We are the best at what we do. All the great authors come to us to promote their works. Our services will put you in the spotlight and make you an instant bestseller. You just need to give us a few thousand dollars to talk to you about joining our team. But please, we request that you not ask about our clients. And no, we won’t put their names on our website so you can contact them and ask what they thought of our services.
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No other agency has New York under its thumb the way we do. All the top publishers come to us for their next bestseller. Our employees combined have over a hundred years worth of experience working in this industry. No other agency can represent your masterpiece better than we can. We’ve sold tons and have movie deals tossed at us from every direction. In fact, here’s a list of books we negotiated rights for three years ago and our current client list. Please note over fifty percent of the authors have a star next to their name. That means they are no longer with this agency.
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My books are taking the literary world by storm. I’m the next best thing and soon New York will realize that too. My big break is around the corner so you had better start reading my books now before you get too far behind. Simply visit my website. You should already know the address since you know my name. My site will tell you about every one of my stunning gems assuming you can wade past all of the technicolored crap and changing fonts on the home page to get to my book list. And if you do manage to circumvent the maze I created all on my own with a little help from my neighbor’s ex-boyfriend though the majority of the work was done by me, then you’ll see that my covers are so blurry that you can’t read the titles. I didn’t bother to type the titles below the pictures because you should know my covers on site, blurry or not. Also, there is no mention of which of my many publishers I graced with the presence of my books or buy links or ISBNs or any other identifiable means for you to learn more about and/or purchase this book.
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Some of you are probably rolling your eyes at the three scenarios I presented above. Yeah, well, they are true. I’ve seen them.
Can someone tell me why I should trust a publicity company that doesn’t bother to promote their clientele on their own website? Someone just dropped a few grand with you. I want to know that they got their money’s worth.
When you see an agency that is boasting about a book deal that happened X years ago (not a bestseller mind you. Matter of fact, good luck finding it in any store, online or otherwise) and is still listing clients they no longer have, shouldn’t that raise some warning bells?
Authors, when designing a website KISS (keep it simple, stupid) is a wonderful thing. Learn it. Live it. Love it. And also, while you’re doing that, please learn to give as much information as possible about your books and where they can be purchased. As a reader, I have thousands of books to choose from and I’m not going on an egg hunt through your website of chaos trying to find that one little tidbit that will lead me to a buy button, if it even exists.
Oh, and though I didn’t give you a scenario, review site people, you’re on my list too. Review sites that don’t make it readily obvious how to submit books for review and/or what the reviewers prefer to read so I don’t waste time querying a genre you don’t even like are high on my list of pet peeves at the moment.
Thank you for your time.
This has been a PSA provided by D. Renee Bagby and her lack of anything else better to write on her blog, so a random rant about nothing will have to suffice.