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Is that “International Book Award Contest” still visible in our ad column? If so, what you need to know is that PNH and I rejected it,* and were surprised to nevertheless find it running on our site. Making Light has a long history of writing about scams aimed at naive authors. We wouldn’t approve an ad for the “International Book Award Contest” on the coldest day ever recorded in Hell.
We’re not pointing the finger of blame at BlogAds.com. We’ve always had a good working relationship with them. Our expectation is that this is some kind of unintentional screw-up (possibly related to how far Patrick and I are from our normal time zone), and that the ad will presently be removed.
In the meantime, if anyone’s wondering whether Patrick and I approve of the International Book Award Contest: we do not.
(Which is not to imply that Abi, Avram, or Jim do approve; just that they can speak for themselves.)
Yep, still there. Shall we write it off as the Imp of the Perverse playing a belated April Fools joke on you across multiple time zones?
You run ads? Ticking off AdBlock for this domain then.
And look what popped up! International Book Award Contest!
I assume from your post that the contest is, in your opinions, a scam How does it work? Do they ask a entrance fee to the contest to give you an award no one cares about? Do they have a "entry into the contest constitutes a grant of republication rights to us" clause in their contest?
It's an entrance fee scame. $89 gets you a roll of sticks, basically.
It's an entrance fee scam. $89 gets you a roll of stickers, basically.
The Absolute Write Water Cooler is a good site for looking up questionable entities in the publishing world. Here's the AW Bewares, Recommendations and Background Checks thread on Readers' Favorite.
Yep, still there from here.
Don't your publishing posts usually end up with scammy looking ads on the sidebar? Tying in to keywords is the explanation I remember from past instances.
BSD @3&4:
Thanks, especially for the correction. Stickers makes more sense than sticks. (Sticks? A euphemism for scrolls, like a rolled up diploma or award? Pencils that say "award winning writer"? A "polite" euphemism for faggot? Oh, "Stickers"! That makes sense).
In #7, Buddha Buck writes:
Sticks? A euphemism for scrolls, like a rolled up diploma or award?
That's BSD's dogwhistle for "fascists."
"A faggot is a bundle of sticks?"
"That's right, yeah."
"...and a fasces, from which fascism gets its name, is an axe sticking out of a bundle of sticks?"
"Uh, right."
"So the symbol of fascism is an axe in a faggot?"
(I first saw this in the 70s. No idea who first thought of it.)
Looks like it's gone now. Replaced by something from Xlibris and a Hosting Matters ad about how it's not what you know, it's WHO you know.
Which is totally cracking me up, given the title of my most recent post.
10
Abi, the Hosting Matters ad always seems to be there - I have the non-site ads blocked.
Don't your publishing posts usually end up with scammy looking ads on the sidebar? Tying in to keywords is the explanation I remember from past instances.
That would be my guess, given my experience that blogs about fat acceptance or eating disorders invariably seem to get saddled with sidebar ads for diet pills.
Sarah, it's not just keywords that put ads on our site. BlogAds.com asks us to approve each ad as it comes in. We wind up advertising a lot of self-published books -- that's okay, we have nothing against self-publication per se -- but we're a good deal pickier about ads that target unpublished and self-published writers.
BSD's right. Fake awards are a scam. Victims pay a substantial entry fee for a guaranteed award in one of their zillions of categories. Genetic markers: "Everyone will be so impressed" and/or "You'll make lots more sales."
Bill @7:
As Avram could tell you, I don't bother using a dogwhistle for fascists.