Authors pushing books

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

As far as posting in the deals section goes, I suggested a while back that we might want a split into subsections:

device deals
book deals
bookstore deals

Device deals would be for sales on ebook reading devices, like when Woot had refurb 600s for sale. That one's pretty obvious.

Book deals would be for discounts/freebies on individual books, which is where "My book is half price on Smashwords this weekend" would go. Those wouldn't necessarily have to be posted by the authors; any deals that someone spots that are specific to a specific book or books would go there.

I hardly ever go to "Deals, Freebies, and Resources". Separated as above it would be more useful to me.

"General Discussions" and "Reading Recommendations" could still be used to discuss books. That wouldn't be affected. Signatures mentioning a book or three in any area would be just fine too.

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

As far as posting in the deals section goes, I suggested a while back that we might want a split into subsections:

device deals
book deals
bookstore deals

Device deals would be for sales on ebook reading devices, like when Woot had refurb 600s for sale. That one's pretty obvious...

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

I hardly ever go to "Deals, Freebies, and Resources". Separated as above it would be more useful to me...

Would thread prefixes be enough separation, using colour codes and the ability to filter by prefix, or would you prefer separate sub forums for each of the deals.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

Would thread prefixes be enough separation, using colour codes and the ability to filter by prefix, or would you prefer separate sub forums for each of the deals.

I'd prefer separate sub-forums for a couple of reasons:

1. It's easier for me, as a user, then having to choose my filtering or look for codes. If I'm looking to find a book to read, I can just go straight to Deals/Books instead of having to remember to set my filtering, and then have to change it when I want to find out if there's anything happening like that awesome O'Reilly sale a couple of weeks ago.

2. It's easier for the people posting, for much the same reason. They just pick the right forum and post, and don't even have to know about, let alone use, prefixes. Therefore, they -- especially the newer ones -- are more likely to get the right posts in the right places, which saves a lot of work for the mods.

Nothing can be too easy for some users. Consider the fellow yesterday decided who the most appropriate way to ask for help with a problem with books on his PRS-505's SD card was by necroposting in a two-year-old discussion of .mobi DRM in the developer's section. Despite, y'know, the fact that his question had nothing to do with .mobi, DRM, or development. So the easier we can make things for the newbies -- and a fair number of the people promoting books are newbies and have no interest in being anything else -- the less tidying up will be required. Separate subsections are intuitive; prefixes require more thought and more effort.

I would like to see a voluntary "DRM free" prefix, though, so I can go straight to those books.

[jinlo]

As if in cosmic reward for making any kind of comment regarding this issue, I am now ready to add another thread to the self-promotion offer pile. I’m going to go over to the Deals section right now and announce my latest ebook. It’s not free, but it’s only a $1.99, so I consider that a deal. If the Deals board was categorized as Worldwalker suggests, I would have placed it in the Book Deals sub-forum instead.

I will not put anything about it in the Writer’s Corner because I don’t participate enough in give and take with other writers here to justify that action. I also won’t start any threads in the Recommendations section because I feel that should be left to a reader not the writer. If there was a Self-Promotion board, I would also put it there, but it doesn’t yet exist.

This was not meant as an attempt to place an advertisement here in the feedback section, but only as a demonstration of my personal thought process for promoting my book. I admit that I sometimes use MR for this selfish purpose, but I also believe that's why the Deals section was created.

I hope this helps in any considerations toward adjusting the boards.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by jinlo

As if in cosmic reward for making any kind of comment regarding this issue, I am now ready to add another thread to the self-promotion offer pile. I’m going to go over to the Deals section right now and announce my latest ebook. It’s not free, but it’s only a $1.99, so I consider that a deal. If the Deals board was categorized as Worldwalker suggests, I would have placed it in the Book Deals sub-forum instead.

I will not put anything about it in the Writer’s Corner because I don’t participate enough in give and take with other writers here to justify that action. I also won’t start any threads in the Recommendations section because I feel that should be left to a reader not the writer. If there was a Self-Promotion board, I would also put it there, but it doesn’t yet exist.

This was not meant as an attempt to place an advertisement here in the feedback section, but only as a demonstration of my personal thought process for promoting my book. I admit that I sometimes use MR for this selfish purpose, but I also believe that's why the Deals section was created.

I hope this helps in any considerations toward adjusting the boards.

I like your reasoning. I must admit that I don't read the Deals section anyway, so I don't much care what's in it, but $1.99 for a book is indeed a deal.

I'm glad you won't be posting to the Reading recommendations section, and for exactly the same reason you gave. And since I do use this section, if you posted about your book in it, I'd have to hate you forever Well, until next week at least...

[Ea]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I definitely agree there is a problem. I think there should be a "self-promotion" sub-forum, so that things are clear and other forums are not polluted. That probably wouldn't solve everything though, I agree more rules may be necessary on what is allowed and not.

What worries me most is people posting in "reading recommendations" to plug their own works, especially (but not only) if they don't make it clear that it's self-promotion. That forum is meant for people who have read a book and liked it (or not) to give their honest opinion about it. Of course I'm sure a writer is honest when they tell us their book is the best, but I'm not interested in their opinion in this case...

I definitely agree. I don't think things here is so bad yet, but I've participated in a few threads at the Amazon Kindle forums, and it's mostly self-promoting writers who post. And I'm mostly, like, "delete" whenever I get an email of a new post. I just don't like it unless I specifically signed up for it. And I know I didn't at MR.

I'm really worried that over time this issue will clog up the MR boards.

[pshrynk]

We could probably do some tags like that.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by jinlo

I’m going to go over to the Deals section right now and announce my latest ebook.

That's news. It belongs in the NEWS forum.

Hay mods. Can we get his thread moved to the right place before someone gets angry?

[Worldwalker]

News should be (at least in my opinion) news about the ebook industry, not about individual authors' books.

Admins? Can we get the Book Fair set up, and the Deals forum split done, before things go all pear-shaped? *puppy dog eyes*

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Then we will warn them and, if they ignore our warnings, we will ban them. We've done it in the past, and we'll do it again if necessary, reluctant though we always are to do so.

How about you charge them? Not for a freebies and deals announcement but for the hey I see you're talking about the new reader sony is working on, you know you could buy my book in that format right? That's not being a forum memeber, that's spam. If they really need ad space in that thread they can buy the adspace. There's a lot of talk around the topic of people deserve to be paid for everything, shouldn't they pay mobileread for displaying their ads in unrelated threads?

And no I'm not talking about sigs.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

How about you charge them?

EVERYONE would have to give a credit card when they join. Every time you sign on the computer would have to check if it's still valid and has enough for 5 or 10 fines (just in case they figure to blast us with spam).

Most of the time someone will join MR and them start promoting their book(s). Sometimes I don't think that they know they are doing anything wrong.

Read the rules? That’s not in human nature. But we can remind them that there ARE rules and that they should read them.

This is not a crisis. Some of us would like to see certain changes. Some are more vocal and positive on the changes that they want and some want no change. But if there are or aren't any changes I don't think that you'll see people deserting.

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

EVERYONE would have to give a credit card when they join. Every time you sign on the computer would have to check if it's still valid and has enough for 5 or 10 fines (just in case they figure to blast us with spam).

well it would cut down on the video conversion software spammers... But i was thinking of a friendly reminder form a mod. They edit the post as held for moderation until the blatant ad is paid for. If they pony up $10 they can have their post back if they don't the post can read xxx_perosn is trying to place ads without paying for them. The authors would be taking a big hit to their rep if they spam and don't pay.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

But if there are or aren't any changes I don't think that you'll see people deserting.

Not yet, no, but I think over time, as the ratio of book promotions to things other than book promotions increases, people who are looking for news, writers' chat, bookstore sales, etc., will start to check back less often because when they go to the sections that formerly held those things, they see only books. Since they're not around as much, less discussion will take place, and it will snowball, to the point where there's nothing left but book promotions -- at which point the authors, too, will be getting screwed, because the book buyers will have drifted elsewhere. A bit of organization now, setting up the Book Fair section and splitting Deals into Deals/Devices, Deals/Books, and Deals/Stores, would ensure that MR keeps working for everyone.

Think about it in terms of sports. Imagine a sports forum with only one section. Mostly, it's full of baseball fans, dutifully glorifying and adulating the Red Sox, and everyone is happy. Then football fans start showing up, in increasing numbers, and righteously praising the Patriots. After a while, there's so much football talk going on that the baseball fans don't see a lot of baseball threads, so they don't come around as much. They start fewer baseball topics and don't respond as much to existing ones. Eventually they've all drifted away and there are only football fans there. So the forum has traded its baseball fans for football fans, which is not a good thing if it's supposed to be a general-interest sports forum; it needs them all.

This could have been avoided splitting it into a baseball section and a football section, and then as needed adding a basketball section and so forth. That would allow the forum to keep its Red Sox fans, and add the Patriots fans, Celtics fans, Bruins fans, Revolution fans, and other right-thinking people (Yankees fans would, of course, be IP-banned).

In other words, it's just basic forum management. When one particular category of discussion starts to dominate a section, you split it off into its own section so that it doesn't drown out the minority categories. Everybody wins.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Not yet, no, but I think over time, as the ratio of book promotions to things other than book promotions increases, people who are looking for news, writers' chat, bookstore sales, etc., will start to check back less often because when they go to the sections that formerly held those things, they see only books.

That sounds like one of the reasons that I stopped watching TV. Tired of the ads. That and the shows became more and more stupid. No, there pretty much where they were before. I just got tired of watching the same old thing with new faces.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

Read the rules? That’s not in human nature. But we can remind them that there ARE rules and that they should read them.

This is not a crisis. Some of us would like to see certain changes. Some are more vocal and positive on the changes that they want and some want no change. But if there are or aren't any changes I don't think that you'll see people deserting.

Well said