Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 35

Book Authors: Evaluate KDP Select for Yourself

As many of you know, I have just completed two free days for my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT via Amazon’s KDP Select program.

This is the second time I have tried KDP Select free days. The first time was a month ago for CIA FALL GUY and TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.

I have definitely learned things from these two experiences and I look forward to continuing to learn. I truly believe that KDP Select is an unbelievable opportunity for new authors or authors whose books have unjustly languished.

Leaving aside the affect of free days on Amazon’s algorithms (mathematical formulas) for promoting an author’s books, I think the most important opportunity is “seeding” interest in an author’s books.

Let’s face it, with so many choices today, why should someone buy my ebook novel instead of the ebook novel of someone else? In fact, how will anyone know about my ebook novel?

When I self-published MRS. LIEUTENANT 4 1/2 years ago — and right after it was selected as a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist — I had no online contacts, few people had a Kindle (although I did have a Kindle version of the novel), and BookSurge (before merging into CreateSpace) insisted on charging too much for the paperback.

And the novel’s biggest obstacle? The prime market for the novel — the PX system of the U.S. military where army wives shopped — would not carry the book because, as a POD (print on demand) book, it wasn’t returnable.

Now fast forward 4 1/2 years — people have a Kindle, or they get the free Kindle apps for almost any electronic device, and they have learned to read ebooks. Now active duty military personnel and dependents anywhere in the world can get the ebook of MRS. LIEUTENANT.

But who knew about the book? I needed to get the word out — and putting MRS. LIEUTENANT on the KDP Select program and doing free days offered a golden opportunity.

In fact, this new one 5-star review by someone who downloaded the book for free and who I do not know says it all — exactly what I hoped to achieve when I wrote my book:

GREAT READ! I read the whole book in less than 24 hours. As an army wife, I found the characters to be realistic and their fears and anxieties to to be accurate. One of the best “Army Wife” books out there!

Here, though, is the cautionary warning:

Do NOT take my advice or anyone else’s advice on whether KDP Select is for you. Instead, try it out yourself, but with these guidelines:

1. Being on KDP Select without using any of the free days is NOT trying out KDP Select.

2. Having free days without “working” those days — doing promotion before and during the free days — is NOT trying out KDP Select.

(P.S. “Working” includes having several good reviews on your book’s Amazon page before doing any free days. And getting reviews usually requires outreach efforts that do NOT include paying for any reviews.)

I know of authors who are on KDP Select only to get payment from Amazon for Amazon Prime members who borrow the authors’ books. And these authors do not do ANY free days.

Yes, I understand about working for years — I worked on MRS. LIEUTENANT for over 20 years — on a book and then the tug at your heartstrings for giving away your “baby.” But what is the use of struggling to write something for so many years if very few people read it?

Wouldn’t you rather develop a core reading fan base by giving your book away? Then selling the book as these people recommend it to their friends when the book is no longer available for free?

Okay, I have said my piece on this. I do feel strongly that authors can read all the pros and cons they want about KDP Select. But ..

Until authors try KDP Select for themselves — subject to the two guidelines above — they cannot make an informed decision for themselves.

I’m just saying …

And thanks to Bonnie B. Latino, co-author of novel YOUR GIFT TO ME, and Kathleen M. Rodgers, author of novel THE FINAL SALUTE, for their input on this topic. (If you would like to read more novels besides MRS. LIEUTENANT about the lives of U.S. military personnel and their spouses, I recommend both these books.)

Mark your calendars: KDP Select free days for LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on September 3rd (Labor Day) and September 4th at http://amzn.to/NUpy9o

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

Update and Thanks for KDP Select Free Days for MRS. LT

Although the two KDP Select free days for MRS. LIEUTENANT are just over, the novel has already gotten one new review — a 5-star one:

GREAT READ! I read the whole book in less than 24 hours. As an army wife, I found the characters to be realistic and their fears and anxieties to to be accurate. One of the best “Army Wife” books out there!

Click here if you want to see the review on the Amazon site. (And if you find it helpful, do click so above the review.)

Obviously I am very pleased with this review because military wives are the readers I really wanted to reach with this novel. But there is something else that is important about this review:

I clicked on the reviewer’s name and discovered she had not written any other Amazon reviews. Now I cannot prove this, but I think she may have written a review for MRS. LIEUTENANT because at the end of the novel I expressly ask for reviews and provide a direct link to do so.

At any rate, I hope that this is the reason because good reviews are very important to Amazon algorithms and readers may not think of writing a review unless requested.

Now I want to thank everyone who so graciously helped get out the word about the free days. And I have two special thank yous:



A big thank you to Anthony Wessel of Digital Book Today for all his help. And check out Digital Book Today’s daily updated list of free Kindle books with 4.0+ stars and 10+ reviews at bit.ly/Top100ListDBT

And a big thank you to Freebooksy for featuring MRS. LIEUTENANT.

What am I doing now?

Gearing up for my next experimenting with KDP Select free days — this time for LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. The technothriller will be free on September 3rd (Labor Day) and September 4th at http://amzn.to/NUpy9o

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

MRS. LIEUTENANT Free on Kindle: What I Am Learning

Today is the second of two days of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) being FREE on Kindle via the KDP Select option — click here to download it.

I have been tracking the number of downloads as well as the ranking of the book on Amazon. And while this is not definitive, I do see the same pattern on the second day that I saw when my thriller

CIA FALL GUY was free on Kindle for two days in July:

Through the first day and early on the second day the book continues to do better and better in the free Amazon list. Then in early afternoon of the second day the book’s ranking starts to go back the other way.

CIA FALL GUY did not break into the top 100 free on Kindle books. The book’s best ranking was 135.

MRS. LIEUTENANT did break into the top 100 free on Kindle books. In fact, its best ranking was 21! (As I write this it is now at 24.)

Plus for a while MRS. LIEUTENANT was the “#1 Bestseller on Amazon’s Free War Fiction.” (Last time I looked MRS. LIEUTENANT had dropped to second, although that is still great!)

What I have seen this second time around is partly the obvious — the more effort you put into promoting the free days the more likely your book is to do well.

Last time I paired CIA FALL GUY with one of my nonfiction books — TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK. I thought that it made sense, as long as I was putting in the effort, to promote a fiction and nonfiction book at the same time.

In retrospect I think that was a mistake. When you are promoting your book for free on Kindle, it is probably better to have a single focus. You need to concentrate on promoting one book rather than dividing your focus.

And I plan to continue my experimentation with KDP Select by offering LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS for free on Kindle on September 3rd (Labor Day) and September 4th. Mark your calendars if you enjoy technothrillers.



If you are reading this post soon after I publish it, you still have time to get MRS. LIEUTENANT for free. Who knows? Perhaps with your help the novel will return to #21 in free Kindle books.



© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

Twitter Author Tip and Novel MRS. LIEUTENANT

Here is a Twitter tip that other authors may appreciate knowing:

If I tweet:

MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) FREE on Kindle Aug 20 & 21 http://amzn.to/TKTk4B

At the bottom of the tweet Twitter automatically adds the words “View Media.”

If a person clicks on those words, this is what appears:

Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

Phyllis Zimbler Miller | Kindle Edition

4.5 out of 5 stars (35)

$2.99



Most Helpful Customer Reviews:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Best of Everything for Vietnam-Era Miltary…

Phyllis Miller sent me this book after seeing my name on an Internet forum. I was a little concerned because many first novels are really amateurish, almost embarrassing to read. But I really… Read more

Published on May 27, 2008 by Dr Cathy Goodwin

4.0 out of 5 stars The Women Behind the Men

“Mrs. Lieutenant” presents the vivid, personal stories of four young wives as they learn to cope with military life, against the backdrop of America at war–both in Vietnam and at home–in 1970… Read more

Published on January 16, 2008 by Newsyrob

And the “View Media” under the tweet changes to “Hide Media.”

Although I use bit.ly to shorten my Amazon links because an abbreviation of Amazon appears in the shortened URL, I use budurl.com for other shortened links.

I experimented with budurl for a MRS. LIEUTEUANT shortened link to Amazon in a tweet, and that shortened URL also got the “View Media” treatment from Twitter.

Bottom line? From a marketing perspective it is very important to include a link directly to your book’s Amazon page in a tweet about your book.



Important Twitter warning: I just looked at an author’s Twitter stream in which the only tweets were about buying the author’s book. This is NOT the way to promote a book on Twitter.

Promoting a book on Twitter means interacting with people on book-related and other subjects and then only occasionally promoting one’s own book. (Unless you are in the midst of promoting your book’s free days on KDP Select, in which case you will probably tweet more than usual about your book.)

When you do tweet to promote your book, you might want to consider using a link to Amazon instead of to the book’s page on your author website. Then with the Twitter “View Media” automatic feature, prospective readers can check out your book directly from Twitter.

P.S. And after studying Amazon’s associate (affiliate) legal terms with my husband the lawyer, I have decided to begin phrasing out my use of Amazon affiliate links for my own books. (The above Amazon link for MRS. LIEUTENANT is NOT an affiliate link.)

Important Amazon associate note: In my book TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK, the advice for getting an Amazon associate account is ONLY for putting an Amazon store on Facebook. And then, of course, you can only do that if you live in a state in the U.S. that allows you to have an associate account with Amazon.

ANNOUNCEMENT: MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) will be FREE on Kindle Aug 20 and Aug 21. See http://amzn.to/TKTk4B



Click here to see information about MRS. LIEUTENANT and five other free Kindle books at site Free Kindle Books and Tips.



© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

If You Believe in Your Books Give Them the Best Chance

I get emails from authors asking about book marketing for their books. The first thing I ask is for the authors to send me links to their books on Amazon, to their website and to their social media accounts if any.



What I receive in return is often quite revealing. Here are some common issues:



Issue: An author will send the URL to a page on Amazon that lists her book along with books by other people of the same name. Then I have to scroll down the page to find her book.

Solution: Send the URL to the exact book page on Amazon. And do NOT send the very long Amazon URL. Go to bit.ly where an Amazon link is automatically turned into a shorter Amazon link that looks much better. (For example, the Amazon page for MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL is at http://amzn.to/OXrBhh)



Issue: An author will say she is on Facebook without sending a link. No way to know whether a personal profile or a Facebook Page is being referenced.

Solution: Send the URL to the Facebook profile or Page. Make sure you have gotten a customized Facebook URL at www.facebook.com/username

Issue: The Kindle price is very high, especially for a self-published fiction author. For example, many self-published fiction authors have their Kindle ebooks priced between $.99 and $4.99.



Solution: Lower the price.



Note: An alternative would be to put your ebook on Amazon’s KDP Select exclusively for 90-days (read the terms carefully) so that the ebook can be borrowed for free by Amazon prime members with a Kindle. At least this way an expensive Kindle novel can be sampled – and then there is the option for the five free days in each 90-day exclusive KDP Select period.

Issue: Unclear from book title and book cover whether book is fiction or nonfiction.

Solution: Clarify the book cover by adding on it, for example, the word “novel” or “thriller.” If this is not feasible, add the appropriate word in the book’s description.

Full disclosure: I just took my own advice and added the word “technothriller” at the beginning of the Amazon book description for LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS (see http://amzn.to/N6YyFZ). I also added the word “thriller” in the beginning of the Amazon book description for CIA FALL GUY even though “A Thriller” is on the book cover (see http://amzn.to/L38eiP).

Issue: Amazon author presence not optimized — no bio and/or no headshot.

Solution: Go to authorcentral.amazon.com (if in U.S.) and add the information. And if you need help with this, see my ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK at http://amzn.to/N5H0Gj



Also my new ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET ON THE INTERNET WITH PICTURES could be helpful for authors — see http://amzn.to/Oa5Cmb

In conclusion, most of these issues revolve around two topics:

1) making things as easy as possible for people to say yes to you

2) making yourself stand out as a person rather than just as a book author name

When you are engaged in marketing your book online, keep these issues in mind. Your prospective readers will thank you.

And if you need help with any of these issues, consider a one-hour brainstorming session. Email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com

ANNOUNCEMENT: MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) will be FREE on Kindle Aug 20 and Aug 21. See http://amzn.to/OXrBhh

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

News Items About Book Marketing and Publishing

First, I am grateful to Digital Book Today for including my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT as one of 10 books featured for a week on the site.

In the post “Weekly Featured Great Reads: eBooks for the Kindle 8/15/2012” Anthony Wessel says:

This is a free listing we provide as a service to authors. Digital Book Today has posted our 8 Weekly Featured Great Reads for the Kindle on the right and left hand side of our site. Today we have 8 great eBooks (plus a bonus 2 books) that are highly reviewed Kindle titles with a bargain price. Take the time to check out the “Great Reads” and read more about them on Amazon.

Click here to read the entire list of books.

Second, thanks to HUNTER author Robert Bidinotto I learned about the Forbes article by David Vinjamuri “Publishing Is Broken, We’re Drowning in Indie Books — And That’s a Good Thing.” Click here to read the Forbes article.

Third, because of the quote in the Forbes article of mega-author Sue Grafton from an interview by Leslea Tash for LouisvilleKY.com, I checked out Tash’s followup to her original blog post. The followup contained a response from Sue Grafton to the firestorm raised by her earlier remarks. Click here to read the response. (Note that I left a comment on this followup blog post.)

In Sue Grafton’s followup remarks she said, “I don’t understand the mechanics of e-publishing.” She went on to say:

This is a whole new thrust for publication that apparently everyone has been aware of except yours truly. I still don’t understand how it works, but I can see that a hole has been blasted in the wall, allowing writers to be heard in a new way and on a number of new fronts.

All I can say is that I am personally glad for POD (print on demand), ebooks, self-publishing, Amazon, and all the other online tools that enable authors to bypass the New York gatekeepers.

In fact, here is what I wrote about the New York gatekeepers in my comment on Leslea Tash’s followup blog post:

Sue Grafton’s quoted remark in the Forbes article about self-published novelists not “bothering to read, study, or do the research” is so off the mark.

For my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, which takes place in 1970 at Ft. Knox, I spent years and thousands of dollars reading books, hiring an editorial book consultant, taking writing courses at UCLA Extension, starting the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime, etc. in order to make it the best novel I could.

In fact, at the same time I was in the midst of self-publishing, the novel was selected as a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist.

But back then agents and editors in New York did not understand a story about army wives. In fact, one rejection said the women would have to meet through their own jobs — maybe at a law firm — and not through their husbands. Another rejection said there was no more prejudice in the United States.

On August 20 and 21 MRS. LIEUTENANT will be FREE on Kindle as part of Amazon’s KDP Select program. You can download the ebook for free at http://amzn.to/OXrBhh and see what New York editors did not understand. (If you do not have a Kindle, you can download free Kindle apps at Amazon.)

Please tell a friend about the FREE download of MRS. LIEUTENANT. (The story is a slice of women’s social history right before the start of the women’s liberation movement.)

P.S. Louisville is in the story — my grandparents lived in Louisville at the time of the novel, which is based on my own experiences as a new Mrs. Lieutenant during the Vietnam War.

Remember to download your free Kindle mobi format of MRS. LIEUTENANT on August 20 and 21 at http://amzn.to/OXrBhh

And if you do not have a Kindle, download a free Kindle app for almost any electronic device at http://amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

P.S. You might enjoy reading the blog post about how MRS. LIEUTENANT, a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist, is getting a second chance thanks to Amazon’s KDP Select.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

“Telling a Friend” About the Novel MRS. LIEUTENANT

In preparation for the two free days on Kindle for MRS. LIEUTENANT (August 20 and 21), Yael and I have been working on implementing an option for people who have finished the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT to email their friends to recommend the book.

I got the idea for this from Mark Harmon of http://epubandebookhelp.com/

Although we loved the idea, Yael thought there might be a better way to implement it for our goals other than what Mark suggested.

Yael worked on the tech end — getting the technical aspect in place for us. Together we worked on the wording of the recommendation form. Then I inserted a link to the recommendation form into the html doc of MRS. LIEUTENANT, re-converted the ebook via Calibre, and re-uploaded the ebook to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

I liked the result so much that I also added the “tell a friend” form to the MRS. LIEUTENANT book page on this site.



Click here now to see the form for telling a friend about MRS. LIEUTENANT. When the email is sent to a friend, the friend gets a shortened link to the book’s page on Amazon.

And to read about a good idea I got from book publisher and ebook converter Chris O’Byrne regarding asking people to review a book, read my post “Making It Easy for People to Say Yes to You.”

I incorporated Chris’ idea into the html revision of MRS. LIEUTENANT at the same time I added the “tell a friend” function, providing two strong calls to action at the end of the ebook.

And put a note on your calendar to download MRS. LIEUTENANT for free on August 20 and 21 at http://amzn.toOXrBhh

Plus please act on the two calls to action at the end of the novel — write a review on Amazon and “tell a friend” about the novel.

P.S. You might enjoy reading the blog post about how MRS. LIEUTENANT, a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist, is getting a second chance thanks to Amazon’s KDP Select.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

Getting Out the Word About MRS. LIEUTENANT’s Free Days on KDP Select

Preparing for free days for a book on Amazon’s KDP Select is like any other marketing campaign — it takes planning, execution and followup.

With 10 days to go before the two free days of August 20 and 21 for MRS. LIEUTENANT, I am well into the execution stage.

But I am also into the stage of considering new opportunities.

Because it is so easy to change the background of a Twitter bio, I asked my business partner Yael K. Miller to create a jpg of the book cover of MRS. LIEUTENANT with an announcement of the free days.

She did this — and you can see it here on this post. Then click here to see the image tiled across the entire screen of my Twitter bio.

I also changed one of the links in my Twitter bio to the link for the book on Amazon — http://amzn.to/OXrBhh — as the link in the Twitter bio cannot actually be a hot link.

I will be continuing to think of additional places to promote the free days. One goal would be to get an announcement of the free days on major military support sites.

Stand by for an update on whether I achieve this goal.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

KDP Select: MRS. LIEUTENANT Gets Second Chance

Four and a half years ago when my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT was named a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist while I was in the midst of self-publishing the novel, I was not on any social media site.

Part of the competition was to get people to vote for your book. Each semifinalist was given a page on Amazon with the beginning of the novel. I had no one to vote for my book.

MRS. LIEUTENANT has been a labor of love for over 40 years, only 20 of which I actually worked on the book. The project stems from my first weeks as a new Mrs. Lieutenant in the spring of 1970 right after the Kent State shootings.

Twenty years ago two movie producers optioned the story, then told me I had to write a book before they could “shop” the project around Hollywood. By the time I write the first draft of the novel (to protect the innocent), they had moved on.

Then I wrote and rewrote and took courses and read books until POD (Print on Demand) made self-publishing the book a realistic option. (Note: Although the price BookSurge — now part of CreateSpace — insisted on for the paperback made it unlikely that many people would buy it from an unknown author.)

Even though Kindle had only been introduced in November of 2007, I knew enough to have the novel converted for Kindle. But not that many people could read a Kindle book then, nor did the free Kindle apps for almost any electronic device exist then.

Fast forward to November/December 2011 when Amazon introduced KDP Select.

In the following months I put new books on the KDP Select program but did not put MRS. LIEUTENANT on it because I would have to remove the ebook (by this time the novel had also been converted for Nook and iPad) from other ebook sites.

Finally I realized that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face (you know that expression, right?) and I put in the effort to remove MRS. LIEUTENANT from all other ebook sites.

Then I put MRS. LIEUTENANT on KDP Select (requires an exclusive on Kindle for 90-day periods).



And after testing out KDP Select with CIA FALL GUY and TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK, I’m ready for two free KDP Select days for MRS. LIEUTENANT on August 20 and 21.

Of course, this requires a great deal of work to list the book’s free days on as many free Kindle listing sites as possible. Now I am in the process of using lists from several sources.

One free list is https://katrinaparkerwilliams.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/kdp-select-free-days-promo-sites/

This list is one of those in G.E. Johnson’s “Get Connected: 101 Places to Promote Your Books Online.” I bought this ebook along with these two ebooks whose lists I am using: Dan Poynter’s “KDP SelectTM: Navigating Kindle’s Freebie Day” and Cheryl Kaye Tardif’s “How I Made Over $42,000 in 1 Month Selling My Kindle eBooks.”



Each listing possibility has to be read carefully:

Some require payment (I am usually passing up these), some require putting a link on your own website (I am passing all these up). Others require following on Twitter (of course!) and/or “liking” a Facebook Page (of course!).

Still others mention they favor books with lots of reviews and average ratings over 4.0. (MRS. LIEUTENANT is great with this requirement – at this writing 35 reviews and what looks like 4.3 star rating out of 5.0.)

One difficulty I am having with these lists is answering the genre question. Sometimes I write “military/women’s fiction” and sometimes I consider checking “literary fiction.”

And yes, it can be a full-time job getting ready for two free KDP Days. Yet I owe MRS. LIEUTENANT in Kindle format this effort. This is a story — a slice of women’s social history at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement in the U.S. — that I have wanted to share for 40 years.

And I hope you will calendar getting MRS. LIEUTENANT for free on August 20 and 21 at http://amzn.to/OXrBhh — and tell your friends!

(If you need to download a free Kindle app to read the novel on your PC or Mac or iPhone, here is the link to do this — http://amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771)

P.S. Eight or so weeks of effort and thanks to a very nice person at Amazon’s Author Central, MRS. LIEUTENANT’s Kindle version now has Kindle categories and, as of this morning, the two I want:

• Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > War

• Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > World Literature > Jewish

Yes!

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. A new nonfiction ebook of hers is TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her newest fiction ebook is the thriller 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

Playing Sports in High School Can Assist College Applications

The August 8th Wall Street Journal article by Heidi Mitchell headlined “Competing for Scholarships on the Field and Online” reports:

With tuition for a four-year private university topping $250,000, families are eager to tap some of the $2 billion that the National Collegiate Athletic Association estimates is granted in athletic scholarships for the 23 NCAA sports each year.

In my new book HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE, I have a section on this topic:

ADDITIONAL ASSISTS IN COLLEGE APPLICATIONS

Can sports be a possible assist into college? (Do not automatically skip this section.)

A college may be interested in you for the sport you play even if you are not a widely recruited football or basketball high school star.

At various U.S. colleges today there are many college sports teams (as opposed to college sports clubs) in addition to football and basketball whose coaches may have a say in your acceptance at the college.

Some of these sports may be fencing, tennis, swimming, lacrosse, track, golf; schools may have women’s teams in some sports and men’s teams in other sports.

And your own high school coach may be able to recommend you to the college coach.

Play sports because you love it or it is what you want to learn.

Do not participate in high school sports only as something to put on your college application. If you are not interested in sports, spend your limited free time pursuing something you love.

Where can you learn which schools have which college teams?

Check out the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s website at www.ncaa.org for information on how student athletes can comply with NCAA bylaws in order to compete in intercollegiate athletics as well as information on what high school students need to do to be eligible to compete their first year in college.

If you are planning to visit a campus with a college sports team on which you would be interested in playing, contact the coach ahead of time for a possible appointment. You can ask your high school coach to put in a good word for you with the college coach.

Contact the coach ahead of an on-campus visit.

If you and the college coach hit it off, it is quite possible that the coach will notify the admissions office that he/she is interested in you (although this does not necessarily mean you will be accepted nor does it necessarily mean a sports scholarship). If the team could use your ability and you want to play on the team, you might thus find yourself in a stronger applicant position.

Telling a coach you will play on the team is an implied contract.

If you tell a college coach that you will be a member of his/her team if you are accepted to the college and then attend, in my opinion this is an implied contract. This is especially so if the college coach has put in a good word for you with the admissions office.

It is a serious commitment that you should keep for at least one season of your sport. If you have no intention of participating in that sport once you get to college, you should not tell a college coach you will participate in order to get the coach to help with your application.

This is an important life lesson — only make commitments that you intend to keep. The trustworthiness of your word is a very important attribute for success in life. You want to earn the reputation of someone who can be trusted.

A coach putting in a good word for you that helps get you into that college is the same as a debt (like car payments). You pay back the debt to the coach with sweat equity — your time and effort — rather than in money payments for the car. And you have a responsibility to pay off the debt before you join a fraternity or sorority or undertake other activities that interfere with your commitment to the coach.

Play sports wholeheartedly — be the best you can be.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE is the first book in the 3-book series HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND BEYOND COLLEGE. All three books are filled with practical step-by-step advice to help teens and young adults.

Click here to get HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE now on Amazon.

P.S. HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE is available in both paperback and Kindle formats. If you would like to read it in Kindle format but do not have a Kindle, download the FREE Kindle app for almost any electronic device at http://amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

She is also the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and her thriller CIA FALL GUY.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller