Can You Rely on Book Recommendations?
Submitted by mwilliams on Mon, 2007-11-05 20:40.Not those made by commenters on blogs. The latest greatest in advertising is the pay-for-recommendations approach, where a company will sell authors X number of recommendations of their book posted in blog comments around the Web by “people who speak English really well.” What next?
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hahaha the world of promotion is so unsavory, :D
oh well, recommendations, banners, and others have never really worked for me.
I get most of my sales from people who have listened and they push their friends to get em.
A good fan is worth much more the a good advertisement.
There's lots of people who try to promote their work by spamming links to their sites all over the web.
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
well,
I have to be honest when I first came out of the gate with my work I promoted anywhere I could.
and quite a lot, but it was not till I relaxed and let poeple discover my work that I became successful with it.
I semi agree with it...promoting is an art I find...you have to be willing to give as much time promoting as you did writing it...I promote as many places as I can and let people come to me...I dont believe doing nothing will increase your chance of being known...chat with people, read stuff and eventually bring your work up..dont be afraid to tell fun facts of how you came to write your story etc...things that remind you of the way your story turned out etc...
I see nothing wrong with promoting my novels. I do not spam but merely tell people where they can buy my books and get more information. People can also read my short stories for free and download the first chapters of my novels for free. I think that's a pretty good deal. Ken
So you see nothing wrong or annoying with paying a bunch of people to run around and leave comments in blogs across the internet promoting your book?
How about if it's not really people, but paying for some piece of software to do that?
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
The idea, I think, is that a blogger gets paid for mentioning a product or service. I don't like it at all because it's hidden marketing unlike spam which is quite easy to tell from real opinion.
Ken, there's definitely a difference between spam and promotion and what you describe sounds more like the former.
Sorry, Jakob, but I don't see how putting what you do up in a profile like MySpace can be spam. Spam to me is where you direct your wares to individuals by emal or constantly bombard sites with sales pitches. In my sites I tell people what I do, which is write books. I tell them where they can buy them or download free stories and if I am currently working on projects. I intereact with them.
I didn't say that was spam because if you make your own profile then people *choose* to read about you. However posting irrelevant comments in someone else's profile, that's spam. Same goes if a group of Taiwanese modern sweatshop workers post blog comments about you since then it's not about choice any more.
I see many attempts here at Wordsy to disguise promotion as being honest content and it annoys me. We don't discourage authors to promote themselves but our users have the *choice* not to see author promotion posts. So to all you who have tried to get around moderation by choosing an incorrect category, please respect our users' choices preferences and their choices and tag content accurately!
Advertising should be opt-in. Always.
I think that if those folks are grass roots workers they are a part of your audience. I don't like the shameless promotion. But it a way its honest. Like peril in the animal world. We have ball parks to prevent city on city rioting, food stamps to prevent mobs of angry poor folks from piliging who they perceive to be better off.
Telemarketing was removed from The Unitied States Ghetto's leaving many people no option but poverty...and those jobs moved to places where that is a step up from what I assume to be horrible factory work, which is a step up from starvation.
My stories are benevolent. But we are in a competative world. Selling a wiget that is the same as all the other widgets, except that the wegit business has been around so long that the marlket is locked out. Promotion is the only valid in.
Take for example flexcar. What is so new about being a car rental company. but they use the approach that they are "sharing Cars" "so that you don't have to own one, you can share it with others" for a fee of course. It still spin doctoring.
I venture to the panel here that everyrock band is the worlds greatest rock band. And that everywriting site is the most popular sight. "Your a shootting star no matter who you are" was that the line in that tune that came out about a decade ago.