Book Promotion: How NOT to do it

This morning Patsi received an email asking for help on a new book promotion.  I'm reprinting the email here in its entirety to show you what NOT to do when you are seeking partners to help with your product promotions.

Hi,

We are working on promoting a book to as many people as possible to make it become a bestseller at Amazon.com on January 9, 2007.  The key to the success of this plan is to get a large number of people to purchase the book on a single day.
So we  need to  the  ezines list of  your  website or  subscribers who can  promote the book for us.
Regards,

Mac

What's wrong with this picture?!!!

First of all, neither one of us know who "Mac" is. Nor do we recogize the email address in the sender field.

Second, what the hell is the book?  Title? Author?

Third, why should we promote this book?  What's in it for us?  Why would we risk our reputation with our list on promoting a book we know nothing about for an author we know nothing about?

We get innunated with requests to promote new products and services and I, for one, am in the process of reviewing our procedure for how we decide on what and who to partner with on promotions.

Cooincidentally, yesterday I listened to a podcast by Yaro Stark of Entrepreneurs-Journey about his take on internet marketing, joint ventures to promote products, and how the big boys do it. It's worth listening to if you want some insights about the current state of joint venture promos.

But I digress. Study that email and let me know how you would do it differently.

BTW, if you want to know the best way to pitch bloggers about your product, check out our program How to Pitch the Best Bloggers.

Comments

[Yaro]

Ech! - there are so many things wrong with the approach made in that email.

The author should have a read of Dale Carnegie's "How To Make Friends & Influence People"

Thanks for the mention of my podcast too Denise!

[Patsi M. Krakoff]

What really got to me was the lack of connection on a personal level..."a large number of people"... numbers, not people is the emphasis here. Oh goody, I want to help him with that, for sure! All about him, isn't it... doesn't he know, I'm Person of the Year! Ya gotta talk sweet to me...