Tag Archives: rant

Misleading Advert Blog Posts

Be forewarned: This post may delve into rant territory, but I shall do my best to avoid mentioning names/specific examples. (Granted, if you’ve looked into this subject, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty…)

I hate blog posts that claim to be ‘How-To’s’ or ‘Guides’ in the title that turn out to be nothing more than advertisements for another product.

The novel I’ve been working on is coming ever closer to that fateful moment where it hits the self-published shelves, and as such I’ve been reading a lot of author/book/publishing blogs for advice, tips, etc. A great deal of it’s been really helpful and informative, and I’ve discovered a few authors that have been tacked on my To-Read list.

But every once in a while, you see that blog title that says something along the lines of “How to-” or “Mistakes not to make-” or something comparable–only to discover the blog post is just an advert to send you to a book or podcast that they wrote on the subject.

This has successfully created a new pet-peeve of mine.

Don’t get me wrong, if people want to write self-help books and advertise them: that’s awesome. It is, and I wish them all the luck with making money and getting the word out using their advise and experience in a much more in-depth format.

Just make it clear you’re advertising a book – in the title.

Good blogs, are informative (or entertaining). That’s the point of wanting to read them and some people are doing this very, very well. The content of their posts are what’s stated in the title – yay!

Others, not so much. When your title is (just an example): “How to Publish on Kindle” – I expect some tips and advise on how to publish a book on a Kindle, not an outline summary of the book you’re selling. I feel like I’ve been cheated. Is it a good marketing strategy to get hits? Sure. Does it work? I think no–mostly because I’m so aggravated it’s another internet ad in disguise that I don’t even click the book link on principle. I don’t like feeling aggravated.

How do you fix this? Call it out in the title: “A How To Book On Publishing With Kindle.” Or Even “New Book To Help With Kindle” or something. Make it catchy, but make sure it’s obvious your blog post is advertising a book in some way.

Don’t make me think I’m going to read a blog post with informative content when there is none.

Thank you.

On a side tangent – Authors who blog? Please, please stop mentioning your own books over and over again in your posts. Especially if it’s the same book in every post. I know your’e sharing your personal stories, but it starts to just feel like a name drop after a while. Even if your articles are great and informative, it gets tedious seeing that same book and cover over and over and over. Advertise your books in the side column; I know you wrote them.

Ah, ranting complete.

Bad Mood

I hate Windows.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

If you read my previous post, you know that today I was in a great mood. Woke up early, had breakfast with the folks. Went to a convention with my brother and raked in the goodies like Salty Dog V & IV and a Gin figurine.

The day continued to get better (the stuff that happened after that post) when I came home from the con and watched Red vs Blue: Reconstruction with my brother. Which was amazing. It made me laugh and finally bite the bullet and order the Red vs Blue Box Set for the first 5 seasons of DVDs. I was on top of the world in giddiness from seeing new footage of my one true love Sarge (Red Team FTW). My only disappointment was that Donut didn’t make an apperance – but since it looks like Reconsruction will be getting another season I have hope.

At this point, I rewatched House Season 5, Episode 4 for the tenth or so time. (Wilson takes House to his father’s funeral in case you forgot.) And the good mood just kept on going up.

It was at this point that things settled down and I opened Photoshop to draw tomorrow’s WAM while my brother hooked up his XBOX360 to the internet to log-in to his live account. (He couldn’t before b/c 1) I didn’t have internet in my room where the unit is and 2) Xbox suffered red ring of doom before he could set up his account on the machine.) He filled in his gamertag and got all ready to log-on.

Only it wouldn’t accept his e-mail or password.

This caused me a bit of ‘huh?’ because I clealry remember registering him earlier in the summer. Long story short, I spent a little over an hour trying every e-mail/password combination under the sun between both of our accounts to figure out what account was using his gamertag. None of them worked. And it wouldn’t even recognize his e-mail as having an account (which I know it did) so we couldn’t even have our password e-mailed to us. Maybe I’m crazy and didn’t actually register it. But that’s impossible b/c I can see the gamercard with the gamertag I registered in the summer and *breathes*

Needless to say, I’m in a bad mood and ranting about it on the computer seems to be helping. However, facts are facts and we had to reregister at Windows/XBOX/Whatever Live and he now has a new gamertag.

So now I’m trying to draw WAM and hopefully have come up with something acceptable. Because quite franky, I nearly said ‘screw it’ and posted nothing b/c I was so angry. I’ve calmed down a little bit since then and decided that it wasn’t fair to my readers to take out the frustration on them. I’m making them read this post instead. So there.

In conclusion: I hate you XBOX Live. Thank-you.

At least Izuru’s finally happy to have his Captain back.

Gin and Kira

Squad 3 Rules.

Blue Sucks.

*draws WAM to brother playing Halo in background*