If you are calling me promising me an extended marketing deal for my books, please read this!

If you are someone who wants to be published authors, let me give you a word of advice. 

There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Be careful when companies claiming to be “self publish” companies or “book marketing” companies call you out of the blue. Chances are very good all they want is their money. You see, I’ve been there and I’ve been burned. To the tune of over 50,000 dollars in two different endeavors. One was a “marketing campaign” that secured me over two dozen interviews on blog talk radio. That set me back a cool 25,000 dollars. Guess how many books I sold from that campaign.

48.

That’s it.

The next really bad experience came from a “reputable” self publishing company affiliated with a well known Christian publisher. I was contacted out of the blue and told I would receive “VIP” treatment because I was a traditional published author and that IF, and there is the key word that is so small but carries such a huge burden, IF my books sold X amount of copies I would be offered a contract with the big Christian publishing firm.

So, I forked over 25,000 dollars to put together my book. Part of the deal was to print up 500 copies that could be returned by book stores so book stores would stock my books. Never happened! And, when bookstores contacted me to order books for upcoming book signings at their store, they couldn’t find my books to order them! After two years, the company contacted me and wanted to know if I wanted the printed books or if I would pay to have them destroyed since warehousing them would be too expensive. I got 100 of the books but the rest were destroyed.