How I Said Yes to Myself for a Novel 38 Years in the Making

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller
(Los Angeles, CA)

I’ve wanted to share the story told in MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL for 38 years, ever since I was a new Mrs. Lieutenant at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, in the spring of 1970 during the Vietnam War.

But I only started writing the book 20 years ago when two female movie producers in Hollywood optioned the story, then told me I had to write the book because no one in Hollywood “got” the story. By the time I had written the first draft of the book, the producers had moved on.

And then followed 20 years of learning how to write as a novelist rather than a journalist: classes at UCLA Extension, books, writers’ group, seminars, reading “good” novels. And in the meantime New York book agents and book publishers didn’t “get” the story any better than Hollywood.

Yet I knew there was an audience out there for this story of four very different women who unexpectedly come together when their husbands go on active military duty.

This December I said to myself: You’re going to be 60 soon. Stop waiting for other people to say yes to you. And I published the novel with Amazon’s print-on-demand unit BookSurge.

And in the meantime MRS. LIEUTENANT was named a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. This meant an excerpt of the manuscript was given a page on the Amazon site along with pages for excerpts from all the other semi-finalists. And one day I discovered that a semi-finalist had something called AmazonConnect on her page and I didn’t have one on mine.

That was the beginning of my intensive quest to learn as much as possible about internet marketing.

Now I wasn’t fazed by having to do my own marketing for MRS. LIEUTENANT, because in 1992 the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION that I co-authored with Rabbi Karen L. Fox was published by a big New York publisher. And Karen and I had to do all the marketing for that book. (We’ve just re-released it on Amazon.)

Thus I was prepared to market MRS. LIEUTENANT; just not prepared for how the internet has changed the world of marketing.

Now I’ll admit in retrospect there is some advice I followed that I’ve since learned isn’t that valuable, at least for my book. One such technique is maximizing exposure on Amazon, which isn’t the best use of my time I’ve discovered.

Yet, thanks to going on a virtual book tour through www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com, I learned that book blogs are an excellent way to get known. And if you offer a copy of your book for a contest to run on the blog when the review of your book or an interview of you appears, the book blogger is happy and more people pay attention to the review because they have to leave a comment to be eligible to win. In addition, book bloggers often link their book reviews to other book blogs. More exposure!

Plus I’ve become involved with social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And I now write three blogs, one in connection with MRS. LIEUTENANT. I also respond to pr leads on Peter Shankman’s email notifications from www.helpareporter.com. (Sign up now – it’s free.)

The book marketing gurus who I follow say it takes a year of steady effort to get any real payoff in your book’s sales. Therefore, I have a way to go before I know if my efforts are paying off.

And in the meantime, I have become so enamored with Web 2.0 that I’ve started a family online information business – Miller Mosaic, LLC – with our first website now live at www.estateplanningforyou.com and the company motto “Working to Make Your Life Easier.”

On www.mrslieutenant.com you can read the first four chapters of the book, download book group discussion guidelines, see original 1970 army documents, and find information on organizations that support military families today. You can also email me from the website.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZimblerMiller or connect with me as Phyllis Zimbler Miller on Facebook or LinkedIn. And be sure and tell me where we “met.”

Good luck with saying yes to yourself and publishing your book!

Visit Phyllis's site.