Okay, a couple of odd emails I’ve received over the past few days now make sense. I received nearly identically worded emails from different people with requests for reviews based on reviews they’ve seen of mine on Amazon.
Um, I rarely review on Amazon.
The outlandish difference between the genres of their books was odd as well.
This morning, one of my Facebook peeps told me they saw an app being marketed to authors to help them find and contact Amazon reviewers.
STOP. USING. THOSE.
I swear to the Goddess, the next person who sends me a review “request” like that? I’m going to promptly leave them a 1-star review and state it’s because they used a spammy app to SPAM ME.
Seriously.
WTF is wrong with you people? Go read Kristen Lamb’s blog and build a RELATIONSHIP with your readers! You are NOT going to be some overnight sensation doing this, so STOP WITH THE SPAMMY!!! It’ll only piss people off (like me) and backfire on you in a BIG WAY. BUILD a relationship! Do the groundwork.
THERE IS NO SHORTCUT, but doing something like this is a sure way to LOSE yourself readers. (And, worse, get yourself 1-star reviews from people like me who HATE spammy tactics.)
GRRRRR!
Seems kinda dumb. But OTOH I probably wouldn’t remember the names of people who sent me that kind of spam. So there may not be much of a backlash, especially since I likely wouldn’t have read their stuff anyway.
Unless I blogged about it, and named names. And Google helped everybody else remember.
Which is a bit harsh. But if this became common…I might start doing it.
I am going to start emailing back the people who email me and warn them that I’m considering leaving them a 1-star review based on their spam tactics and give them a link to Kristen Lamb’s blog and hope they learn the lesson.