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I wrote a book instead.

I scrapped the documentary. A book is better.

Feedback, advice, ideas, opinions and hopefully a few donations appreciated.

Link is www.indiegogo.com/pdbook the link to the actual information is on there.

I'm publishing with Lulu because they specialize. Cafepress is large and dependable but I think that they take more out of the sale, haven't looked into it.

If anybody is interested I'm looking for an editor to edit the whole book for a cheap price. I can't afford a professional editor at the market price. There are a lot of mistakes and I didn't bother to add in as many descriptive words or structure the sentences in a way that is presentable from top to bottom. The total amount of pages is around 215 maybe less after I make some revisions.

I can afford to pay $300.

* There are A LOT of mistakes and revisions/edits that need made.
 
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What are you crowdfunding for if you're publishing with Lulu?

I visited the website and, frankly, the 'Your Website' page amounts to nothing more than a pack of lies. You have 65,000 followers on the Please Don't Be Real Twitter account? Really? I couldn't find a single account. Nor on Facebook despite your claim to have 10,000 fans. Care to furnish me with some links?

As someone who runs a website and is always interested in advertising opportunities, can you really promise 2000 visitors to my site (I'm assuming per month)? Can you show me the website statistics that back this claim up?

If you can't then you are trying to get people to invest in a product/business based on false statistics and information. I'm not a lawyer and there are probably ways you can weasel out of it but it smacks of fraud.

Just friendly advice, but I am curious to know more.
 
If you write a book, you invest your time into making it. You don't just write and publish. Honestly from the samples I read, I'm not buying it. I could go and put my money into better things like a new shotgun mic, or new shotgun. 12 or 20? haha
 
What are you crowdfunding for if you're publishing with Lulu?

I have to pay an editor, designer, graphics, better hosting package, paid advertising & SEO, ship 25+ copies to my house at min. price (Around $9), and I need some other things. Good thing is that I'm getting all of that at discounted prices, some free.


I visited the website and, frankly, the 'Your Website' page amounts to nothing more than a pack of lies. You have 65,000 followers on the Please Don't Be Real Twitter account? Really? I couldn't find a single account. Nor on Facebook despite your claim to have 10,000 fans. Care to furnish me with some links?

The twitter isn't created. I say I have 65,000 because that is how many I will have. I use a marketing tool to promote so 65,000 in about 5 months, probably less. If you talk to some twitter guys the numbers will check out you can ask them or try it yourself and do the math. 30 days in a month, 300-400 followers each day. 5-6 months.

Right now my personal account has about 1000 in 5 days on half speed.

Not a lie, proven amount with stats to back it up. If I said "I have 5,000 followers on twitter" then by the time I post their link my account would have 5x that much which would mean 25,000 followers not 5000, see what I'm saying? I listed the true amount instead of current amount. Posting their links more than once.



As someone who runs a website and is always interested in advertising opportunities, can you really promise 2000 visitors to my site (I'm assuming per month)? Can you show me the website statistics that back this claim up?

If you can't then you are trying to get people to invest in a product/business based on false statistics and information. I'm not a lawyer and there are probably ways you can weasel out of it but it smacks of fraud.

Just friendly advice, but I am curious to know more.

Not per month, but yes, more than 2000 unique visitors. I can prove and back up the 5,000+ visitors from social media & networking, but not the 2000 coming directly from the site -- no way to prove that one unless the book website was already getting traffic and I had already delivered 2,000 visitors to somebody. Then I could take a screenshot of the clicks to personX's link...but even then a screenshot can be faked, so no I can't.
 
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If you write a book, you invest your time into making it. You don't just write and publish.

I'm sorry but that is incorrect if you are suggesting that profiting from a book is without expenses. Takes more than time to write it to earn profit from selling it. The traffic for life story books do not convert to sales very well...not as well as major markets.

If you're suggestion that I should be writing just to write, well, I respect your opinion but will have to disagree.

Honestly from the samples I read, I'm not buying it. I could go and put my money into better things like a new shotgun mic, or new shotgun. 12 or 20? haha

Well then you're missing out on a really good book.


Edit: I see what you mean with the samples. They need edited and I should probably replace the first intense delusion with one of the worst delusions during the whole length of time I was in the dark. The cafeteria sample is relevant to the whole book and root cause of many of the paranoid thoughts and delusions so I'm keeping that as a sample. The background info in sample 1 is good. Sample 3 should be replaced though. I put it in there to go with the low self-esteem...gave too much info about the character maybe, sentence structure was put together wrong.

Editing now.
 
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Try a hook. I only read the first one because I got bored. That's all I can say. Maybe I'll buy it one day when I see it at Barnes and Noble. I'll say to myself, "Maybe everyone's douchey comments on indietalk helped make this guy big."
 
The twitter isn't created. I say I have 65,000 because that is how many I will have. I use a marketing tool to promote so 65,000 in about 5 months, probably less. If you talk to some twitter guys the numbers will check out you can ask them or try it yourself and do the math. 30 days in a month, 300-400 followers each day. 5-6 months.

Right now my personal account has about 1000 in 5 days on half speed.

Not a lie, proven amount with stats to back it up. If I said "I have 5,000 followers on twitter" then by the time I post their link my account would have 5x that much which would mean 25,000 followers not 5000, see what I'm saying? I listed the true amount instead of current amount. Posting their links more than once.

No, you are outright lying on your website. It says "The twitter account for Please Don’t Be Real has over 65,000 followers". By your own admission the twitter account doesn't exist. How is that not lying?
 
The twitter isn't created. I say I have 65,000 because that is how many I will have. I use a marketing tool to promote so 65,000 in about 5 months, probably less. If you talk to some twitter guys the numbers will check out you can ask them or try it yourself and do the math. 30 days in a month, 300-400 followers each day. 5-6 months.

Right now my personal account has about 1000 in 5 days on half speed.

Not a lie, proven amount with stats to back it up. If I said "I have 5,000 followers on twitter" then by the time I post their link my account would have 5x that much which would mean 25,000 followers not 5000, see what I'm saying? I listed the true amount instead of current amount. Posting their links more than once.

In other words you're just going to follow hundreds of random people every day in the hopes they'll follow you back. So basically you're going to be a spammer who follows a bunch of other spammers, and who is followed by spammers.

I think I'd rather try to build a real Twitter following that is interested in what I have to say, that I'm engaged with, and that might actually benefit me in some way (oh, wait, I've already got all that).

And yeah, saying the account has 65k followers when it doesn't even exist yet is lying. It's potentially fraud. And at the very least, it makes you look really, really unprofessional and like a scammer.

Also, expecting an editor to work for $300 on a self-published book that needs as much editing as yours is kind of insulting (I'm an editor, and no way would I take on a project like yours for so little pay, even if it was the kind of thing I normally edit, which it's not). There's no benefit to them to work for such a low rate. If you know it needs a lot of work, then why don't you try doing a few rounds of edits on it yourself? If you can get it polished more, then you might be able to find an editor who will do line editing for you for somewhere in the area of $300, if they're just starting out or only edit part time.
 
No, you are outright lying on your website. It says "The twitter account for Please Don’t Be Real has over 65,000 followers". By your own admission the twitter account doesn't exist. How is that not lying?

It's only a lie if I won't have 65,000 followers.

If I say "I will probably have 65,000 followers" that would be an outright lie, false, not true.

Also, please keep in mind that this information is/will be shared with everybody. Obviously all sites involved will want to see the twitter & facebook pages first, or at least some type of confirmation of the amount of followers.

I'll probably change it to "The twitter for Please Don't be Real" grows by 500 follows each day and will reach over 50,000 as your URL's are posted" -- then add the URL to the twitter page (Which really does grow by 300 to 500/day) so they can see current number of followers and the added followers each day.
 
It will grow not from interest in your book but from using a follow service. You may like playing with semantics but it is deception.

Grow a real fan base. What good are spammers? If you had a book signing would you want these 65K to show up and spam you? :lol: Or would you rather have 400 real fans show up?
 
It will grow not from interest in your book but from using a follow service. You may like playing with semantics but it is deception.

Grow a real fan base. What good are spammers? If you had a book signing would you want these 65K to show up and spam you? :lol: Or would you rather have 400 real fans show up?

Thanks for the advice ;)
 
Thf, since you asked for feedback, here's mine: First, you're not willing to fix your own mistakes and do all of the revisions for your book before you hand it off to a copy editor. Secondly, your marketing scheme is less than honest. I'm not sure why anyone should get behind your project, much less make a donation.
 
Here we go again.

http://www.indiegogo.com/backfromhell - removed.
http://www.indiegogo.com/To-Hell-I-Fell-From-Hell-I-Came-Documentary - removed.
http://mypassengers.wordpress.com/ - deleted.

Every time you start something you abandon it. You tell people you
already have something when you mean you hope to someday have it.
You made the exact same claims with your documentary. You told us
over and over that it was the most moving documentary ever made. Not
WILL BE, but that IT IS. Yet you never made it and abandoned the idea
of making it.


“The twitter account for Please Don’t Be Real has over 65,000 followers”
does not mean “The twitter account for Please Don’t Be Real will someday
have over 65,000 followers”. You are smart guy and you know you are
deliberately misleading people and playing with semantics.

You registered the domain under a false name with a false address
using a contact number that does not exist.

Yet you want people to trust you and give you money.
 
You don't just write a book. My dad, sadly the person who holds my business license due to my debt, is a book editor. He's been editing the same mystery novel for over 6 months. That's what he does 18 hours a day. He gets paid more than anyone else in the family, because of the time he puts in. I've been planning to write a camera use book for the Panasonic AG-HMC-80, and just the planning, tinkering, and experimentation is taking me months and months and months. On-top of that, for a 350 page book, do you know how many reams of paper the average editor goes through? I walked into my dad's place Saturday, and he easily had way over $300 in paper that's been printed. Just for the same book. Marked, shipped, retyped for corrections. Get your facts straight bro.
 
Also on IndieGoGo in the perks section it says "All perks listed on pleasedontbereal.com" which is against their terms. As soon as someone contributes the perk text is non-editable so you honor what you agreed to, but this text allows him to accept contributions and then switch the perk in the end. There is no other reason for doing that! Dishonest and against their terms. He knows how it works since he's had accounts there.

This member also tried to post this under a different user account with a different name and state listed but I told him to use his original account.

I don't like where all this is going.

Since this involves asking for money I am tempted to ban this member to protect other members.
 
What's hilarious here is that you are trying to fake your way onto twitter. Are you aware of the market value of what you're pretending to have? It's not too high. Even if you had 65k real twitter followers, you would still have to make a truly great work. Otherwise, 2/3 loose interest. Then 1/3 of those people make it over to kickstarter, then 6/7 will give you a buck. The others 5.

So now you have

65,000
/3
so around 22k left
/3 again
thats around 7
add the one in 6 that give higher numbers and you've got almost 12 grand.

So you've come up with this elaborate plan to claim via spam and website info,

That you're a guy with so much support, you could buy a used imitation rosewood panel station wagon.
 
I'm sorry to say, since I leave my computer on 24/7, my best friend and neighbor read directorik's last post. He said, and I quote, "If I was a cop I'd be calling in right now about a fraud investigation. Sounds like a con-artist."
Here are laws I found helpful to any law enforcement officials on this forum.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001030----000-.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001037----000-.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001038----000-.html
And if you try to come after me for providing these laws to everyone calling you out,
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001039----000-.html

For some reason I see you coming after me thfdocumentary. I guess that's easy with all my personal information on the interwebs, thanks to my medals. So if you do, it's called military training, a gun, and a baton, and the fact that I'm a Nevadan. c:
 
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