http://www.kocosports.net/member.php?u=5301

As newly registered user i only wanted to say hi to everyone else who uses this board :D

Welcome to my design blog which I’ve woefully neglected. I’m sending you another link via email to my personal site as well :)

Everything you said.

I tell people that if they have the money to either remodel the bathroom or publish their book and their family wants them to remodel the bathroom, they should do that first.

The vanity presses that claim they’ll “publish” your book for a few hundred dollars are counting on P.T. Barnum’s dictum that there’s a sucker born every minute. Vanity presses have their legitimate uses (a family history that you want to give as holiday gifts to your grandchildren, for example). But if you want to market books to the public, it’s essential that you put out a product people will be willing to buy. And you can’t do that with a vanity press.

I’m not knocking digital printing (“POD”). That’s a printing technology, not a publishing model. Yes, the vanity presses use POD. So can the self-publishing author. But you don’t need to fall for the hype of the vanity publishers. All you have to do is go straight to a reputable POD printer with your professionally edited and designed pages.

Every time I see one of those endlessly rambling sales letters, whether of the snail mail or web variety, I fire my shredder up, both literally and, where appropriate, its virtual equivalent. Those kinds of sales letters drone on and on and on and after the first 50 short paragraphs or so, you can pretty easily figure out the price of whatever is being sold must not be worth it since the seller seems so blasted intent on hiding it [cost] from the reader/potential client/buyer.

If you can’t tell me exactly what you’re trying to sell me and how much it will cost me, assuming I have a need or desire for it, in the first 2-3 relatively short paragraphs, I’m not interested.

As Jane Q. Consumer, I’m always suspicious of those never-ending sales letters which ramble on and on and on before I finally manage to actually locate the cost of the thing. And, please, enough of the over-inflated valuation of all the extra stuff the seller is tucking in to make you believe you’re really, really getting a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. Enough already, pigeon drop, anyone? (At least that’s usually my first reaction.)

Common sense dictates (or should) that you don’t get something for nothing, so enough already with the hyper-inflated, alleged invaluable (usually worthless) “extras” you’re getting along with the core product.

Let’s see, first there’s a product, be it information or the world’s greatest ________ [fill in blank with appropriate product], then you immediately set about espousing its wonders (don’t forget if it’s a virtual sales pitch, you gotta toss in that highlighted gimme about how THAT particular reader/potential customer only has until 12:01 am on that date before this wonderful item doubles in price since the everybody he or she [d/b/a "the seller"] has ever known insists [the seller] is absolutely nuts for selling said product[s] (and all the hyper-inflated dollar amount “freebies” you get along with it, making it a gazillion dollar deal for only $69.95, or whatever) oh, sooooo cheap, so [the seller] is giving in at 12:01 am TONIGHT and doubling the price.

I could ramble on endlessly, but I already have quite sufficiently, methinks. My kudos to you for freeing yourself to leave off writing sales letters.

Frankly, if money was no object (and isn’t it always for a small business owner/co-owner?), I’d put you at the top of the list in the running for logo and web design, et.al., just because you choose NOT to pen those silly sales letters. (Well, on second thought, they must not be quite so silly from everyone’s perspective, since I presume they must get some kind of profitable return given how popular such letters are).

Okay, enough of my verbosity (we artsy types are supposed to be a little strange and eccentric anyway, aren’t we?). Kudos to you for liberating yourself from the grinding “necessity” of writing sales letters, something you have the talent and capability to do, but just plain choose not to ’cause you don’t want to. That’s a plus in my book, frankly.

Cheers!

DWB,
Gallery B