Let me see if I’m reading this correctly:
I do Step 1 and you “pre-screen” my writing for $20. For that, I receive a pass or a fail. From the way it’s written on the webpage, I pass as long as I have fewer than ten typing mistakes in the first thirty pages--is this correct? I’m paying $20 for spell-check?
Next, I do Step 2 for $70 (I am now down $90). You say that your, “readers are readers”; are they random people pulled off the street? Volunteers? Members of a particular writing group? I’m not finding what qualifications these readers have, if any, or how they are selected anywhere on your website. I’d appreciate it if you could point me where that’s stated since I may have missed it. Most readers who are not also writers likely couldn’t tell a story arc from the Arc de Triomphe. Nor are they familiar with book formatting in any technical sense of the word. They can tell you whether they liked the pace, character(s) or plot(s), but that’s going to be a very subjective thing. As for spelling, grammar and punctuation, well. Most of those readers would give a pass to, “I haz a confuzed,” which about sums up my current state.
So, to sum it up, for $90 I get a button that I can post on my blog/website/wherever that links back to the Book Birr website which displays my book, which, if I have half a brain, was already displayed to death on my own blog/website/wherever. Plus an additional 30 bucks if I want the book displayed for a full year, so $120. I’m honestly not seeing the up-side to me here. A button...pardon me, badge that will mean bupkis to the average person reading my website unless I have explanatory text near it: "See that? Yes! I meet minimum standards on this website over here that I paid for! Woot!!!11elebenty!! Now, buy my danged book!"
As to the “Harebrained” scheme (I have sworn not to pick nits and point out that the picture is of an agouti Lionhead and not, in any sense of the word, a “hare”): I send you a swack of books or pay for a swack of branded thumbdrives. You sell them at a discount and keep all the funds as far as I can make out. This benefits me how, exactly? And what is an “instructional insert”? A synopsis of the book? A survey for the reader to fill out--is that where the readers from Step 2 come from?
Free pro-tips from someone who’s designed webpages:
Do not, under any circumstances, make a webpage live just to make it live. Save it as an HTML file on your own computer.
Open it in your browser and look at it over the course of a few days--do you love it? Do you need to tweak the format?
Check it obsessively for typos, particularly when you’re attempting to sell a service to writers, let alone publishers. And especially check for typos of your own website name. When you referred to your own site as “Book Bier”, it made me think of, “a place where books go to die”. Not good.
Drag over several friends and make them all read it, also checking for typos.
Make your site live and then check it again, verifying that all links work the way you want them to and checking, yes, once again, for typos.
Do not make “cute” comments slagging off some of the very people you’re attempting to sell to--”I left publishers out of this here, because, while to some extent publishers are gate keepers, they are primarily concerned with making a profit. Their concern for wordiness, misused modifiers and the like is in direct proportion to how much profit they stand to make. (Which ever way you think I meant this flip it over and you'll see this concept travels all directions.)” (bolding added) Really? You don’t think a publisher might look at a page marked, “Writers” just out of idle curiosity? "Damn those publishers! Damn them all for knowing that a professionally produced product sells better because, oddly, people like professionally produced products. Damn them all, I say! Wait..what?"
This? This is not hate. What this is is a cold, impersonal look at a business attempting to sell me something. A business which hasn’t laid out any of the qualifications you or your employees (if any) have to do what you’re telling me you will do. Nor are you explaining how, exactly, any of this will be a benefit to me.