I will never spend money on Book Basset’s services.
Why?
Because they fucked me.
Today I was supposed to have a Featured Author post, one that ran 5 of my books.
This is a good deal and you typically have to book it 5 to 6 weeks in advance.
It’s a pretty affordable deal, too – just $21.99.
I went ahead and sent in my books and paid them on September 23.
That same day, a bit earlier, I’d set three of my books to Kindle Countdown deals.
These were the book I was to promote today:
The last one is free and Bring Back Our Girls is always $0.99 so there was nothing to do on either of those.
The first three books, however, were on Amazon Kindle Countdown deals which could not be changed.
My post was supposed to go on their site between 9:30 and 10:30 AM Pacific Time.
It did not. Instead we saw 5 books by another author go up.
My books were not listed on the site, my books were not put on social media, and my books were not sent out in the daily email.
I will never use Book Basset again.
Am I being a bit harsh?
Perhaps if this was the first time this had happened, then yes. But it’s not.
The same thing happened to me in July 2014, as you can see from this email:
Why?
Because they fucked me.
Today I was supposed to have a Featured Author post, one that ran 5 of my books.
This is a good deal and you typically have to book it 5 to 6 weeks in advance.
It’s a pretty affordable deal, too – just $21.99.
I went ahead and sent in my books and paid them on September 23.
That same day, a bit earlier, I’d set three of my books to Kindle Countdown deals.
These were the book I was to promote today:
The last one is free and Bring Back Our Girls is always $0.99 so there was nothing to do on either of those.
The first three books, however, were on Amazon Kindle Countdown deals which could not be changed.
My post was supposed to go on their site between 9:30 and 10:30 AM Pacific Time.
It did not. Instead we saw 5 books by another author go up.
My books were not listed on the site, my books were not put on social media, and my books were not sent out in the daily email.
I will never use Book Basset again.
Am I being a bit harsh?
Perhaps if this was the first time this had happened, then yes. But it’s not.
The same thing happened to me in July 2014, as you can see from this email:
I emailed the site and sent them a Tweet soon after it became clear to me that my books would not be promoted.
It took an hour for me to get a response. This is what that looked like:
It took an hour for me to get a response. This is what that looked like:
I asked them to run my books and send them out to their email list today, not some future date that they want.
Since my Kindle Countdown deal would be over tomorrow there was really no choice but to do this – I can’t reschedule that.
Thankfully the daily email hadn’t gone out. The books will go up. I will give them that – they didn’t fuck me when it was all said and done.
But why do I still feel bad?
Since my Kindle Countdown deal would be over tomorrow there was really no choice but to do this – I can’t reschedule that.
Thankfully the daily email hadn’t gone out. The books will go up. I will give them that – they didn’t fuck me when it was all said and done.
But why do I still feel bad?
I would encourage you to not use this site.
As you saw, this was the second time in little more than a year that they’d done this to me. I can’t help but think other authors have suffered the same fate.
The site blames this problem on WordPress.
Fine, they can do that. It doesn’t matter to me what they blame things on – my books were not promoted, despite following all of their rules and guidelines.
I’m very disappointed and this has ruined my day. I was expecting little in the way of sales – maybe 10 if I was lucky – but there would be something.
For awhile it looked like there’d be nothing, nothing but a deep feeling of depression at being another worthless author that no one gives a shit about. I can’t even pay people to give a fuck about me.
These are the days when you want to quit, they really are.
What do you do in the face of that? These are some things I’ll do:
- Take a break: Find something besides your current work in progress to work on. I always have multiple projects so today I’ll focus on something back-burner, maybe even some edits somewhere.
- Put it down: I’ll probably do a bit more with reading or doing a puzzle or maybe even watching a movie today. When you’re in a sour mood and the world is against you, it’s often best just to get away from the offending source, which in this case is writing-based.
- Shrug it off: Later tonight I’ll probably shrug this off and get back to something. I already feel better just writing this post, which took me 10 minutes so far. I don’t think anyone at Book Basset can write that fast, and without error.
Well, there you have it – a big spiel, depressive bit, and then some crawling out of the hole.
This is what being a writer is all about.
If you’re lucky, don’t give up, and keep at it in the face of these bozos – like Book Basset – you might get to this some day:
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