Intersting attempt to promote self-publishing

[yendi]

nihilistic_kid (amongst other folks on my FL) has occasionally often poked fun at the attempts by self-published writers to promote their books, and even recently had one self-published writer attempt to spam his LJ to promote his novel. I'd always thought that was about as impressive a job of chutzpah-based marketing a SPW could come up with.

But I was wrong.

Somehow, a SPW of thrillers managed to get his novel listed by Amazon-generated-spam as a novel that fans of Freakonimics would like. Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt goes into detail in his blog, although he's not sure (any more than I am) how this was pulled off.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You can buy a spam slot.

[yendi]

They're that affordable? I figured that Amazon sold them in general (I mean, the alternative is to hire a team of full-time editors and such to keep track of new books and make recommendations), but I figured that it would also be something that the average non-publisher couldn't afford.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Self-pubbed weenies have been known to spend thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars promoting their books.

That's what makes the vanity publishing industry work, after all.

Idle Reading

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

Man, I read this as "You can buy spamalot".