That Spam I Am—If You Don’t Know the Difference Between Meaningful Interaction and Spamming You are Wasting Your Social Media Time (and Mine).

by Sophie Perinot

You know what drives me crazy (currently)? How much of what passes for author interaction at social media sites these days resembles spam.

I made the connection a few days ago while clearing out the spam comments at my blog. They almost all start out the same, with a sentence that looks like the writer (probably a bot) might actually have read my blog post—“I enjoyed this post. This topic is really very intesting...”—then they turn into self-serving sales drivel. And while I was gleefully emptying the spam filter it occurred to me that I’ve been seeing lots of this same sort of “let me say a polite thing about you so I can talk about ME, ME, ME” stuff on twitter, in on-line writing groups, and on facebook lately.

Frankly, it’s cheesing me off.

It’s gotten particularly bad in writing and reading related facebook groups. When I join a group devoted to say “Lovers of Mysteries with Dogs as Their Main Character” (okay I made that one up, but I don’t want to point fingers at actual groups or communities), I expect folks therein to share information on good books with doggy detectives, or links to websites to help me in researching or writing same. Instead what I am getting these days are nearly naked advertisements—“My book ‘It’s a Dog Eat Dog World’ just got a super-duper review at ‘Dog books R us!’ Read it here. Or better still buy my book here, or here, or here.” Come on fellow writers, if I want advertisements there are plenty running along the top or side of every darn website I visit. You’ve got a personal facebook page, probably an author FB page, and doubtless an author website to share good reviews and “buy it now” links on. You can even directly and unabashedly promote your book at those locations (though the jury is out on how effective that will be for you). But the essence of communities/groups (even in the virtual world) is dialogue.

A hybrid of “boast posters” are the folks who share EVERY blog post they’ve ever written or will ever write to a facebook group, or to twitter for that matter, irrespective of whether it’s on topic. Sure, if you (or if I) have written a post that is germane to the topic of a group or comment thread (or touches on one of the subjects that you assume people follow you on twitter to hear about) then posting your link is a worthy public service. But if you are just slapping up everything you can think of to increase your name recognition then spare us and save yourself the time (because pretty soon I for one am going to stop even looking at your posts because I already KNOW what they will say—some version of “look at me.”)

As writers today there is a great deal of pressure on us to market our own work, and very specifically to have a presence in the virtual world. But I presume that an annoying presence seldom sells a book. If you join any community of like-minded people as part of your “building an internet presence” campaign, you should try to interact with fellow members in a genuine, non-agenda-driven, manner. And just for the record the interaction is neither effective nor genuine when it amounts to commenting on topics started by others in true spam form (“I am fascinated by cocker spaniels but for a really great blog on poodles, more specifically MY poodles, click here”).

People can smell a fake a mile away—just like I can pick out the spam comment at my blog even when they are cloaked in an attempt to look like a genuine response. And if you are a spammer not a genuine community member you are wasting your time. Because the truth is I buy two kinds of books: 1) those receiving notable reviews or buzz from reviewers I trust (whether that’s a “R”eviewer in the print or digital media or the guy I sit next to on the bus every morning and discuss books with); and 2) books written by friends (folks I’ve gotten to know through writers conferences, through on-line communities and through their blogs). You are no friend of mine if you spam me.

Digital Publishing’s PLR Plight

by J. Lea Lopez

In a previous post, I discussed my views on Amazon’s place in the world of publishing, and it would be accurate to say I was skeptical, at the least. Let me make it clear up front that while Amazon will again be the main focus of my post today, it’s not because I necessarily have it out for them, or because I’m angry about something, or because I’m just a big meanie. I (currently) have no dog in this fight, so to speak, and if an author I want to support is only available through Amazon, I’ll certainly support them. That doesn’t mean I agree with all of their policies or practices.

In my last post, I mentioned the ease of plagiarism on Amazon. Plagiarism and piracy are a writer’s nightmare, but there’s another P to beware of: PLR.

Never heard of it? Do me a favor: when you’re done reading this post, type PLR into Google and try not to cry at the results. In short, PLR = spam. Chances are, you’ve noticed PLR ebooks on Amazon, especially when looking for non-fiction. They’re the ones with generic-looking covers, that surprisingly have the same or similar names and covers as dozens of other ebooks on the same subject.

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. For a fee, anyone can purchase a subscription or a chunk of PLR content that they can then compile into an ebook and sell to anyone willing to buy. Oh, and did I mention it’s completely legit? By legit, I mean shady and despicable, but legal. Because anyone can purchase these PLR articles, you can—and if you look at Amazon, we have—run into the serious problem of ebook spam. What’s worse, is that the so-called authors of these books never have to write a word.

The same type of screening that could detect plagiarized content before it hits the shelves could also help detect and eliminate ebook spam. Not even something as blatant as uploading an ebook consisting of 700 pages of repeated song lyrics throws up any red flags at Amazon. Smashwords has strict vetting standards that have kept them seemingly free of the kind of junk currently flooding Amazon’s virtual shelves, and Mark Coker has been outspoken on the issues of PLR and plagiarism. To Amazon’s credit, they have recently begun to crack down on “undifferentiated or barely differentiated versions of e-books.”

But is it too little, too late? How long will it take for them to clear out the thousands of spam ebooks already uploaded, and how many more will be uploaded in the meantime? More importantly, why should you care?

Amazon is a huge retailer, and their name alone lends a sense of legitimacy to the ebooks uploaded there. If PLR ebooks and/or plagiarized content is allowed to clutter the shelves and compete with hard-working authors like you and me, everyone loses. Consumers will get frustrated with the buying experience. Authors—you know, the ones who actually write bona fide content—will lose sales not only to those content-farmed books, but also from those customers who simply give up and stop searching through the spam to find the real deal.

I can only speculate about Amazon’s motivations and tactics (they’ve been rather silent on this—and most—issues affecting us writers) but so far they seem to have taken the approach of damage control rather than taking preventive measures in the first place. Hopefully the developments of the past week or two mark a turning point in their policies and procedures regarding ebook content.

Have you ever had a bad ebook-buying experience as a result of spam PLR ebooks?