I’ve bought a few “ebooks” online. By “ebooks” I mean large PDF files organized like a book that an author did not go through any kind of publisher to get out to the public. A few have been good, a few have sucked. For the most part the quality hasn’t been all that different from real books I have bought off of Amazon.
Usually, I’ve bought these “books” off of a home-rolled web site the that the author has put up to promote her/his book.
One sales tactic I despise and that has caused me not to buy books is what I call the “pre-spam”.
It is enough for me to read a paragraph or two about a book before I decide to buy it.
However, authors who use the “pre-spam” technique will not give you that paragraph telling you about their book. Instead you will get web page after web page filled with multiple single sentences telling you something, but not much, about the book:
Tastes great….
Less filling…
Will teach you how to really enjoy beer…
“Changed my life”, writes Sue….
Yada yada yada
What is worse, there will not be links to skip that crap and go right to the page where you can purchase the book. Not only are the authors making themselves look like flim-flam men, but they are also interfering with someone trying to buy their product. They are interfering with someone trying to give them money. Between that stupidity and the “pre-spam” I begin to wonder how good the book can be. After all, how good can it be if the author is resorting to the “pre-spam” to convince me to buy the book and how good can the book be if the author is stupid enough not to give a potential buyer a way to buy the book?
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