Airleaf / Bookman Marketing / Bowker Book Club

Is a spammer and con artist.

Avoid him at all costs.

Jim Hess

Well, that's succinct. :rollin

Would love to hear the details (hint, hint).

Friend of mine said she made around $8,000 publishing with him last year.

Hey Mark, what book?

A warning without details is useless. A claim of having made a sale without details is equally useless.

I agree with capitalistwriter on this one.

I know that most of the vanity presses offer some kind of promotional "services" -- for a fee, of course. (Before anyone jumps in to save me, no, I'm NOT signing up for one of them.)

Just how BAD are the promotional services offered by those companies?

I'm asking because today, I got a promotional e-mail (for an AuthorHouse author) through the old Prodigy romance list. That list was shut down around 1998 or 1999 (but never deleted by Prodigy) when we moved it to another provider. Stranger still, the the URL for the list no longer works. You can only join by e-mail -- via an addie that is no longer listed on the web. So either she got the address from a woefully outdated list of "promotional links" or she's hiring a truly inept company to do Internet promotions.

If the author paid for promotional services and they posted her message on the old Prodigy romance list or directed her to that list, she was screwed. :smack

I have no way of knowing this. I'm just guessing. But if I were a betting man I'd bet the words "Bookman Marketing" were somewhere in that author's recent past.

I think that a lot of these "services" are essentially worthless. Even if they're conscientious about only collecting current addresses, and make some effort at targeting them (a pretty tall assumption with most of these services), their strategies are based on the cheapest and most ineffective of promotional methods: bulk e-mails and faxes, press releases, flyers. A few try to distinguish themselves by letting you piggyback on a group ad of some kind, or by issuing a catalogue, or by providing you with bookmarks or postcards.

All these methods were ineffective before the influx of vanity POD (I know--I've tried some of them). Now that every self-pubbed author and their sister is using them, I daresay that except in cases of local interest, 99.999% of these promotional things go ignored. As a book reviewer, I get lots of spam review requests from POD- and self-pubbed authors. I'm always glad to consider a personal request, but the spam stuff I just delete.

It's not just the vanity presses. There are more and more companies and websites that exist for the sole purpose of offering this sort of "promotion"--like Bookman, which is one of the most obnoxious. I've been meaning for some time to add a section to Writer Beware about these services, but I just haven't had time.

- Victoria

I have no way of knowing this. I'm just guessing. But if I were a betting man I'd bet the words "Bookman Marketing" were somewhere in that author's recent past.

Oh, I remember them. !@#$ spammers. g

I checked out their site. Ick. One of their services includes "email marketing." (As in Email and the Detectives?) No doubt that translates to "grab addresses out of misc.writing and send them our junk."

Anyone heard of the Jenking's Group?

Why would Author's Den and Bookman team up? It almost reads more as if Bookman is leasing Ad space rather then a partnership if you go to the website listed. From an email sent by Bookman (Brien Jones)

Authorsden.com has formed a partnership with Bookman Publishing and Together we are offering unique and discounted bookselling, promotional and publishing services.
Please click on the link below to see these exciting new offers.
BookMan.AuthorsDen.com

We've seen other folks recently announcing a "partnership" that was really only an advertising sale. Pay no attention to hype.

We've seen other folks recently announcing a "partnership" that was really only an advertising sale.

Exactly my concern, Jim - I was worried about someone with an AuthorsDen website believing that Bookman was the "only" way to go to get a book published and/or promoted because the sites were *partners* now and that made Bookman a good deal.

AuthorsDen calls it

It's a working and promotional partnership. BookMan has shown great interest in providing their authors more exposure and sales via the new AuthorsDen Bookstore.

- as you said advertising.

Thanks Jim!

[XThe NavigatorX]

I'm topping this because when I click Search I can't find anything on Bookman Marketing, and I think it's important that people find stuff on these spammers.

[Lauri B]

Originally Posted by maestrowork

Anyone heard of the Jenking's Group?

Yep (it's actually the Jenkins Group). They are a publishing/marketing company--do a lot of corporate books and book packaging and apparently do them well--and they also sponsor a book award called the IPPY. The contest used to be very well regarded (and probably still is--I'm pretty sure we still enter at least a couple of our books every year), but I recently received an email offering us the opportunity to buy our way into the goodie bags they are giving out at BEA, which just seems tacky, so I have mixed feelings about them right now. They do have a pretty good publishing newsletter, and its editor is a genuinely nice guy named Jim Barnes.

[CaoPaux]

Originally Posted by XThe NavigatorX

I'm topping this because when I click Search I can't find anything on Bookman Marketing, and I think it's important that people find stuff on these spammers.

Whoops, I had it only as BookmanMarketing.com in the index. Will correct. Thanks!

ETA: Here's a couple more threads on 'em.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=964
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791

[mreddin]

The first problem that needs to be addressed is whether all the promotional efforts in the world are going to overcome books that are overpriced, non returnable and short discounted. I suspect the effectiveness will be wasted and the majority of your marketing will be focused through online venues.

Most of the package's I've read are overpriced for the services offered. Typically the first part of the package includes press releases to major media outlets. We all know how much the media resonates at the announcement of "Local Author Pens Book" type news releases. Expertly written copy, given the slant of a news story (even for fiction) sent to targeted editors and outlets for the genre or subject will give you more milage but sadly most of these packages take the "buckshot" approach. I suspect your better off hiring a copywriter and using a company like Intermedia to develop a targeted press mailing.

Most vanity packages include 4-color postcards at an inflated price. You can get two sided, laminated postcards in quantities of thousands for a few hundred dollars. A templated, generic postcard is likely to get discarded unless compelling copywriting causes the piece to catch people's attention. It must also be said that having an attractive professional cover will help here, an obvious template from PA or others will send off the red flags.

A combination of Google Adwords, Oveture and Yahoo Groups advertising with highly targeted keywords and phrases can be an inexpensive means of driving traffic to your book site. Start a professional Blog that focuses on the niche your book is about to build traffic and word of mouth spending just the cost of monthly hosting.

I suppose the bottom line is to avoid the subsidy press packages and have something custom copywritten and uniquely focused on your book and make sure the campaign is targeted to the niches most likely to be interested in your book. Well that's my unqualified two shiny copper pieces for you.

Mike

[PVish]

Originally Posted by mreddin

I suppose the bottom line is to avoid the subsidy press packages and have something custom copywritten and uniquely focused on your book and make sure the campaign is targeted to the niches most likely to be interested in your book.
Mike

That's the key. I've used POD three times. My niche market is so small (think the surrounding counties only) that buying a "press package" would be a waste of money. I custom write my own releases (each for a specific medium) and market to a very narrow group. Because I have a strong local readership, my first two POD books have made money within four months of my initial investment.

I just got my third POD book today. I anticipate selling 500 copies max. If I'd anticipated selling a thousand, then I'd have done complete self-publishing (as I've done once before).

POD works nicely for a specific niche market. POD won't be profitable, however, if an author buys all the bells & whistles that a POD publisher hopes to sell.

Know your market and have an established readership before you POD. Otherwise, you're wasting your money.

[XThe NavigatorX]

In case anyone is interested, bookman pulled a ST trick and changed their name. They are now Airleaf http://www.airleaf.com/ Mods might want to change the title of this thread, too.

[HapiSofi]

Bookman Marketing changed their name? No wonder I stopped getting spam from them. I've been on their hardcopy mailing list for a long time. They sell real services, but they're very expensive, and I doubt their effectiveness for most books and authors.

Bear in mind that a company like that will focus on selling you the services they offer, not the services you need.

[CaoPaux]

Heh. I wonder if they got a clue that spamming was giving 'em a bad name? If we now get spam from AirLeaf, we'll know they didn't.

[victoriastrauss]

Bookman/Airleaf's core services are built around ineffective and cheap (for them, not for the authors) techniques like press releases and spamming. They are also heavily promoting their own vanity radio and TV shows at $499 a pop for a 10-minute radio "interview" and a 15-second TV "commercial".

- Victoria

[popmuze]

Anyone have an information about this company? They seem to be some kind of vanity publisher, but they also offer book selling services for (I think) books already in print through other publishers?

Anyway, for some reason, I now get emails from them every other day, offering to sell my book for $99.

[James D. Macdonald]

First person experience by an author with Bookman Marketing (Airleaf's old name) here:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight...692.html#25223