Puuuhlease. Enough with the self-pity! You have what it takes to turn your novel into a blockbuster movie, or at least get some money when a studio wants to option it. Still not convinced? Allow me to shed some light on the subject, er, topic.
You read it right. You need to build a book that is ready to be translated into film. An excellent example is The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Collins was a script writer for Nickelodeon before she decided to become an author. When she did, her writing was very much like a script: short, quick, powerful and straight to the point. Notice how pretty much all of the dialog in the movie came straight from the book - even more so than Twilight, because Suzanne's book was so script-like that it could almost act as the script (Collins did, in fact, co-write the screenplay for the film). Another tip? A book that is on the shorter side is more likely to be optioned than a book that is 500 pages long. Of course there are exceptions to this pattern, but you get my point. You simply heighten your chances a little bit if what you're aiming for is an eventual movie deal. Either way, simply putting a book out there is like tossing a raffle ticket into a giant fishbowl: you have a chance of getting picked, even if the odds are against you.
Another, more attractive option is to actually write a script. Script writing has a lot of rules and formatting dos-and don'ts. You have to learn how to shave off all those extra words that you use in a novel and throw them out the window when you're writing a script. It's a whole different ballgame - one that I actually prefer in many ways to writing a novel. But each one has its own difficulties and boons.
I'll be talking about how to write a script or a screenplay when I get back from vacation, but for now, we'll leave it at this.
Have a good one. :)