Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 36
August 5, 2012
Report About Children’s Books From the SCBWI Conference
I’m going to share information from a workshop session I attended today at the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators conference in Los Angeles.
Neal Porter, editorial director of Roaring Brook Press, now an imprint of the Macmillan Children’s Book Group, spoke about the books he has published and why he liked these.
Porter used a slideshow of the book covers to illustrate his talk and here are the 12 books he shared:
ACTION JACKSON by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan with illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker
BALLET FOR MARTHA: MAKING APPALACHIAN SPRING by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan with illustrations by Brian Floca
BAD KITTY by Nick Bruel
LITTLE NIGHT by Yuyi Morales
FIRST THE EGG by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
AMANDINA by Sergio Ruzzier
UNDERGROUND by Shane W. Evans
SCRAWL by Mark Shulman
REDWOODS by Jason Chin
A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE by Philip C. Stead with illustrations by Erin Stead
AND THEN IT’S SPRING by Julie Fogliano with illustrations by Erin Stead
LITTLE TUG by Stephen Savage
ZEUS: KING OF THE GODS (OLYMPIANS) by George O’Connor
A IS FOR MUSK OX by Erin Cabatingan with illustrations by Matthew Myers
ABC3D by Marion Bataille
And to the applause of the workshop participants, Porter showed the YouTube video created for ABC3D — a video that has been viewed by almost 3 million people:
As you will notice from the above book list, many of the authors are also the illustrators of their books. Porter assured the workshop that authors do not have to also be illustrators to get their books traditionally published.
He did, though, remind authors not to submit their books with an illustrator already attached. The publisher of a children’s book has the right to assign an illustrator, and Porter said one of the things he especially enjoys is matching an illustrator to an author.
Click here to read a post I wrote of a workshop about Amazon publishing that I also attended at the SCBWI conference.
© 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
August 2, 2012
The Joys of Coding My Own Ebooks
I am working on the html re-coding of HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE.
At the end of this post is the link to the blog series by Guido Henkel that enabled me — with my business partner Yael K. Miller’s ongoing help — to do the html coding myself.
Here is one example of how wonderful it is to be in charge of the destiny of my own ebooks:
Bonnie B. Latino is co-author of the new novel YOUR GIFT TO ME, which is now #1 in Top Rated War Fiction on Amazon. She asked me if, in my next book, I could include information on how to get a shortened Amazon URL.
I told her that, as I now do the html coding myself, I would find in TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET ON THE INTERNET WITH PICTURES a place for the requested information and add the information now (and then re-upload the ebook to Kindle Direct Publishing).
This is the requested information I added:
Extra tip: See in the above [Amazon review] example the URL http://amzn.to/MHDGHT? This is what is called a shortened URL.Here is how this works:
For example, you get a very long URL for anything on Amazon. The actual URL for my review of Susan Chodakiewitz’s children’s book is http://www.amazon.com/review/R1NHABEIIXYPWJ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1475170831&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=This URL appears at the top of your computer screen. You copy this URL and go to a shortened URL service to reduce this long URL down to manageable size.
There are different URL shortening services, and I usually use bud.url for my blost posts because the analytics are not available for others to see.
But whenever I want to shorten a URL from Amazon, I go to bit.ly (sign up for this free service) because bit.ly automatically creates for an Amazon URL a shortened URL with an abbreviation of Amazon in it: http://amzn.to/…
The one downside of bit.ly is that others can see your analytics. But for purposes of encouraging people to feel confident clicking on a shortened URL, bit.ly is a good choice.
Advanced extra tip: If you live in a state in which you are allowed to have an Amazon associate (affiliate) account, you can get your affiliate URL for a specific product on Amazon and shorten that URL by doing this:
When you are signed into your Amazon account and are on the sales page of a specific product, click on “Link to this page” near the top left-hand side of your computer screen. Then click on “Text only.”
Next, look at only the very first part of that text. Copy everything in the URL starting with http:// except the quotation marks at the beginning and end of the long URL. Then you may copy that URL into bit.ly to get a shortened URL.
And having control of my own html coding gives me other options:
Instead of keeping a sample high school student’s resume in the actual HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE, I created a page featuring the resume on my author website. Then I am linking to that resume from the ebook.
In this way I can update the resume if needed, plus ensure that the resume’s formatting does not get bent out of shape because of people reading the resume on different electronic devices.
You can click here to see the high school student resume on my author website.
Now back to more html coding for me …
© 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
July 27, 2012
Is Reading Fiction Different From Reading Non-Fiction?
When I self-published the thriller CIA FALL GUY, I asked a person on Twitter who works in the American intelligence community if he would like a copy to read.
The person said yes and I emailed a copy. Then I got a DM through Twitter — he asked something about the book that made me wonder.
I DMed back asking if he read much fiction. His reply:
He has not read any fiction since the early 1990s!
In retrospect, before offering a copy of the ebook, I should have first asked him whether he read fiction. My error was in assuming that he would be interested in fiction taking place in the world he knows.
Now I got a DM telling me he had finished the book and found it slow going. I pondered this comment because people have written reviews on Amazon about the fast pace of the novel, which is actually short by novel standards.
Of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion of a book — fiction or non-fiction.
But this made me think about reading fiction vs. non-fiction. Is there a mindset needed for reading each type of book?
If so, what does this mindset entail?
One requirement for a fiction reader:
A willing suspension of disbelief of some of the things that happen in fiction.
Maybe someone who only reads non-fiction would not be accustomed to doing this.
Yet the more I thought about this, I realized what may most be needed to enjoy fiction:
The willingness to be interested in what happens to a fictional character (or characters).
In other words, a fiction reader has to really care if the protagonist finds the treasure, gets to safety before the ice sleet covers everything, escapes the aliens, or whatever the challenge is.
Now I will admit it is up to the fiction author to create characters and situations that foster a caring attitude in the minds of the readers.
But I would also maintain that it is up to the reader to be open to the author’s efforts.
The technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that I wrote with my husband Mitchell R. Miller has gotten a range of reactions, including attacks on women in the military in some reviews of the book.
What I found especially interesting is that a news article this week about the first woman to be officially assigned to a U.S. sub also got attack comments about women in the military.
Clearly Mitch and I did not realize, when we wrote the story, that there would be people (especially men it seems) who would attack the story based on their own feelings about women in the military.
Click here to read the news story and comments about the first woman assigned to a U.S. sub.
Click here to see the reviews on Amazon for CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to see the reviews on Amazon for LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.
© 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
July 26, 2012
News of KDP Select, Women Military Personnel, and Book Marketing
As some of you may know, I did two days of KDP Select free ebooks on July 24 and July 25 for the thriller CIA FALL GUY and TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.
Because I wanted to try these free days in the “natural” state, I did not pay for any ads on any of the various sites that offer the opportunity to promote KDP Select free days.
(KDP is an Amazon program in which your ebook has to be exclusive on Amazon for a 90-day period, and during those 90 days you are entitled to five free days in any configuration.)
I did, though, post announcements at various places that I found by consulting a number of sources.
I purposely did a fiction and nonfiction book together because different books appeal to different people. If I were going to do all the effort needed for a KDP Select promotion, I figured it was almost as easy to promote two books as to promote one book.
One surprise: Almost three times as many copies of CIA FALL GUY were downloaded as copies of TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.
Yes, I know there are more fiction readers than book authors (at least I think this is true), but fiction readers have their own tastes in reading and all authors need to market their books.
Anyway, I am not yet ready to write about my conclusions from this first experiment. Instead, I am almost finished writing a sequel to TOP TIPS, a sequel I would like, in a few weeks, to use free days on KDP Select coupled with the technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.
Instead of conclusions in this blog post, I’d like to share information:
First, here is the link to an article describing the first Navy woman graduate to serve on a submarine. (Yes, it is a bigger sub than Mollie Sanders is on.) Read the article now if this interests you.
On a much sadder note about women in the military, read this article about the increase in homelessness for women vets. This is an issue that the U.S. government needs to confront now rather than years from now.
As I am sharing links, here are links to two new guest blog posts of mine:
“How to Promote Your Book With Social Media” at booksbywomen.org
“CIA Fall Guy by Phyllis Zimbler Miller: Excerpt & Guest Post” at the blog of Laurie Jenkins.
And you might want to take the short history quiz connected to the video I created on the topic “1948 Berlin Airlift Throws a Lifeline to West Germans” on the site rivvid.com.
© 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
July 24, 2012
FREE Kindle ebook HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON & FACEBOOK
Free ebook on Kindle CIA FALL GUY
CIA Fall GuyFREE on Kindle today (July 24) and tomorrow (July 25): Thriller CIA FALL GUY at http://amzn.to/L38eiP
Other Country Amazon Sites: Part II of Harnessing the Power of Amazon Reviews for Authors
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program. Get these now:
(See Part I of “Harnessing the Power of Amazon Reviews for Authors”)
Until recently the reviews of your books on Amazon.com did NOT transfer to other Amazon country sites.
While I cannot speak for all other country Amazon sites, besides the U.K. Amazon site I have checked the sites that I can read enough of the language to figure out what reviews are being offered — France (amazon.fr), Germany (amazon.de), Spain (amazon.es) and Italy (amazon.it).
Here is an explanation of what I have discovered:
As of this writing, my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT has 35 reviews on the U.S. Amazon site. But on the U.K. Amazon site at the top of the page there is only one review — a review originally written on the U.K. site. Then if you scroll down the page below that one review, you will see this:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com: 35 reviews
And below this are three U.S. reviews along with a link to Amazon.com to read all 35 U.S. Amazon reviews. (Click here to see this example.)
The same thing is true for the French, German, Spanish and Italian Amazon sites: Three reviews in English with a link to all 35 reviews on the Amazon.com site.
(Note: The English reader who wrote the original review on the U.K. Amazon site was kind enough to also post her review on the U.S. Amazon site. Thus her review is included in the 35 Amazon.com reviews.)
Now for the important warning:
While you may not have very many reviews if any originating on Amazon country sites other than your own country Amazon site, you should occasionally check the other sites (if you can read enough of the language of that site.)
Here is a cautionary tale that happened to me:
The technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that I wrote with my husband Mitchell R. Miller elicits a wide range of reactions, including from military people who love the story and accept that it is fiction to military people who dislike the story because it is fiction. And I can live with these opinions and the range of stars awarded to the book.
But when I recently checked the book on the U.K. Amazon site, I was shocked at a really nasty review of the book. (Although there were no swear words, the language was offensive.)
I clicked on the link to the person’s other reviews, and found he (presumably a he from the review although he did not use his real name in the review) had written only one other review and it was also offensive.
I felt justified in reporting the offensive review of my book to Amazon U.K. as an inappropriate review and I also reported the other review to help that author. The next time I checked, the offensive review was gone from LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.
To clarify the above cautionary tale, I would NOT have reported the review because of the one-star given to the book. I reported it because the language was so offensive that I did not want other people exposed to such nastiness.
The moral of this cautionary tale? Check your own reviews on other Amazon sites besides checking the reviews on the Amazon site on which you participate.
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program. Get these now.
© 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
July 22, 2012
Harnessing the Power of Amazon Reviews for Authors: Part I
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program.
Click here for CIA FALL GUY.
The opportunity to write book reviews on Amazon works both for authors whose books get reviewed and for authors who write reviews for other books.
Let’s start with why you as an author want reviews on Amazon for your books:
While Amazon’s algorithms for ranking books in categories and lists are secret, it is a good bet that the number of reviews is factored into the algorithms.
And while reviews probably make the “machine” of Amazon happy, reviews also encourage people to buy your books.
If people are considering buying your book, they are much more likely to do so if they can read several favorable reviews as opposed to a book that has no reviews or only a couple of negative reviews.
Now before you go running off to get all your friends to write 5-star reviews for you, consider this:
A nonfiction book targeted at a specific audience can authentically have all 5-star reviews if the book delivers on its promise.
But fiction is subjective — what someone likes another person may dislike. (I have recently learned that, when you write fiction on a topic on which many people have opinions of their own, the reviews are liable to be all over the rating chart.)
In other words, it is okay to have a range of reviews on a fiction book. (For example, megabook THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins does NOT have all 5-star reviews.)
As an author, we need to ask for reviews, and I have been adding this request at the end of my Kindle ebooks. If we do not ask, how can we expect readers to know that we would appreciate their help?
Additional help for authors:
People can also help our books by clicking “like” at the top of a book’s page on Amazon and by clicking “yes” in answer to “Was this review helpful to you?” when it is a positive review.
Further, people can add a comment to a positive review. In other words, people can explain why a particular review was so helpful.
How do you as an author benefit from reviewing the books of other authors?
Besides participating in a community of authors helping each other, you can get immediate recognition for your own books. This can happen in two ways:
One way is that you can manually add your name at the end of a review and include the name of one of your books. (Amazon recently answered an author’s query with the response that you may not list more than one book.) If you have more than one book, you may choose the one that is the best “fit” with the type of book being reviewed.
The other way is the automatic “signature” and link to your Amazon public profile that Amazon puts at the top of each of your reviews. Be sure to optimize this opportunity. (To do so, see Chapter I of TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.)
Stay tuned for Part II of “Harnessing the Power of Amazon Reviews for Authors” about reviews of your books on other Amazon country sites.
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and the new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program.
© 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
July 20, 2012
Top Book Publishing, Marketing & Publicity Info Sources
I was working with a Miller Mosaic client on Skype for a book marketing brainstorming session. The author mentioned he was the first in his family to publish a book and he knew nothing about the book publishing world.
It has been four years since I threw myself into learning as much as I could about the online marketing world in general and book marketing in specific. I pondered how today I would recommend a new person start to learn about this arena.
I came up with this short list of recommended information sources (note that these are NOT affiliate links):
Joan Stewart the Publicity Hound blog
Penny Sansevieri’s book marketing blog
Aggie Villanueva’s promotion blog
To subscribe to Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s newsletter (scroll down on right-hand side)
Digital Book Today (new blog posts on home page)
Joel Friedlander’s blog (new blog posts on home page)
Miller Mosaic online marketing blog
Although there are many other online marketers I admire and follow, I wanted to make this a short list so as not to overwhelm people new to these topics.
Advanced info: For those of you who are interested in learning how to convert your own books into ebooks, I recommend the blog series starting with this post.
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and my new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program. Mark your calendars now and please tell your friends.
© 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
July 18, 2012
For Authors: Tiny Tips for Marketing on Amazon
After publishing my ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK, I have been spending time utilizing my own advice.
The result of my efforts? I have discovered the opportunities on Amazon are even more complicated than I had previously thought.
First, a shoutout to Publicity Hound Joan Stewart. I wrote a guest post for her blog about the Amazon Author Central profile (Chapter III in TIP TIPS). Joan and I worked on the phone to make the post as clear as possible. One thing we added to the post is this:
If you have a U.S. Amazon Author Central profile, people on Amazon can get to your Author Central profile in at least three ways:
First, if they type your name in Amazon’s browser field, your Author Central profile will be one of the choices returned in search results along with books by the same author name.
Second, if they have typed in one of your book titles and then are on that book page, they can click on your name right under the title at the top of the page.
Third, they can scroll down the Amazon page of a book of yours until they come to: More About the Author.
My quest continues:
After writing this guest post, I spent more time on Author Central profiles of the other country Amazon sites whose languages I could puzzle out. (In my case, forget Amazon Japan.) It appears that the U.S. Author Central profile is the most robust.
Other Amazon country Author Central profiles do not have as many options, including at this time these other profiles do not provide the opportunity to make changes on the product description in the way that authors can on a U.S. Author Central profile.
HERE IS THE FRUSTRATING THING I JUST DISCOVERED:
If you have a title in both physical format and Kindle and you have told Amazon to “link” the two formats into one title, you still have to make changes in the product description in the physical format book screen in Author Central as well as the Kindle format book screen in Author Central.
Okay, you think. What’s the big deal? You’ll just cut and paste.
Surprise! Not so simple as I discovered yesterday after a lot of back and forth experimentation.
While both product description boxes give authors the “theoretical” ability to use Amazon html code for product descriptions, the Amazon html code works for Kindle descriptions – not for paperback descriptions.
At first I thought I was seeing things. Then I checked out Jeff Bennington’s product descriptions for his book AN INDIE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE. Sure enough, he had an enhanced product description for the Kindle format but not for the paperback format of the book.
To see what I mean — here are the links to the two product descriptions for my technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS (scroll down the page):
Click here to see product description of the paperback of LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.
Of course, this could change tomorrow — or even today. With Amazon it is a never-ending revision project for authors. And when I learn new things, I’ll share them here, so consider signing up below to be notified of new blog posts.
FREE KINDLE BOOKS: On Tuesday, July 24, and Wednesday, July 25, TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK and my new thriller CIA FALL GUY will be free on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program. Mark your calendars now.
To read my entire guest post “Secret Publicity Sauce on Amazon: Author Central Profile,” click here for the Publicity Hound blog.
© 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
Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author
- Phyllis Zimbler Miller's profile
- 15 followers
