Comments on: PR: What Not to Do: Badger Reviewers Into Ignoring You

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:04:19 +0000

Update: GAH! They sent me another press release today. Obviously they don’t read the site. On the bright side, they did respond to my second request to get off their mailing list.

By: Johnny Bacardi

Johnny Bacardi — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:17:22 +0000

Grant: oh, for sure. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that artist was anything like the people Johanna’s referring to here. She was very professional and very nice. But that’s still a hell of big file.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:05:12 +0000

Yes, Boom! makes things very easy and helpful.

Andrew, I guess someone must be sharing things around, given how I’ve seen more than one group mention it, but I haven’t known anyone to it. Maybe I’m just not social enough with other reviewers. :)

By: Torsten Adair

Torsten Adair — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:38:48 +0000

Boom! does it right.
A simple password (which my browser remembers) and everything readable on their website. Nothing to download, images load quickly, easy to read on-screen.

Oh, and it’s good stuff.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:42:46 +0000

You’ve mentioned the onerous DRM on digital review copies before and it’s always struck me as dumb — even more so today as I’d just been reading about Steve Lieber’s bump in sales after having his book posted to 4chan: http://bit.ly/cUqDgZ

By: Grant Goggans

Grant Goggans — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:27:11 +0000

I think the same young artist was the one who contacted me for a review recently, Johnny, and while I’ll concede that was a mighty big file, I think that she did it exactly the way anybody who wants a review should do it. Here’s who I am, here’s a link to download my book if you’d like to review it. She was professional and pleasant and, frankly, everything that the horror comic publisher that Johanna has mentioned was not.

Publishers should try to be aware of the reality that once us reviewers finish a PDF, we don’t pirate it, we delete it.

By: Kenny Cather

Kenny Cather — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:26:42 +0000

While reading this, I was reflecting upon my time spent in sales. I mean, yeah, it’s not quite the same as marketing, but we had to, you know, gather money, so it was a bit more high stakes?

Anyway, everything you said was second nature for us. We (the good sales guys, anyways) *always* tried to personalize our approach and tie as much of our product as we could in with what we knew of the person we were selling to. I don’t get trying to shove something down the customer’s throat….

Also, asking, “May I please have a minute of your time?” was always better received than, “Hey you! Listen to me!!!”

By: Johnny Bacardi

Johnny Bacardi — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:39:34 +0000

While we’re sharing stories, I recently got an email from a very nice young artist who had a collection of daily webcomics coming out, along with a link to download the PDF of this book. Fine, thought I, it looks and sounds interesting.

That PDF was over 600 MB. That’s frigging HUGE, by any standards. Took me and my pathetically slow internet connection an hour to DL it.

I work with PDFs in my day job, and I know that it’s possible to create a perfectly readable one with very little loss of image quality at a size 3/4 of that.

I’m sure no inconvenience was intended, but it’s something many artists and publishers should be aware of…

By: Johanna

Johanna — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:39:26 +0000

I hope so. I didn’t respond to their last message — we’ll see if I get anything else from them.

By: Terry

Terry — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:17:52 +0000

So… Did they take you off their mailing list?

By: Thad

Thad — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:35:57 +0000

Bit of a tangent, but my worst “marketers won’t leave me alone” story: I was running a Web hosting company, and downloaded a free (as in beer) utility for the Web server I was using.

The free download required that I enter an E-Mail address and phone number. I filled them out honestly with my company info, because I was working on behalf of a company.

Well, you can see where this is going — the free download was essentially a foot-in-the-door thing where they started E-Mailing me to advertise their other products. I gave them a couple of polite, not-firm-enough “I’m not interested at this time” responses. And then one of them called me on the phone. She hadn’t bothered to check what timezone I was in, and my company cell woke me up at 5 AM.

After my response on the phone — a rather incredulous “IT’S 5 O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!” — she sent me an E-Mail apologizing but still trying to sell me on the company’s products. My response was a firm “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” which I still think let her off easy.

I quit that job after I started having nightmares about my cell ringing in the middle of the night. My current job is strictly 8-5.