I am a writer of real books that took me years to write, that carry messages of caring about the human race, that program readers into self-empowerment, that I hope will help to change a suffering world. Recently I attended a seminar on book promotion that made me sick almost literally. One author recently put a book together--not wrote a book--with snips from other people, then had those people and others prepay to buy a copy in return for ad space on a page attached to the book, then released the book which went to bestseller in one hour because all those people bought it. Not one of them bought it to read it. And it is not really a book, and not written by a writer. The whole thing was a manipulation of Amazon. And it worked like a charm. And it made me sick. I got out of there and today I cleared my email inbox and got out of marketing beyond anything I have already done or connected to. Like you, I must put my books into the system but to become a part of that system is to no longer be a writer. You know...it's not the marketing. There is need for marketing and advertising. It's the attitude and the way it's being done. It shows our culture to be something rather ugly. Sarah