33 pages of advertising for the author's own brand of brushes
354679
ok... seriously?  You basically pay around $13 for this book and once you get it you figure out the first 33 pages or so are an advertisement for the authors own brand of brushes.  I'm sure they're nice brushes - if you were to get all the ones he wants to teach you to use in the book, you would be spending hundreds of dollars.  There is probably useful information in this book.... I just haven't been able to get over the 33 page advertisement for the hundreds of dollars of brushes I'm probably not gonna buy. (ok, maybe I will buy a few, but I have a shopping addiction.)
475272
I should have known. How could there be a coffee-table book about a flack? Even the premier flack of the glamorous fashion business? The answer to that is embedded in the intro to this disappointing book: the author shopped his idea around for a while until some inexperienced publisher bit. Note to author: let your editors help you. When they tell you to keep your self-references to a minimum, listen to them. When you claim to be writing about an entire 80-year-career, include some bibliographic notes to sources before 1965. They know the book business like you know the flacking business. Note to publisher: hire an actual book designer who knows how to design for actual readers. I know, I know: my fault for expecting to be able to read and get information out of a coffee table book. Nonetheless, please, graphic designers, read up on how to set type so it can be read. Also, suggest that the author include scans of the old press releases. Wouldn't that have been fun? More fun than setting ye olde press releases in American Typewriter. Tired! I paid full price for this at a small bookstore. The book was sealed. I knew I shouldn't. All the signs were flashing DON'T. At least the small bookstore got a windfall.
3163172
Sounds like a good way to advertise.  I wonder, however, if the writer ever ran into trouble with the universities that he left the fliers at for littering or other university policy offence's for the advertising method described.  I would like to hear about those issues and how he maneuvered around them to maintain his income stream with his advertising method.  Other than that a good read, and a viable advertising method.
2656806
In interesting start, as noted in another review, seems like a first chapter to a book.

BE AWARE.  Of the 78 pages, 8 are full page drawings and the rest is DOUBLE SPACED!  If effect, you will be buying about 35 pages of story for the money.

What you get is good, but VERY short.
713144
This person is trying to make money off of a successful author. Melissa Foster offers these FREE to her readers on her website
3083743
Kudos to the marketing guy of the company who advertised this product. What she/he did was to show 4 types of fan brushes in the picture. But actually, the product comes in a per piece basis, and not in a set of 4. The number 4 just pertains to the size of fan brush and not the quantity. Excellent deceptive advertising!
4130191
There are useful suggestions mixed among a lot of advertising for the author's commercialized methods of treatment.  This detracts from its authenticity IMHO.
2881329
The author wrote about the free books as if there would be many new ones to choose from every day.  During my first encounter,  I must have gotten about fifteen free books, including a handful of cookbooks.  I must admit that I loved them and have copied down quite a few recipes.  I also several of the novels.  Most were first books in a series, and I can readily understand using giving the first in the series as a free book to entice the reader to buy more.  Fair enough, and a good marketing strategy.

However,  I have visited this same sight several times since that first,  and the titles don't change nearly as much, or they offer fifty page teasers so that you will want to buy the book.

To be honest, I've not checked out other sites the author offers.  Perhaps I need to do that before I judge too harshly.
3074340
As ONE book, this one would have gotten more stars.  I HATE the marketing ploy of 4 sections - I paid a total of nearly 9 dollars to finish it --- and tho I liked the writing, I will pass on every other book of his because I don't want to get ripped off - again!
2945021
It soon becomes apparent when reading the first few chapters of this interesting book that in this tiny part of the publishing industry were an equally small number of people (mostly males, obviously) yet they were responsible for producing millions of trash paperbacks that sold in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies.  This book is a celebration of their endeavours.

Because of the very competitive arena in which these publishers worked, with twenty or more new titles each month the covers were the main selling point and the three hundred plus reproduced in this book show that you don't mess with a successful formulae.  They had to show a female (unless it was for the gay market) as provocatively posed as possible with a two or three word title to complete the package.  It has to be said though that the quality of these illustrations is pretty poor which only makes the work of one or two artists really stand out.  Robert Bonfils, in particular, consistently turned out quality art and sleaze artists like Stanton, Bilbrew and Bill Ward were made for this market.  No cover design could be too tacky for this publishing genre.

The bulk of the book are the cover reproductions (each with date, publisher, author and artist credits) with several short essays in the front.  The two about soft core publishing on the East and West coasts were interesting because they actually explain the background to the publishers and more importantly how the books were distributed through the network of adult book stores in most cities and towns.  The back has a useful list of publishers and authors pseudonyms.  I was slightly disappointed with the books production though, there is no real page design, paragraphs are excessively long and columns just fall short because no one bothered to make adjustments to the picture sizes to compensate.  Despite this 'Sin-a-rama' will probably be the only book to comprehensively cover the publishing world of paperback sleaze.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
3763708
The book has a lot of good ideas in it all of which require work on the part of the person planning to sell the book.
He lets you know marketing a book is a lot of work.
3974714
SPECIFICS:
Page Count: 80
Number of images: 114
Small images: 77
Half page images: 10
Full page images: 23
2-page spreads: 4
BW images: 7

TEXT:
3 page introduction
2 page foreword
Small paragraphs about the chapter's topic throughout the book
Title and year of each painting

ART:
12 images: 5 stars
46 images: 4 stars
41 images: 3 stars
12 images: 2 stars
3 images: 1 star

Overall: 3,5 stars
1235670
This book was not one of my favorites. I did not find it to be particularly well written, nor outlined well. And to make matters worse, I didn't think it was long enough to legitimately be called a real book. The body of the book is only 132 pages long. Then comes a less-than Directory of Resources from pages 133 to 140. And the book ends on page 143. There is an Introduction and 9 chapters as follows:

1. The truth about publishing
2. Web site strategies
3. Setting up your Web site
4. Web site enhancement tools
5. Building your expert status
6. Online marketing strategies
7. Online media opportunities
8. Amazon.com success strategies
9. Final thoughts

Without question this book is just another of a long line of Internet Marketing books on the market today. There is little new between its covers. Ever since early 2006 I have been aware of the author's "Internet Platform" because I read a couple of her books and Googled her name to find all the marketing techniques she had been using to promote herself and her business ventures. Overall, I have been impressed with the author and the self promotion techniques she has employed online. Unfortunately I have not found her to be a particularly good writer. Sorry. She does not focus on a subject well in her books and fully explain it. She tends to get sidetracked. And her editors (if she has them) don't catch her on this.

The title of the instant book provides that this book is an "author's guide" to Internet marketing. But what kind of author are we talking about? Is it an author of fiction, i.e., romance writers, fantasy writers, science fiction writers, chik lit writers, mystery writers, etc? If so, then why was there a need for Chapter 5 regarding "Building an Expert Status?" Is it an author of nonfiction, i.e., business writers, how-to writers, or some other book that needs to be written by an expert? If so, then why didn't the title to the book specify it was about authors who write nonfiction? Or is it not really an author at all, but instead a consultant who does some writing? If so, then why did the title to the book even include the term "author" at all?

The book is clearly an overview of the Internet Marketing tools and techniques the author has used to create her own Online Platform. But is she just an author? Or is she more like Dan S. Kennedy who she profiled in Chapter 4? He says he is first and formost a consultant and he publishes primarily for self-promotion reasons. He says there may be some profit from publishing books, but that is a distant consideration. So having said all this, is the book really one for authors? Or is it one for consultants? I think the latter.

Knowing what I know about Internet Marketing for authors, I was disappointed in the coverage of Amazon.com. I don't think an author should have shopping cart technology embedded in their author Web sites. I say this because authors should seek to maximize sales of their books on Amazon so the books will rank high on Amazon's top sales list ranking. The author should become an affiliate of Amazon and direct sales from their author site to Amazon where Amazon will process the sale. Their author blog or blogs should direct traffic to Amazon for book sales, too. If Amazon processes the sale, then there is no need for the author to have a shopping cart on their site.

I was also disappointed in the coverage of Amazon.com since Chapter 8 did not come close to helping the reader with Amazon as compared to the coverage presented in "Sell Your Book on Amazon" (ISBN: 1432701967). The instant book being reviewed could have re-written the best of that book and included it as Chapter 8. But that is not the case, unfortunately.

If the title were changed so it properly reflected its content, then I would give the book 4 stars! But that would have been a gift because I would have been rounding up my star rating from a 3.6. But since the title is off, and the book is short and not particularly well outlined or written, I am dropping my rating to 3 stars. It's just an OK book. 3 stars!
4935448
This is a 236 page book.  The first 106 pages describe the author's preferred method of making PCB's using photo sensitized boards.  Other DIY methods are mentioned in passing and rejected as being flawed.  The next 118 pages describe the workings and construction of a data logger that the author's company makes.  The final 12 pages are the glossary and index.  If you're into building the author's data logger you've got the right book but for reading a thorough description of PCB methods (as the title and ed. review would lead you to believe) I believe you'll be disappointed.  Bait and switch.
617992
About the author states in part "If her first book becomes a success she plans to write other books.", which is more than enough reason to avoid encouraging the author by making a purchase. 86 pages, hardly a book by any measure, is not anywhere near enough to touch on all the topics the author claims to cover, and can only reflect the tiny amount of actual knowledge she has to share (good examples of which can be found by web searching on the author's name). Self-publishing lowers the bar for authors, however in this case it unfortunately makes available for purchase what other 'writers' (and here I use the term loosely) are happy to make available for free via blogs. In this case a page purchased equates to a page wasted.
2931587
The brushes are in perfect condition. But the product image is incredibly confusing and in my honest consumer opinion misleading. The title talks about what they're selling but the image, only one, sells 3 packs. 2 of 4 brushes and 1 of 5.
Up in the Q&A there's even a person that answers "Hiya Katrina. I got all 3 packs. I know it is unclear but it's all 3 sets."
What the heck am I buying?
2695457
The information was decent, but there wasn't enough depth to it, and too much of the book seemed like an advertisement for the oils that the author's company sells. I'm not going to go as far as to accuse the author of charlatanry, though sometimes i really want to. The book definitely wasn't worth $30.