Mass-marketing by authors?
Folks: here's why PA is doing such a disservice to its authors. Real publishers, even small presses, can get your books into the distribution channels where the titles will be put in front of buyers from libraries and bookstores.
PA leaves its authors slogging through the swamps, chained to a onesy-twosy publishing method that guarantees they can't get into the channel and onto the same boat as the authors who have real publishers. They are trying to create an alternate marketing channel, for an overpriced product of variable quality.
Fri Sep 15, 2006 4:41 pm
Post subject: PA MARKETING IDEA?
"I was daydreaming today wandering how to make PA wealthy when suddenly a wacky idea came to mind. After careful research I figured out that PA makes money off of the books they sale, then why not try to sell as many books as possible. PA has a treasure trove of books and authors. Why not bulk mail their titles to residents across the United States for purchase, much like double day book club."
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[brief explanation of problems with bulk mail]"Nevertheless, I think your idea could work, if PA, or a large group of PA authors who wanted to pool their resources, could get their hands on lists of people who have demonstrated a favorable pattern of behavour by ordered a certain amount of books online during the past year.
In fact, with the way PA has been slighted on the promotional end of the industry, I'm suprised they haven't tried this themselves. Cut out all those middlemen who pay them little respect and go directly to the paying customer. They certainly have enough titles with a wide enough range of interests.
They already have changed the way the publishing industry does business with authors, now it is time for them to change the way the promotional end of the business is conducted, for their benefit and the benefit of the thousands of authors they have published."