offer this service and what the fee will be for the service, I know approximately what the fee would be and I would definitely use BookBuzzr to do this again and pay for it!


And as someone else was doing this heavy lifting for me, I decided to expand my reach even more:


Because CIA FALL GUY had the required number of reviews and rating on Amazon, I was able to pay for a place on the free day listing of Digital Book Today. In fact, I have worked with Anthony Wessel of the site before, and I highly recommend authors consider utilizing an advertising option on this site.


Then I decided I would also buy an ad to run AFTER the free day to help the momentum of the free day outreach. I did this at The Kindle Book Review, which did a very nice display of CIA FALL GUY (see link below).


Assuming I had paid for the BookBuzzr service along with paying for a place on the Digital Book Today list and an ad at The Kindle Book Review, I believe I got a very good return on my investment.


The only elbow grease that I added:



Blog post by me run the day before on Free Book Dude
Blog post by me run the day of the free day on BookBuzzr
Blog post run the day of the free day on my author website about the backstory of CIA FALL GUY
Paying $7 to have a promoted post on my Facebook profile account announcing the free day
Several tweets on Twitter during the free day — both general tweets about the free day and a few tweets to specific people

In conclusion, I am very pleased with these steps for the February 7th free day of CIA FALL GUY, and I hope this after action report may be useful for other authors.



Click here to see CIA FALL GUY listed on Digital Book Today’s free list.




Click here to see the ad I paid for on The Kindle Book Review.


Click here to read a blog post about the backstory of CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to read the BookBuzzr guest post that ran on the free day.



Click here to read the Free Book Dude guest post that ran the day before the free day.


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 09, 2013 23:28

February 7, 2013

CIA FALL GUY Story Background

book cover of CIA Fall Guy

Romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY is FREE on Kindle only today (2/7) at http://amzn.to/Sp29TC

The seed for the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY came from my experiences living in Europe when my husband and I were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972.


My husband Mitch was a military intelligence officer with the 18th MI Battalion, and I eventually got my own security clearance and a low-level GS job with the 66th MI Group. A copy of the reports I typed (on a manual typewriter) went to the CIA station in Munich.


The bombing of the Frankfurt Officers Club actually occurred in May 1972 only a few hours after Mitch and I arrived in Frankfurt by train from Munich and then immediately flew back to the United States on a U.S. Army-chartered plane. I subsequently read about the bombing in the front-page news items of The Wall Street Journal.


A few years later while getting my M.B.A. at The Wharton School I applied to work at the CIA. Click here and skim down to the middle of the page to read about that experience — “The CIA and Me.”


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 07, 2013 15:52

February 4, 2013

Truth Catches Up to Fiction Regarding Women in the Military

Image of Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders book cover

On January 24th when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rescinded the 1994 Pentagon policy that banned women from combat, more than just the women who will now get to serve in combat were the beneficiaries of this decision.


Those of us who write female military fiction characters were also the beneficiaries.


With this real-life step forward, perhaps fiction authors will no longer get Amazon reviews saying that women cannot do “such and such” in the military. (Remember, we are talking here about fiction.)


Although women have already been serving in submarines in the U.S. Navy, my thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS (written with my husband) still gets the occasional rebuke that women do not serve in subs.


And, yes, while Mitch and I first wrote this fictional story before women could serve in subs, now truth has caught up to fiction.


The January 24th Wall Street Journal article by Julian E. Barnes and Dion Nissenbaum entitled “Combat Ban for Women to End” said this about women in submarines:

Female officers now serve on large submarines, and the Navy has plans to add female enlisted personnel on those vessels. The Navy also will allow women to serve on smaller classes of submarines.

In the fictional world, female enlisted personnel have already served on a sub in the short-lived ABC drama “Last Resort,” while LCDR Mollie Sanders already serves on a smaller sub.


Still, I am pleased that truth has caught up to fiction. Perhaps this forward step in the U.S. military will help women move forward in other real-life areas that still block women’s advancement.



Click here to check out LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Amazon.




© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 04, 2013 19:29

February 1, 2013

In Honor of Black History Month

book cover of Mrs. Lieutenant

I wrote my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT — which was a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist — to preserve a very specific slice of women’s social history in 1970.


And part of that social history concerns the African-American experience in the U.S. because MRS. LIEUTENANT takes place six years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.


MRS. LIEUTENANT is inspired by my own experiences as a new Mrs. Lieutenant at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, in the spring of 1970. The main African-American character in MRS. LIEUTENANT is a composite of people and researched information. (In fact, I wrote one part of the novel to answer a question in real life that was never answered.)


While equal rights may seem the norm today, in 1970 when my husband and I drove south from Chicago to Ft. Knox, we were concerned that we were driving into the South. In Louisville, for example, we half expected to see blacks (the correct term then) seated in the back of the bus.


Perhaps most interesting at that time (as the novel portrays) is that the U.S. Army, which had only been integrated since the Korean War, was more integrated than other places in the U.S.


In honor of Black History Month, check out MRS. LIEUTENANT on Kindle at http://amzn.to/TKTk4B


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on February 01, 2013 16:31

January 30, 2013

Customer Service Suggestion for Amazon Author Central

Photo of We Can Do It stamp

You may have read about my travails due to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) no longer supporting third-party conversion software such as Calibre.


I learned about this issue after suddenly getting nasty reviews on Amazon about the formatting of my ebooks. It took numerous emails back and forth to KDP before the reason for the issue emerged.


My business partner Yael K. Miller spent considerable time researching how to create a well-formatted ebook using KDP’s own conversion software – KindleGen, which is the only conversion software now supported by KDP.


Then I undertook the time-consuming work to re-convert all my current 11 Kindle ebooks.


The problem:


I continue to get nasty reviews on my Kindle ebook pages complaining about the formatting issues. This is because, even though the ebooks are now correct, people are reading older versions.


To combat this, I have done several things:



Added my email address in the book product pages of the two most-affected ebooks and offered a free replacement.
Officially requested that KDP notify all purchasers of these two books that there is now an updated version. (KDP states it takes four weeks to respond to this request, and it appears to me the answer will probably be no.)
Added a comment on each book review I find complaining about the formatting. In the comment I offer my email address and a replacement copy (some people have taken me up on this offer).

Now to my request to Author Central:


I asked if an author can receive notification each time someone posts a new review on a book page of that author. This idea came to me when I realized it took several days before I noticed a new review yet again complaining of the html code.


It would be so nice if I got notification of each review. That way I could immediately deal with any formatting complaint reviews.


Of course the answer from Author Central was no.


The Author Central rep did agree to pass on this recommendation. But I would certainly not place odds on this author-friendly idea being implemented.



What would it take for Amazon to truly support authors on the site?


There needs to be an Amazon author ombudsman (remember that word from college days?). This person would be the contact point for author recommendations of how Amazon can more effectively help authors on the site.


And, of course, this assumes that the ombudsman would have the ability to actually have helpful changes implemented. (I do realize this is a rather big assumption.)


Oh, Amazon, you say you want to help authors, but sometimes it seems as if you don’t truly care. Please say you’ll help on this issue!


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on January 30, 2013 17:01

January 28, 2013

The Non-Definitive Answer to the Question of Authors Writing Book Reviews on Amazon

Photo of apple orange combination

First, the disclaimer: This is purely an opinion piece; I have no scientific statistics to back up my opinions &mdash I only have personal observations.


The question of authors doing reviews on Amazon of the books of other authors came up in the LinkedIn Book Marketing group that I manage. Why put out a request for other authors to write reviews on Amazon if Amazon will not accept those reviews?


Here is what I have observed:


Yes, Amazon has a stated policy of not permitting reviews by people with a financial interest in a book, such as the publisher of the book. But it is unclear about who else is not allowed to write a review.


Now remember that Amazon can delete any review that it wants because Amazon interprets its own rules. And you may have read online various comments about famous authors having their reviews removed from the books of other authors on Amazon.


Let’s clarify what we’re talking about here:


I am NOT talking about reviews written by authors using fake names so that they can bash the work of other authors. I am also NOT talking about negative reviews by other authors.


I am talking about Amazon removing POSITIVE reviews by other authors &mdash and this includes authors who do NOT write in the same genre as the book being reviewed.


My personal observation leads me to believe this is not a black-and-white situation. For example, Amazon removed a positive review on a book of mine written by an author who writes in the same genre of a different book of mine (but not in the genre being reviewed). Yet Amazon has allowed other authors to write reviews of my books.


Presumably there are secret Amazon algorithms that “decide” who can write a review on a book on Amazon and who cannot. And as these algorithms are secret, there is no way of telling whether you as an author can write a review for another author.


My advice is to write the review but keep a copy just in case. Then if the review “disappears,” you can take the copy of your review and share it on another site.


Now for a little rant of my own about book reviews:


We do not all like the same books. If we start to read a book and it is not the kind of book we expected to read, then we can stop reading it.


Yet there seems no reason to write a mean-spirited review that you started a book and stopped after a few pages because it was not what you expected. (Is it the author’s fault if you expected something else?)


My 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist MRS. LIEUTENANT got just such a mean-spirited review. While I have learned that people’s reactions to the novel are sometimes based on their feelings about the Vietnam War, this particular mean-spirited review did annoy me.


If you have a moment, check out this brief review at http://www.amazon.com/review/RQTE2CCARDVIB/ — and if you agree with me that it is unhelpful, please click on “no” to the question about whether it was helpful.


After all, authors usually put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their books. If you start reading a book and it is not for you, put it aside but do not publicly complain it was not what you expected.


(And if you only give a book a few pages, it is probably difficult to judge whether it was what you expected. And having the opportunity to read the first pages of a book is precisely why Amazon offers the LOOK INSIDE feature.)


© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC


Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.


Click here to visit her Amazon author page at 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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Published on January 28, 2013 11:58

Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author

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