scams

The Mail I Get: Booktweep Edition

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I’ve been getting spammed with emails lately from an awful book promotion service called Booktweep.

We saw your book “The Pursuit: A Fox and O’Hare Novel” at Amazon. We would like to help you in the Promotional efforts of “The Pursuit: A Fox and O’Hare Novel” to boost the number of sales and ranking. We will act as an extra helping hand in marketing your book so that you can get more time to write your next one. You can check our website and discuss your promotion queries and your Book Sales target. For more info just visit our website and write to us. Our website is https://booktweep.com/product/signup/

So I took a look at the Booktweep website. It’s a mess. Basically, you pay them $14.99 a month and they will send out terrible twitter ads about your book.  Here are three examples of their work:

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I sent the promotional visionaries at Booktweep this note:

Here’s some advice for you on your promotional efforts.

1. Research the authors you are contacting. If you had looked into me, you’d know that THE PURSUIT hit #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists on its debut four weeks ago and that we don’t need your tweet help.

2. Hire someone familiar with the English language to write your twitter ads. The ads you are running now humiliate you and your clients.

3. Hire someone familiar with the English language to write your website. It’s embarrassing and unprofessional to have phrases like this as subject headings on your website:

Why to choose Booktweep?

How it works?

So, why to wait ?

(FYI, the correct phrasing is: Why choose Booktweep? and How does it work? and So why wait?)

In addition to those inept headings, you have phrases like this:

5.8 Millions Tweet Impressions

15.7 Thousands Profile visits of @Ebookjunction

Million and Thousand do not need to be plural. Someone familiar with English would know better.

I could go on and on. Why would anyone pay you to promote their work when you do such an awful, sloppy job?

A Horror in Horror

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Open Casket Press

Book Editing Terror!

Author Stant Litore is warning horror writers to be wary of publisher/editor Anthony Giangregorio and his much-maligned Open Casket Press. Litore alleges that Griangregorio goes far beyond traditional book editing, massively rewriting manuscripts and then publishing the altered works without the consent of the authors. Griangregorio has been known to change the gender of characters and add rape scenes. This outrageously over-the-top editing and rewriting amounts to what Litore calls “a crime against intellectual property.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s certainly unprofessional, unethical and inept. Another blogger, Cussedness Corner, warns authors away from Giangregorio as well by offering a horrifying, line-by-line analysis of Open Casket’s terrible author contract.