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I am a spammer.

I just got an eight sentence email from a webmaster than didn't even have the guts to leave their name, LOL. People are so stupid.

Part of my marketing strategy for Lazarus is to talk about my book on message boards. A while back, I joined a BUNCH of message boards. I really tried to actively participate, really I did. But for the most part, many of these message boards are wiggedy wack. So I basically would start my OWN thread, usually in a Literature/Books/Entertainment thread so that the posts would be relevant. It would say "Lazarus by Rashid Darden" or something of that nature. Anytime I wanted to update the public about what was going on with the novel, I would post in THAT thread.

In my head, that's not spamming. Starting multiple threads on the same topic, changing the focus of existing conversations to fit your needs -- that's spamming.

So anyway, I could have ignored the email, but I felt like being a bitch today:

You know, I DID want to point out that my posts were all in the appropriate section of your forum (Books/Literature or whatever) and therefore were on-topic. You no longer have those separate sections of your forum, so of course I won’t make a new thread to discuss my book. It was my hope that by having a thread that was about the book, rather than creating new ones every time I had information to share, that it would be as unobtrusive as possible.

As I said before, a simple “please don’t do that” would have sufficed. It’s not that deep to me and really shouldn’t be to you.

Eight sentences, dawg. Eight sentences on a Black and Asian Unity Forum that had a BOOK section!

Let me just say one more thing....in all my time promoting Lazarus via the internet, African American people have ALWAYS had my back and bent "spamming" rules in my favor. It's like black folks understand more than anyone else just how tough it is for self-published writers. We have a collective understanding of our self-published heroes, like E. Lynn Harris. We know sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I've quit like three different white gay yahoo groups for writers because they didn't accept my announcements about the book. Nearly ALL the black writers groups I am on accept announcements. I don't beg people to purchase Lazarus....I make them aware of my journey. There are very few black people who DON'T appreciate this.

So...whatever....I did my research and the people who run this website in question are losers anyway, LOL.

Bus how I responded to their email and it bounced back? REAL PROFESSIONAL, lolol.

And they are wack at website design.

Yes, I feel like being a petty bitch today.

Have a good one!

Posted by Rashid on June 16, 2005 6:54 AM