Author Name: Jay Thomas Willis
Book Title(s): Implications For Effective Psychotherapy With African-Americans; As Soon as the Weather Breaks; The Cotton is High; Born to be Destroyed; Paranoid but not Stupid; Why Black Americans Behave as They Do; Hard Luck; When the Village Idiot Get Started; Educated Misunderstanding; The Devil in Angelica.
Marketing Subject: Being on the Lookout for Marketing Scams
They say, “fool me once, your problem; fool me twice my problem.” I have been fooled even a third time when it comes to Marketing scams, or what I perceive as marketing scams. Be sure it doesn’t happen to you.
The first time I was new on the scene. I didn’t know what else to do. I was anxious to market my books and get them before the public. I had published several books, but had failed in the marketing department. I borrowed over $3,000.00 to launch a marketing campaign. The marketing company had been writing to me several times a month for over a year, and I finally decided to give them a try. Six months after I sent them the money, I finally figured out that they had no real intentions of promoting my books. Several months later I heard through the Internet that they were being investigated for fraud. Some other victims formed an organization with the objective of pursuing the company for getting monies back that had been paid to them. At this time I had decided to cut my loses. They were pressured into going completely out of business.
The second time, books sales were slow. I decided I couldn’t just keep doing nothing, so I got fooled by an Internet company promising to do email campaigns as well as some other campaigns. I gave them at least $1,000.00 upfront to do these campaigns. Six months passed and I hadn’t sold a single book. I decided I had been scammed again. They even had the nerve to contact me later wanting me to do more business with them, having no regard for the fact that they hadn’t been the least bit effective.
A third time, I was approached by another Internet company promising to drive people to my Web site. I gave them at least $1,000.00. Again, after several months I hadn’t sold a single book. It didn’t take much imagination to realize I had been scammed again.
I must admit from the beginning my publisher had warned me that some of these companies promised to do things that they couldn’t or wouldn’t do. And there was a question about whether enlisting these companies really made a difference in terms of book sales.
If you are going to enlist a company to promote and market your books, be sure you know something about it. Be sure it is tried and true, and have proven itself in the market place. Otherwise, you might be simply throwing your money into a hole with no bottom.
