It’s time for another Good Idea/Bad Idea
Good Idea:
Promoting your work.
Bad Idea:
Promoting your work by pretending that you are a reader who is commenting like any other person on a blog, pimping your book, and having your fake reader name link to your author website.
There are plenty of stupid people on the internet. But people who spend a lot of time on book blogs — and reading — are generally a lot less stupid than in other internet locales.
God.
Haaaahahaha…I think I saw this one earlier in the week. It’s a very popular thing to do on the Amazon forums.
*laughing hysterically* Oh, the irony is thick at Literary Escapism (where Jackie has written a review that I totally agree with — Demon Angel *can* be hard to get into.)
But the rest? lol!
@JenB: I just saw it at Shannon C’s blog … then again at Literary Escapism, where I might have missed it if not for a close-my-eyes-take-a-deep-breath glance at the comments.
Yeah, I saw it on Shannon C’s blog too. I just…seriously…why? Why would an author do that, and how the heck did she think she could get away with it?
It’s sad. But also funny for the rest of us.
Are you serious? Channeling Homer Simpson- DOH!
It was you Meljean, admit it.
@katiebabs: lol, I totally D’oh!ed on another site.
Nah, I don’t have to do use sock puppets. People just pretend to like my books because I have a blog and twitter. Those foolish, foolish romance readers, you know — can’t separate the book from the person or figure out that someone is pimping their own work under a fake name.
That makes me sad! I actually like her books and now feel torn. How can I justify spending money on someone who is that obvious??
@Jackie B: to be fair, it might not be the author herself. I’ve heard that promo companies do this kind of thing, too. It could be that she’s hired someone to stir up buzz around the blogs, and not quite realize how they intended to do it.
Tsk, not liking that at all…then again, they do wanna spread the word about their books, in any form
Two of those numbnuts did that at my blog. Yuck! They both wrote for the same POD publishers. I deleted their um, backsides.
Is it bad that I was confused when I saw the comment? My first thought was “okay, this reader really likes this author”; now I know better. There are times I am such a newbie at this whole review thing.
Now the question is….do I delete it or change the name to be correct and get rid of the promo? Would it be wrong if I did that?
@Jackie M (Literary Escapism): I’m never sure what the right response is. I had one about month ago here that I just left, because I figure that if she’s going to show her ass, I don’t mind letting her.
On the other hand … it *is* irritating when someone uses your site to promo their work like that. Irritating and rude.
So when they show up here, a part of me wants to just delete the comments. The other part of me is quite happy to allow them to stay and make an ass of themselves.
@Jackie M (Literary Escapism): I should add — it’s not the promo that irritates me (although there are better ways to go about it.) It’s the assumption that everyone reading the blog is too dumb to figure out that it *is* self-promo.
I don’t mind self-promo as long as the person is honest about it. Talking about your book (you might really enjoy my book, etc etc) doesn’t bother me at all; but it’s like you said, if you’re going to promo it, don’t pretend to be someone else.
She’s actually not the first one to do it at Literary Escapism, but she is the first author I’ve seen. I’ve had a lot of hte “play roulette or poker” sites stop by and leave comments on books with their names as links to something. I don’t like those and end up deleting them (or just deleting the promotion part). So I may just do that.
AND…I’m glad you liked the review. I kept having to rewrite it because it kept sounding like a negative review and that’s not what I wanted since that wouldn’t be correct.
I feel better about it now.
@Jackie M (Literary Escapism): Well, on my end, I’m just glad you didn’t hate the book. Not because that would mean that you’d write a review that was “OMG, this book suxxors!” (Of which I’d had plenty, lol) but just the general Yay! that you didn’t end up slogging through a book you didn’t enjoy.
When I look back at Demon Angel, I do see quite a few things that I might have done differently, structure-wise, so that the plot starts earlier. (Actually, I did originally start in Part II so that the main plot started right away, then realized that all of the history between them was needed to explain how they reacted to each other — and, I thought, the romance. I waffled for a long time about how to structure it, and went for chronological just because it was the most straightforward (in a book that was already convoluted enough)). Now, I think I might have handled it a little differently, in that the story is exactly what I wanted to tell, but I might have told it in a slightly different way.
Er, not that I don’t love the book; I do. But that after putting a few more books under my belt, I can see where a few structural changes might have made a huge difference in the pacing, and the content itself not alter much.
Oh, Meljean, I <3 you so much right now for this. I was trying to figure out the best way to handle that comment. Possibly I’ll just link to your post and call it good. Oh, well, she was at least good for a laugh.
Also, I like to think I’m approachable about that sort of thing anyway. I mean, there is a perfectly good contact form the author could have used instead of commenting on a four-day-old post and it wouldn’t have been so asshatted. Then again, I live on planet Earth, and Earth logic eludes some people. :
P
It also never occurred to me to edit the comment itself. Must. Resist. Tempation. The edit feature should be used for good, not evil.
That was one of my biggest head-desking moments this week. Whoever left the comment did Samantha no favors. If it was a reader, they made the author look like a tacky sneak. If it was a promo company, ditto. I just am going to hope like hell it WAS one of those two options, because the third makes me oh-so-sad.
Also. Authors? A surprising number of people know what IP addresses are and how to track them. Even if you think you’re tricky. If Shannon wanted to know for sure…she could find out.
Don’t be dumb, authors. Please.