Samples and Spammers and Pirates! Oh My!
Another quick peek at some websites looking to help, promote, or capitalize on indie writers.
BookDaily.com is an interesting little idea. Authors can sign up and upload samples (usually the first chapters) of their books. These are then put into the BookDaily catalog and potential readers can choose books and genres to get those samples, via e-mail. The chapter comes in a regular e-mail – it’s not a file you have to download to your e-reader. There are (as of this writing) about 60,000 books on Bookdaily, and the site says that over 212,000 chapters were mailed within the previous 24 hours. Unfortunately, it costs $49 for EACH book to be actively promoted at BookDaily. This may or may not be an advantage for an author, depending on his advertising budget. BookDaily does claim to send the book sample to at least 25,000 readers each month. There is an option to just add your book, via ISBN or Amazon ASIN, but it does not appear (at least eight hours later) to allow anyone to find your book in their system.
Bookmatchers.com is sort of a dating service for readers…and books. It claims to take information on a reader’s likes and dislikes and set them up with suggestions for the next book they should read. There are also a lot of suggestion options; in searching for fiction, it will ask you as to whether or not you like the main protagonists and antagonists of a story to be a particular sex or race, if you want it the story to have a light, comedic feel or a dark and gritty one, and so forth. The defaults for all those particular options are luckily “No Preference.” This site has potential and is very no-frills. Other than covers uploaded by authors, there are no graphics on the site. Bookmatchers is currently free for readers and authors, and it is fairly easy to upload your book’s information. Beware of making any mistakes in your entries though, as right now you have to e-mail the site to make corrections. (Accounts for authors are a feature that will be implemented soon.) This is a great idea in theory and could be very useful if the site starts getting more users and more traffic. Unfortunately, there are only 879 titles and 26 genres in their database as of this writing.
If you’re an author who has a print book, you may want to look at the Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy Library Recovery Facebook page. This group is working to help East Coast libraries that were destroyed or depleted by the effects of Hurricane Sandy. If you would like to donate a copy of your print book to this effort, go visit that page and get the details on how to do that. But don’t spam them with an ad for your book or an ad for whatever service you happen to be offering – it is bloody tacky and you’ll end up alienating a lot of people. And you might end up profiled here BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ahem. Sorry. And last, and certainly least, the pirate site of the week: EBookZap.com. This is another scammer trying to use compressed files and dodgy websites to phish information and install malware on your computer. Mighty nice of them to include Amazon Affiliate links to all the books, right above the various mirror sites were people can “download for free.” These scumbags have a fancy looking site, and from their Facebook page, have already ensnared a few of the unwary with their asshattery.
Guess what? Legitimate book websites don’t do that sort of stuff. They don’t “get cracking at it” in quite the same manner as these bozos. They either have the ebook or can point you in the proper direction of a legally-obtainable copy, in ebook or DTB form. These guys can’t even keep their pirated pseudo-content straight, as most of the links are onto storage websites like DepositFiles or MegaUpload and have already been removed as illegal content. We’re talking fourth-rate even among pirates. Captain Feathersword could fight these maroons off.
Try and remember: Most pirates probably look a lot like this. Except with laptops and mobile phones instead of the cool boots.
Well, that’s another post in the books. I’ll be back next week with more, so until then, always remember: Don’t let the con-men and the pirates make you into a sucker!
