IRRITATION NUMBER ONE: Website “entrepreneurs” who INSIST that you haven’t heard them the first time. One Kim McDougall, klchatel@verizon.net, owner of BlazingTrailers.com is one such individual. Every time I turn around, there’s yet another email in my box delivering a post she’s made to a group board I’m subscribed to. She keeps urging us, exorting us, even, to visit her site, to submit a trailer (the form’s still in beta-testing according to Kim, mind you) *roll eyes*.
Ah…I heard you the first time, Kim. And I accept trailers, too, but it isn’t the “competition” that’s bothering me. It’s your persistence of cheap solicitations.
I post one, maybe two, solicitations, well-spaced apart, then leave it alone. Seems to me that, if an author or a publisher isn’t interested, they simply aren’t interested. They aren’t interested in getting the word out, at least not using the offered venue. That should be fine, shouldn’t it? I mean it isn’t as though there aren’t plenty of book trailers and new novels coming out to fill our websites.
Bottom line: Offer it, then leave it at that. Now that might not be the “American entrepreneur’s way,” — you know, SAVE BIG CARPET SALE, COME NOW, BIG CARPET SALE, DON’T MISS OUT, FACTORY REMAINDERS CHEAP, GET YOURS HERE…. …Sorry, boyz and gurlz, that kind of advertising method just doesn’t play well with me. Class acts don’t hawk their wares like cheap sleezeballs selling second class goods, especially since books are supposed to be first class all the way.
IRRITATION NUMBER TWO: People who want to discuss politics, but get mad and indignant when someone posts something contrary to their perspective. Then, instead of debating it, they go complain to management. If that fails to reap their desired result, the squelching of the opposing viewpoint, they pick of their whining selves and, with backward glances of woe-is-me, depart the venue, only to sniffle and whine and lurk in “seeing distance.”
Gawd. Fine. If you don’t want to debate it, why play in the politics pit?