Where to start?
PP does have
its own Facebook page, which is relentlessly sell-sell-sell. It doesn't make me want to engage with it at all. Good marketing and publicity establishes a connection between the product and its potential buyers: PP's Facebook page fails on that level, as far as I'm concerned.
As for its website: oh dear. There's no way I'd hand over my email address to what is essentially a blank site. PP's requirement that we hand over our information in order to get any sort of access to the site suggests to me that the people behind it can't even present their own site effectively, so why would I want them involved in presenting me? Or my books?
The Author's Marketing Service (it's a service for just one author? really?) website contains spelling mistakes and dodgy punctuation and it states,
There is one thing that every author has in common: every author needs more publicity! Publishing companies just aren’t providing the same public relations services that they used to, and publicists are way too expensive for most authors.
That seems to equate publicity with public relations, when they're very different things; and it is promoting the myth that publishers don't market the books they publish, which isn't true.
The suggestion that "publicists are way too expensive for most authors" is interesting too.
Here’s the price for the complete Author’s Marketing Service:
$399.00 one-time fee, and $39.95 per month!
A three month subscription with AMS comes to $518.85, which is not cheap. How many extra copies would a book have to sell to recoup that amount?
I've worked with freelance publicists and if they do their job properly, they make the books they work on sell better--which brings in more money, which covers their costs (we hope). Their costs vary widely but the ones I've used have solid experience in publishing, they understand how books are bought and sold and how publishing works, and they are very effective.
I have to ask: what experience do the people behind this service have of promoting books, of working in publishing? What results have they had apart from the apparent successes they've had in promoting their principal's own title?
Then there's this:
Here’s what
Author’s Marketing Service has to offer:
- Custom Author’s Website: We’ll design a top-quality, custom site similar to this one that will brand you as an expert author, including a custom domain name.
So for that much money we get a website similar to the AMS site? These are the links which show at the top of that site right now:
I don't know what "#263 (no title)" or "#242 (no title)" mean, but it seems that neither do the people behind the website as the links lead to 404 errors and "page not found" warnings complete with a list of related links which I will not click on.
I am not impressed by any of this. I see no evidence that my paying them to publicise my books would achieve anything more than putting money in their pocket. While others might find it useful it's definitely not for me.
