I’ve been crazy busy lately! Sorry about the infrequent posts but I’m refinancing my house, doing taxes, enrolling kids in school, and other paperwork. Midwinter is also doing a number on my Coffee Equalization Coefficient. But here is an update on book promotion companies. I heard about a stinker recently and found some sites with personal testimonies, so I added those.
**These ratings for book marketing companies are all based strictly on customer experience and opinion. This is a running list and I will be happy to add other customer opinions of book marketing companies to this list. To include your ratings, please comment on this post or email me at katepolicani@gmail (dot) com.
3/7/2013
| Company Name | Type of service | Pass? | Costs | Comments |
| 99 cent Network | Listing | Fail | $45 | No obvious return for money and no visibility of book on site. No answers to emails inquiring about where to find the book |
| AtoMr Book Blog Tours | Tours, Book Buzz | Pass | $99 | Did ” an awesome job” “super happy with the results” “booked blogs that get awesome traffic and have a lot of avid readers” |
| Archway Publishing | Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | See author Solutions | ||
| AuthorHouse | Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | See Author Solutions | ||
| Author Solutions | Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | Fail | Additonal names: Trafford Publishing, AuthorHouse, iUniverse Inc., Xlibris,
“I simply cannot get anyone to respond to my e-mails on a book I am publishing with the company. The company says my book has already gone on sale, though they are obligated to provide me with a sizeable number of free books for my book launch – they have not and are not responding to e-mails….” |
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| Bewitch-ing Blog Tours | Tours | Fail | “half the people who signed up didn’t post and only 3 did reviews even though it was supposed to be 15” | |
| Book-Daily | Listing | Fail | $49 | “amount of sales doesn’t seem to be worth cost” |
| Book-Whirl | SCAM | Fail | Scam Report Another Scam Report | |
| Goddess Fish Promos | Tour Reviews | Neut. | $30 | “didn’t break even” but supplied publicity |
| Inno-vative Online Book Tours / Reading Addiction | Tours, Amazon Reviews | Fail | $100 | “A big flop, didn’t follow through as they had promised” “Three blogs didn’t post at all. The ones
who did post had very low followings, and NONE of them posted their review on amazon. Lame excuses from staff.” Bloggers posted ebook giveaway when customer didn’t offer them/wrong day. The ones who did post the correct giveaway all posted separate rafflecopter forms, preventing a fair winner or forcing customer to send 20 prize packs “Hasn’t given me any sales OR amazon reviews. Stay away from them.” |
| iUniverse | Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | See Author Solutions | ||
| Kindle Daily Nation | Listings | Fail | $160 | “no results” (used to be great but saturated with too many books) |
| Kindle Promo Indie Book Listing Service | Tweets | Pass | £15 | “actively promotes books” |
| Nurture Your Books | Tour, Promo, Nat. Press Release | Fail | $995 | Paid for services and “nothing happened” Multiple calls and emails got no reponse. Emails to everyone in the company finally got a response and offer of the book tour but couldn’t make the other person contact me. Customer resorted to refund through the credit card company. |
| Orange-berry Summer Splash Tour | Tours | TBA | $25 | Slots at tail end of month-long tour with 99 other authors, At least one event didn’t happen, never saw promised review, Orangeberry currently compensating author with discount second tour. |
| Partners in Crime | Tours | TBA | TBA | |
| Pump Up Your Book | Tours | Fail | Ripoff Report | |
| Promo. Book Tours | Tours, Release parties | Pass x2 | Facebook Page Increased by 700 fans, Twitter increased by 450 Follows, newsletter increased by 150, “booked blogs that get awesome traffic and have a lot of avid readers” | |
| Schiel & Denver | book publishing, editing, marketing, printing, distribution | Fail | Ripoff Report
“I did not get one on one author support. I did not get a quality product. I did not get the immediate response that they promised. As a matter fact, every time I called the main line and requested to speak to a manager, they were always in a meeting and the call was never returned.” |
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| Shades of Rose YA | Tours | Fail | $7.50, $15 | Newer company with small following, had trouble filling tours, do refund when cannot fill tour. |
| Sizzling PR | Tours | Pass -1
Fail -1 |
$15 -$75 | “Nice people and very affordable.”
“90% of the blogs were adult blogs/romance/erotica for a YA book” |
| Smith Publicity | Var. | Neut. | “Stellar results, high prices.” | |
| Trafford Publishing
*See also: Author Solutions |
Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | Fail -1 | See Author Solutions (Trafford was acquired by Author Solutions on April 2009.) | |
| Xlibris | Self-publishing, marketing, bookselling/promotion services | See Author Solutions |
Here are some useful Links:
http://www.authormedia.com/3-signs-of-a-publishing-scam/
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/02/happy-valentines-day-from-writer-beware.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/06/01/valuable-lessons-from-self-publishing-survey/ This was a fascinating one on what seems to work/not work for author promotion.
Kate Policani 
Thanks so much for all of this valuable information. I’m really interested in Promo. Book Tours and AToMR tours. Of the two, is there one you would recommend over the other?
Promo. book tours is really Promotional Book Tours, just so you don’t look for the wrong thing. I had to squeeze things so folks could see the whole chart.
I think your choice would depend on what you want.
It looks like AtoMr does more blogs per tour for your dollar, but Promo had two thumbs up. They also have additional options for tours that AtoMr. doesn’t. Outside of tours, they each have some things they offer that the other doesn’t.
Yes, I found both pretty easily online and can agree with your comments especially after researching them a bit more. The thing about AtoMr is that they literally decide if your book will fit well with their audience before working with you, which I think is pretty nice. As for Promo. they have tons of options, for varying budgets, so I can see why both come highly recommended.
Keep on sharing Kate – never know who you’re helping :).
Thanks for compiling this very useful information. I was just getting ready to sign up with one of the “fail” companies. So glad I read your post first. A million thanks!