A warning

Okay, I admit it. I made a boo boo. I posted on the U.K. Amazon readers site by mistake. What I did was confuse the codes Kindle Boards uses to create a picture of the cover. I posted on the U.K. site that I was conducting an experiment to see if this worked and posted along with the links. Well, let me tell you what happened. I got so many vicious replies, people accusing me of trying to sneak in self promotion (as if that’s punishable by death), people reading the book samples and then saying how much they sucked, people posting on the forum calling me all kinds of horrible things. I mean, the hatred really flew. But, here’s the kicker… the links didn’t even work. They were just codes of letters and numbers. These people went out of there way to find out about me so they could bash me for even the mere conception that I would try to promote. Even when I stated in my post I was just seeing if the links produces pictures of the cover. I don’t know, but it seems there must be a lot of people out there with lots of time on their hands. I posted about a similar experience on Amazon romance forum a few months back. That was a legitimate mistake on my part for openly promoting, but even after apologizing and removing the post, the hate and anger still came. My warning to all authors out there is to stay away from the Amazon forums altogether. It’s not worth the little promotion you get with all the jerks surfing them who have nothing better to do than rip apart your self-esteem. I’ve found some of the friendliest forums are: Kindle Boards, Book blogs, Kindle Direct Publishing community, and the writers groups on Linkedin. You still must follow their rules for posting and promotion, but I have yet to be so brutally attacked when I make a mistake. And my marketing mistakes are few and far between these days.