Some honest feedback needed...

[Hywel]

Hi All, I'm new to this newsgroup but hoped you wouldn't mind if I asked a favour? I would like to try and gain the honest opinions of members of "rec.gardens" on a gardening book we are about to publish and as such I would like to give away 10 copies to those people who contact me first. It's 155 pages of what, I feel, is genuinely useful information for those on a time and money budget. It covers topics like: Easy Lawns, Fast Flowers, Delicious Fruit and Vegetable plots, Easy care plants and an Annual Gardening Activity Calender. The cost of the book is normally $19.95 but obviously in this case it is free to the first 10 readers who get in touch. The only thing I ask if you would like a copy, is that you actually read it and email me back a few lines on what you thought of it. To get a copy can you please send me an email with "Garden Book Link" in the subject line to: [e-mail] and I will send you the download link for the book. (In case you are curious, we are using a Hotmail address because our main address previously suffered from spam after making a public post on a newsgroup). Please be assured I won't retain your email address - I'm literally only interested in getting feedback on this book. Thanks,

Hywel Raymer Publishing

[Travis]

I looked at your web site and was not impressed.

[Snooze]

Everything about your post stinks of spam and scam.

1: no mention of website, or book title 2: is really which is your site 3: greatproducts.com's products are all get rich quick schemes 4: no mention of your "book" on the website. 5: legitimate publishers don't send books to random people on the internet for peer review, they send copies of the books to respected individuals in the industry. 6: legitimate publishers an easily create a temporary address like [e-mail] 7: further I bet you won't respond to this post because this same message was probably made on every gardening related website you could find.

Given these clues, I would be willing to bet your "book" isn't worth the time it would take to download.

-S

[Marley1372]

where is travis when something actually does smell fishy around here?

toad

[Travis]

You remember me. How sweet.

[Hywel]

Hello Snooze, I'm happy to respond to you. My offer is quite genuine - I had (naively perhaps) thought that the best place to get honest feedback on the quality of a gardening book was from genuine gardeners who might appreciate it. I've often been a little dubious of titles with testimonials from industry peers as everybody knows that they normally only give these in return for either a copy of the book free or the favour returned to them. You have correctly named one of our sites and yes, we offer information on business opportunities and a great many other subjects as well. If the book is of no interest to you however, I would at least like to thank you for taking the time to check us out.

Hywel

[paghat]

Ain't you the same spammer who sells "get rich quick on eBay" schemes? Ain't you the fool with websites either horrible-looking or non-functioning who nevertheless has the hutzpah to scam people into buying instructions from you on how to make websites profitable? Don't all these scams strive to hornswoggle victims into buying not one but several non-existent "books" on each get-rich-quick topic? Ain't you a Vanity outfit whose moronic writings don't meet the professional requirements that would linterest actual editors & publishers with distribution of books that actually exist? Ain't the words "Free" & "Absolutely Free" & Free This And Free That your USUAL totally amateaur hoky sales pitch to get people to shell out around forty pounds per "starter" nothing-kit? Ain't you an e-text vanity "publisher" fraudulantly misrepresenting e-texts as published books?

I was just awfully amused by one of your other "Free" offers of another faux "book" that promises to teach people "How To Write Killer Ads" which you must've neglected to read yourself -- unless you really did mean "Kill any chance of success."

If you HONESTLY wanted "honest feedback" as you pretend, you got it from Snooze, Travis, & from Mike, Shazzbat, & Pammy in another ng you scam-spammed -- that the responses have been somewhat hostile should tell you something, as garden groups are not naturally & wholeheartedly brutal, & just about everybody would like something free if it were not a pretense & total sham.

But then, you should be used to such responses, being an old-hand at spamming, & alienating the public is like water off a duck's back to spammers who believe they only need to find one sucker out of every ten thousand people they annoy. If you'd been on the level you'd've paid attention especially to Snooze's totally constructive Point #5 which any creditable or authentic publisher would NOT have needed to have been told. Whether it's "send me money to get rich quick on ebay" or "send me money to get-rich-quick with a website" or "add yourself to my spam lists & maybe win one of ten free books" (books that do not now & never will exist), all your "angels" have been just this sort of lowest level scumbag shams 'n' spams 'n' scams.

You've been doing this too long with for me to believe you performed such an appalling act of spam-scamming out of sheer naivete & stupidness, though the stupid factor might be partially in play since spamming UseNet does tend to get exactly the responses warranted, raising public Avoid Like The Plague flags. Of course, spammers tend to believe even bad publicity is good, so perhaps you're measuring this as an advertising success.

-paghat the ratgirl

[Snooze]

It's a good thing it's not my first day on the job. Otherwise I might have mistaken your attempt to shovel fertilizer for an honest reply. Having written professional papers, and having reviewed books for technical accuracy I know that's not the case.

Anyone who has established themselves in an industry or field and has developed the depth of knowledge necessary to write a book has developed a network of professional contacts. There are plenty of nursery men, botanists, master gardeners, and biologists who would gladly review your book for only a copy of the book, if you had established a professional relationship or friendship with them over the years, or while doing research for your book.

Since you have published an e-book, you own the publishing company, the cost of giving away an e-book is zero. There is no raw material or labor cost involved. Given that you're willing to give away copies to completely random people on the net, any excuse about not wanting to bribe for a review with a free copy of the book is a lie. The best review you can get from some random person on the net is "nice book." There would be no checking for technical accuracy or content.

Given that you are asking random people on the net to review your book, we can only come to two conclusions.

1: Your offer to send is really just a scam and an attempt to collect email addresses 2: You have not established a professional network of people who would be willing or able to review your book for technical accuracy.

Any book that has not had the benefit of a peer review for technical accuracy is not worth reading. If a "book" exists, it was most likely written by plagiarizing or paraphrasing other books or searching sites on Google.

You are welcome to attempt to prove me wrong by sending a copy of the manuscript to email address I am posting this from. Should a book exist, of even minimal literary value I will publicly apologize for calling you a scam artist. On the other hand should you feel the need to make the excuse that you have already sent out your 10 free copies, please understand we will consider that an admission that your book does not exist and you were really attempting to scam the readers of this newsgroup and collect email addresses for further spam.

-S