One Way NOT to Do Promotion

I’ve seen lots of good tips on doing promotion for your book. Or for anything else you want to do promo for, like a newsletter, a site, ect…

But let me give you one tip on how NOT to do promotion.

Don’t spam!

No, seriously, don’t do it!

It really doesn’t work. It just makes people angry…or either they don’t notice at all and just hit delete. Never subscribe someone to your mailing list or newsletter unless they ask to be subscribed. Better yet, set things up where they can subscribe themselves.

Always make sure there’s a link in what ever you send to those subscribers where they can easily unsubscribe if they wish. Include a link for them to resubscribe if they wish too. People do change e-mail addresses sometimes and want to rejoin, or sometimes they just want to share the link with a friend so they can join.

If you pay others to do promotion for you, it’s your job to check and make sure they are doing so on the up and up. You don’t want to get a backlash of anger because they are running your information and sending it to people who don’t want it, didn’t ask for it, and just want it to stop.

This is a sore spot for me right now because a few days ago I suddenly started getting this announcement list that is filled with info about which author is going where, which book is out, how great this e-publisher is doing, and well…you get the idea. (It really all seems to be about this one e-publisher and their authors.)

There’s one big problem though, I’ve never heard of this listing. I didn’t sign up for it, I don’t want it, and they’ve made it hard for me to leave it. I get too much spam as it is, I don’t need or want more.

I went to their site and tried to unsubscribe, but quickly found out that I had to have a password to do so. That’s a little hard to have since I never signed up for anything. The site said if I didn’t have one, I had to fill out information and get one to unsubscribe. I really don’t think so! Why would I want these people to have more info about me?

I tried blocking the address, but it’s coming from more than one sender’s address. It hasn’t been fun trying to get away from it. I did at last though. I finally got a message a few minutes ago saying I had been unsubscribed. I hope that’s the end of it. Since the messages were coming from more than one sender though, I’m not so sure. Time will tell.

If the authors who were having their books or book signings placed in this listing -- even if it’s their own publisher -- did so without knowing that this place subscribed people without their permission and then made it hard for them to leave, then those authors might get a hostile response they didn’t even see coming. That’s why I said that the person who’s paying for the promotion has to check into things and find out how that promotion is being done. You don’t want people thinking you are spamming them when you had no idea about it. Heck, you don’t want people thinking you are spamming them at any time. (Smile)