Book Surge Knows How To Market Their Services
October 23, 2007 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
This morning I clicked on an ad for BookSurge, a self-publishing company with some sort of hook to Amazon.com. Like most, they offer a free report. In order to get that report I had to give them my phone number as well as other contact info. I almost didn’t do it, but I wanted to be able to report here.
The report, a six-page .pdf is fine, and even contains some new information. According to them, the average writer spends 475 hours writing a novel and 725 hours writing a non-fiction book. I have no idea if that’s true, and my hunch is they don’t either. But I may quote them on my next ghostwriting bid.
Be that as it may, I’ve become more and more suspicious of many of the self-publishing companies because they market their ancillary services so hard. And sure enough, I just got a phone call from them… less than three hours after I filled in the form.
If I’d been thinking, I would have pretended I was an author looking to self-publishing. Instead, I more or less cut to the chase. Yes, they charge a fair amount for editing, and yes, they have a variety of services at varying costs.
None of which makes a whit of difference if you don’t have a solid marketing plan you’re willing and able to work effectively. And if you do, why would you pay for the extra services? Sigh.
Write well and often,

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Sigh? Why ’sigh’?
I filled in the BookSurge online form last night, and had a similar experience. A salesman called today to ’sell’ me on self-publishing. Natch.
He moved the conversation away from CreateSpace. Quickly. I just got an e-mail follow up with handy links to plenty of ‘upsell’.
Of course you know the value of such things, because you’re in the industry. But think of how this allows first-time authors to get their start! They can actually get their crappy, spellchecked but unedited Harry Potter Knockoff in print four there family and friends!
So what if Amazon cashes in on the weak, the lazy, the grammar-challenged? So what if Amazon turns into a proving ground (or universal slushpile) for the publishers to pick and choose from?
I’m not seeing the bad here. Help me out.
Yours truly,
-Zero
Well, CZ, maybe… the problem is Amazon seems to be trying to corner the self-publishing market… I don’t know about you, but I like it when markets don’t end up being monopolies or near monopolies.