U.S. Military Ranks and KDP Issues

Again my thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS has gotten a negative review with the person (who according to Amazon has never written another review on Amazon) complaining that Mollie Sanders is unrealistic — she gives orders to higher-ranking officers.

Oh how I wish my husband and I had made Mollie a commander in the U.S. Navy rather than a lieutenant commander. I think people see the word “lieutenant” and get confused.

First, I added to the ebook’s Amazon product description that a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy is equivalent to a major in the U.S. Army.

Second, I explained this as a comment in response to the above-mentioned review and added:

Just as a lieutenant colonel in the Army is addressed as “Colonel,” a lieutenant commander in the Navy is addressed as “Commander.”

I added this because the ebook has gotten criticism about Mollie being called a “lieutenant,” which she is not called.

Although both my father and father-in-law served in World War II, I grew up knowing nothing about the U.S. military. When I married my husband before he went on active duty as an officer in the U.S. Army (he was ROTC at Michigan State University, where we met), I learned the officers’ ranks.

(I admit I never learned all the enlisted ranks. But in those days the officers’ wives and the enlisted personnel’s wives were kept very separate.)

As I have stated before, Mitch is a member of the U.S. Naval Institute, and we did a great deal of research before writing about Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders.

And as a long-standing feminist, I should not be surprised at the negative comments about what FICTIONAL Mollie Sanders can do — comments that would almost certainly not be said about a FICTIONAL male protagonist.

Still, it does bother me when people criticize the book thinking they are demonstrating what they know — and they are in error.

KDP Warning:

I have just completed the extensive coding work (four separate documents) in order to convert an ebook via KindleGen. This is because I have learned that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) no longer supports third-party conversion software such as Calibre, which I previously used.

I learned this because recent reviews commented about lousy formatting. After extensive emailing back and forth to KDP, I got the problem identified. But I still do not know when and why the previously correct formatting went haywire, although I suspect Kindle Fire has something to do with this.

Hopefully all this effort will now ensure that LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS will be correctly formatted for the Kindle Fire as well as the Kindle.

Now if only readers would remember that a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy is the equivalent of a major in the U.S. Army!

Click here to check out LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Kindle now.

(Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. You can get a FREE Kindle app for your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC or Mac at http://amzn.to/NBoSGU)

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) 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