SHE'LL TAKE IT

[mpcarter]

Hi, this is my novel, published in March of this year.It's a comedy about a kleptomaniac in Manhattan who falls in love with a lawyer who helps prosecute shoplifters.Dark, demented and absolutley hilarious.Thanks for checking me out! marycarterbooks.com.

[riverc0il]

Chris, don't you think you should be bagging this shameless self promotional spam topic instead of encouraging it? Just my opinion, but use of internet forums for first post self promotion spam is a serious breach of netiquette and it is usually not tolerated on most forums. Edited by: riverc0il at: 4/23/06 6:31 pm

[Chris OConnor]

Here is an active link to her site.

[Chris OConnor]

Riverc0ilI don't feel that way at all, but I appreciate your perspective and want you to always feel comfortable voicing your opinion. We're a book discussion community and she is an author struggling to get her book to market. I actually empathize with her and wish there were more ways of offering help to aspiring authors. This particular forum is devoted to book suggestions and she is suggesting her book. I encourage any and all authors to post within this forum. If her post was in the Member Introductions & Journals forum disguised as an "Introductory" post I'd probably move it to this forum, but by being placed here where it belongs she is simply trying to get some publicity. I applaud this and know firsthand what a bear it is getting visibility.I regularly make posts in other forums trying to draw in new members to BookTalk. Maybe some of our members will find her book appealing. Aren't we all book lovers? If she was selling cookware I'd delete it or ban her - but she is selling what we are obviously buying.

[riverc0il]

Cool beans, thanks for explaining your perspective Chris! I hope my putting forth my thoughts was not too forward, and I appreciate your suggestion to keep voicing my thoughts. I look at it as someone moching off your web site for free advertising. Just my perspective as a fellow web master and I fully respect and appreciate where you are coming from on giving an assist to an unknown author.

[Chris OConnor]

Please always feel free to share your thoughts with me. You're right that she is "mooching" off BookTalk, but I don't blame her and I encourage such mooching. This is a brutally competitive world and any opportunity an author can get their hands on to gain publicity for their book(s) is to be taken advantage of.Here is what we actually gain from her post...1. A new book suggestionOne or more of our members might actually have an interest in what she is offering.2. Increased membershipNow that she has posted on our site our number of members increase by one. This may seem trivial, but people see the total number of BookTalk members are are more apt to get involved with our community if we appear to be successful. 3. A new memberShe might come back and get involved in our community.4. We won't be hypocritesI make similar posts on Craig's List and other sites in an effort to gain quality members. How can I complain if I do the same exact thing? The truth is running BookTalk is expensive and challenging. Any opportunity I can find to advertise for free I will jump on. I just don't have the money to spend on paid advertisements like I wish I did. This author is in the same boat and if I can help her I'd like to do so. Hopefully, other ezboard owners will be as generous and allow us to advertise BookTalk on their boards. Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 4/24/06 10:29 am

[Graydon Wilson]

I agree with Chris.I would object only if she had been promoting the book without disclosing her connection (the way George Will did when he was writing newspaper columns praising Ronald Reagan while at the same time was secretly a speech writer employed by Reagan). But she's up front about it. I do not believe that a person should be barred from nominating a book or commenting on it simply because she is the author, as long as she makes the appropriate disclosure. Everyone understands that the author favors the book and that would be a piece of information simply to be factored in, just as we would do if it were Penn Warren promoting All The King's Men (in my view, the best American novel published in the 20th century).

[Chris OConnor]

Well said.