[ashark]

Huh. "Buy my (assuredly terrible, amateurish, e-)book!" or "sign up for a free PDF copy of my book!" is one of the quickest ways to lower my opinion of a person (or website). Immediately digs a giant hole that they then have to climb out of to convince me they're not scumbag get-rich-quick scam artists or one of their hangers-on or imitators, assuming I don't just close the tab immediately on seeing that kind of thing.

Exception if there's a clear association with a real publisher and/or university, obviously.

[polysaturate]

So, wait, anyone who writes an eBook and would like to sell it is a scumbag? Unless there is a clear association with a real publisher or university? Is this opinion specific to marketing or do you hold the same disdain to programming books as well?

[ashark]

My observation has been that there's a strong correlation between "buy my ebook!" in a website sidebar and someone ticking boxes on some scumbag marketing process which they probably learned from someone using scumbag marketing processes to sell their ebook and lessons in the sidebar of their website about how to get rich quick selling ebooks and lessons. Apparently it works, but I'd prefer to avoid the whole mess, aside from using it as a strong signal to Beware everything else on the site.

[polysaturate]

Everything is a skill. Writing is a skill. Marketing is a skill. Some people will pay to read a book about the skill. Said writers would like to make money from writing said books.

I would think it would be fairly known if someone's books are snake oil. Just my opinion, though. Scumbag seems like a harsh judgement.

[whostolemyhat]

Marketing makes you a scumbag. Got it