Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi,
Does anyone have experience with different promotional advertising packages? I goggled a bit and there seem to be several that claim to advertise your book for you to thousands of customers via television shows etc.
Here is one of the links I found.
http://www.pieceofcakepr.com/lp2/?gcl...

Thank you everyone!

Helen

A little digging shows me they don't have the best service. But that's all I could really find. I'll continue looking to see if I can find you any more info.

Thank you Riley, I appreciate it.

I haven't run across that one yet, but I tend to get emails of a similar sort fairly often. What I end up doing is googling the phrase, "Is (company name) a scam?"
Half the time, I just get the company name typed and the words 'a scam' auto populate, which typically tells me what I need to know.

"Vultures! Vultures, everywhere."

Owen wrote: ""Vultures! Vultures, everywhere.""

I'm stealing that to rename the title...somepeople just look and post, and I don't want this to become a frickin' promotion thread.

Maybe this could be a good springboard for the 'Mods Investigate' thing you've got going on.

But...it's stuffy from all the pot smoke...maybe I shouldn't smoke so much of it in here...

V.M. wrote: " 1 person to do the unnecessary-air-duct crawl "

Oh, NOW I know why you chose me to be a mod. Make the little guy do the dusty, dirty work. FINE!!!

V.M. wrote: "Ok we'll need some secret identities, monitoring equipment, 3 exit strategies, 1 person to do the unnecessary-air-duct crawl and 2 people to STAY IN THE VAN."

I'MNTHEVAN!

I've just heard too many horror stories of companies that promise to do marketing/advertising for you. It's probably better just to buy advertising for yourself.

Some of these services (Author Solutions) ask for thousands of dollars for "packages" that basically do nothing. I, somehow, have stayed off the mailing lists of companies like this, but Writer Beware is full of reports of scams.

Probably the best thing to do is sign up for a place like Author Marketing Club ($150 a year, I think) which offers tools for authors to market their books.

lol...sorry, this thread made me laugh due to vultures and exit strategies. What cracks me up more is there are people right here in this group (ahem) who are willing to save you time, money and infection from vulture attacks that have not been utilized as a friendly tool. OK, yes...me. I have offered services for free in many cases...because I am in same iceberg - surrounded cruise liner here in frigid shark-infested waters and don't really want to have to lay on a piece of floating wardrobe blowing my rescue whistle while losing my favorite necklace to Davy Jones' locker. Why use ridiculously predatory services when there are resources that could be mutually beneficial and let you be King/Queen of your world instead? Did I use too many metaphors? :-)

Bird flu kills, just say no to butt crack...and stay outta the Mystery Mobile unless you plan on also acting as the rapid response team in full tactical gear to bring doritoes and storm the castle in defense of our merry band because I hear the Pirhana Apocalypse is more closely linked to advertising companies than the CDC and FEMA want to admit.

Quiet the Piranha overlords will hear you and then we'll be in trouble

OK. Focus people. Christina, you said you knew how to do these things, can you elsborate? I for one am not too old to admit. I could use some edjucating here.

Back to your crazy A-Team adventure... I'm still n da van.

:)

Nick,
Thank you, I will check out Author Marketing Club.
I get the Author Solutions e-mails and yes, it is very expensive.

I would be willing to pay a little bit, if it would help. But most of it seems as if it is just a scam.

Now, back to vultures! I actually saw real ones a couple of weeks ago when I went for a run. They are beautiful birds.

If it helps, I'll do the crawl, but only if you're absolutely certain it's unnecessary.