Book-Promotion.com (John Eidemak)

Has anyone any experience of this company? Sounds like a bunch of con-artists to me. http://www.book-promotion.com/

This service in particular seems very suspect:

YOUR BOOK PRESENTED AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2009.

The use of the new technology has made the festival wider, bringing people to Cannes, with limited budget, but bundles of talent. The fact that film and TV, due to digital technology can be produced by more people and at lower prices has made the demand for books and manuscripts bigger and wider.
Every film or TV play needs an idea, a book or a manuscript to get started and very few producers can afford not to listen to an idea or concept, even if they might only give it less than half a minute for a decision.

At the Cannes Film Festival 2009, we will promote new books with potential, to the right people.

If you are interested, we need ten books sent to this address in France:
Cannes Book Promotion 2009, Compagnie Provencale, 7 Rue de La Resistance, 83830 Bargemon, Provence, France with your business card or a label glued inside the book cover. We do the rest. The books have to be delivered before the last day in March 2009. Any negotiation is strictly between the author/publisher and the film production company.
We are not involved and we charge no commission or arrangement fee.
Our cost is £250, or US$ 490.00 payable when the books are sent to us. The price covers taking the books to the Festival and delivering them to producers, who in our opinion could be interested in reading it themselves or having it read on their behalf.

A list with personal names and company names will be supplied after the Festival, for you to follow up say four weeks after the festival by sending a short letter by normal post.

This service is not available to authors/publishers who have not promoted through us.

Our capacity is limited and we sold out fast for 2008, so if interested, book now for 2009.

Hi Victoria

Yes that is what I thought. For £400 they do a bit of publicity for you and give you a seven-page website for which they make the most ludicrous claims I have ever seen! They state:

"This is not just an ordinary web site, but a proper author’s motivated web site."

... but when you go to one of the examples what do you see? An ordinary website! LOL.

I was dismayed to find no paypal link on the author's websites, and reading further I discover that book.promotion.com charges an additional £95 for adding a Paypal Buy It Now button.

I added a paypal button to one of my webpages only yesterday. It took me 90 seconds! Literally.

My other gripe is that they claim:

"Your author’s website is needed to handle inquiries and do the selling for your new book".

That is a bit ambiguous, but they appear to be claiming that just having a website will sell the book for you.

I've followed through all the links to Amazon and find that none of the authors they have been paid to do promotion for have any Amazon sales rank number at all (OK mine is pretty low, but at least I've got one!)

Another criticism is that included in the £400 package is the promise to write a favourable review of the book on Amazon. This they have indeed done, but given the review writer's name as "Book-Promotion". A bit of a giveaway huh?

I find all this highly amusing and yet at the same time tragic, for I feel so sorry for those authors who have stumped up the £400 plus maybe another £250 to have their book "presented" at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sounds to me like the people who own the company are going to Cannes for a holiday and have worked out a way to make SP authors pay for it!

Helena Wojtczak