COMPLAINTS ABOUT Book Whirl / BookWhirl / bookwhirl.com

Today, we issued a warning to Booklocker.com authors about a spamming / telemarketing outfit called BookWhirl. Many authors misunderstand the caller and think they're saying "Book World" - but it's BookWhirl.

Here's the warning:

BOOKWHIRL SHOULD BE AVOIDED!

Many authors (not just booklocker authors!) are being contacted by a company, Bookwhirl / Bookwhirl.com, that claims to be a book marketing firm. They're apparently scalping the Internet for authors to spam and to call on the phone (email harvesting AND phone number harvesting!) with their pitch. Any company that claims to be a marketing specialist, but that resorts to spam and telemarketing calls, should absolutely be avoided!

Here's a sample of what they sent to one author. It will give you an idea about the lack of professionalism these guys have...and give you grave doubts about their ability to use correct grammar and spelling when promoting books!

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THIS IS PARAPHRASED, AND WAS SENT TO ONE OF OUR AUTHORS, WHO IS AN ATTORNEY -

She says she would "like to apology for the call I was made earlier" and added, "I thought it was the right time and the best time to talk to one of the great author." She then wrote a huge, run-on sentence that doesn't make much sense, and that contains numerous misspellings and grammatical errors. It includes this, " ...knowledgeable about foreign policy making especially the International law since you’re a member of bar therefore it made you a lawyer I assume." She then says the author didn't give her time to talk about the book since "you didn’t give me the right to speech especially to ask some legal advice since I almost forgot my self as marketing specialist but as one of the bric-a-brac out there about policy making since you knock my curiosity."

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Also, charging $2099 to mail an ad to a list of 5,000,000 "opt-in" email addresses is way below market rate.

The going rate is about $100 per thousand, or 10 cents per address, for a qualified list of email addresses.

These guys are essentially charging .00042 cents per address. The only way a list could be sold that cheaply is if it were comprised of automatically harvested addresses off of websites, which is definitely not opt-in, much less qualified.

They are spammers, plain and simple.

We Googled them and found more evidence:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/3 ... 352416.htm

http://darkforces.powbangzap.com/blog/2 ... today.html

http://www.quidplura.com/?p=262

http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writer ... m-jen.html

http://aprilhenry.livejournal.com/tag/bookwhirl.com

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/sho ... p?t=137038

This amateur, unprofessional company spammed Angela AGAIN on 7/16/09!!!

Clearly a shady and unprofessional company. I am going to assume that with business practices such as this, there is no way they will be able to keep doing business this way and survive. Thanks for the fair warning- this is really ridiculous.

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