The Emptier Side of Book Blogging

Really, for a lack of better words. We all know how awesome it is to get contacted by publishers and publicists to do book tours and get offered ARCs and author interviews and giveaways and so on. But how do you feel when the other side fails to hold up their end of the bargain? What do you do?

I had one publicist contact me to have an author guest post on my blog, perhaps have a giveaway. In that same email, they offered a couple of the author's books. This was earlier in my blogging days so I jumped right on in, went through the effort of having the author on and I initially responded that I'd like a couple of those books to review and giveaway. My set with the author was over but the publicist hadn't gotten back to me about the books. In fact, she avoided that mention in my email altogether, instead focusing on other aspects of my email regarding the author and more promotion. When I followed up a second time, I didn't get an answer. So basically I was used to shill for this author by the publicist and when they offered something, they Indian Gave. Awesome.

I tried contacting another publicist regarding something that should have shipped as a sort of thank you for a promotion I did. She never responded. I tried emailing again saying I hadn't received my package that she said had been sent. No response.

On top of publicists not following through on what they offer, I've had authors agree to guest post and then bail. One poor publicist was in the middle of it as she was the contact person and apologized profusely to me about it since the author wasn't getting back to her.

So as a book blogger, what do you do about this? Do you just let it go? Do you get snippy? Do you complain to someone higher up? Believe it or not (as I'm sure a lot of you might think I start to bite when I get angry), I let it all go. If they don't respond to a second (and nice) email, I just drop it. And I remember them. It's a short list but it's all noted quite soundly.

The thing is, one side of the argument would say don't complain, you get this stuff for free and you get to interact with authors. But see my side would say look at it from our shoes. We get offered something for return services, usually a guest spot for the author, advertising, whathaveyou. When something is offered to us and then recanted AFTER we've already done the work, it's a little disheartening, especially when the same publicist comes back again a little later and asks you for more work on another book.

Sometimes I feel some of these people think we're stupid. Oh we have these book bloggers that are so desperate for "celebrity" contact that they'll do anything for us so let's offer something, get them to do all the work and then "forget." Had I not let the first instance of this roll off my back, I would have become really discouraged.

Sure, my emails could be overlooked. Inboxes for these people fill up. It happens. But when they received every single one of my emails when we were working out details and all of a sudden it's a dead zone on the other end, that's a little suspect. What's even more suspect is replying to those very emails but conveniently overlooking the parts about the books that were offered.

Just to make this clear, this is a very small number of publishers/publicists/authors that I deal with. For the most part, they're all for the give and take and they understand that book blogs are genuine work and the review/guest post/giveaway isn't all that free for us, in one way or another. But, of course, the ones that leave a negative impact occupy far greater space, unfortunately. And it really irks me when people offer something after you've done a bunch of work for them and then conveniently overlook you. And it's not too much fun being so blatantly used. It's because of this stuff that I'm so strict when it comes to promotions on my blog. I mean yeah, blogging is a total volunteer process. I don't make money, I lose money on this blog. But I do it because I love doing it. That doesn't mean I'm willing to get taken advantage of.

Now I know I can't be the only one this has happened to. Has anyone else had any kind of experiences like this? Don't name names and if you want to post anonymously, go right ahead. This isn't meant to call anyone out but just let people know that when something like this happens, we do take notice and it's not something that's forgotten too easily. What we have are business relationships and they should be professional on all levels, regardless of the age or whatever of the person on the other side of the blog.

And I'm not talking about people being unresponsive from the beginning. I've contacted plenty of publishers and authors initially about guest posts or ARCs with zero response. That's not uncommon. What I'm talking about is getting into a working relationship with someone, you do all the work you promise to do and then they bail on you.