Why did I?
So desperate for the books to land.
And they said Or double your money back.
So I thought what have I to lose?

Only time, calm abiding, and probably money.

It seems like there’s a contest for the book of the month.
But once your book is reviewed (assuming, I guess, the rating is a 4 or 5), and even before you can see the review, you get an email explaining that the conversations about which book is selected for that honor can be steered to your book for $20K.
What?
So there is no book of the month; there are only books that got 4s or 5s and for which the authors then paid an extra $20K.
Why do they pay $20K? They do the math: 30,000 guaranteed sales, at $3 (or whatever their profit is per book) a sale, equals well over $20K.
But it’s not quite honest, since readers are led to believe the books were selected in a more traditional / fair manner.

Then you get the review and it’s okay or whatever.
It’s an amateur review from someone who didn’t understand the book particularly well and who say they removed a point because the book is perhaps too artsy or philosophy for some readers. What?
Then you are immediately asked if you are satisfied with the review, at which point you notice two things: you’re not super satisfied with the review, and they are now attempting to box you into saying you are satisfied with their services, even though you wouldn’t at that point know if the review led to anything or not.
When you let their “100% satisfaction guaranteed” siren song seduce you off your established route, you were thinking that you’d be satisfied if the review and its placement helped some people who would be predisposed to liking your books discover this book. That’s what you wish for, nothing else. But now you see that what you are going to get is an amateur review that misses your sense of your book and that anyway sits in obscurity. No one will read the book based on this service, even though it is a pretty good book and there are people out there who, if you could just find them, would be glad to discover this book and your oeuvre. So you say, no, I’m not satisfied. And then you have to answer and answer and answer and answer and email after email after email after email and you are repeating yourself and each email seems to be misunderstanding your previous email on purpose so as to fatigue you into giving up and pretending you are satisfied with what you’ve gotten in exchange for your $400 (it didn’t have to be $400, but that was supposed to give you the best reviewers and the quickest reviews and you were already in the “what have I to lose?” mindset).

At one point they offer to give you the site’s owner’s book so you can make your book sell, but obviously, that’s not what you signed up for, you wanted the site to advertise your book, to get your book noticed by that little chunk of the world population that would love to read your book and follow your development as an author; that was your idea; that is what you are not good at; that is what you’d wanted help with.

At some point, they are telling you that was not a good review and they will give you another for free, but you feel quite strongly by this point that everything they do is just to wear you out until you will eventually be satisfied with an amateur review that is read by very few and that doesn’t move any books, doesn’t help you go evolve from some poor fool who spends a decade writing books into the void to a real author whose vision and perseverance are now receiving their just rewards. So you say, no, just refund the purchase price, that’s all I want at this point. And by now you’ve written so many words about this topic, a topic you find both boring and stressful.

And the denouement is that the owner emails you. He’s willing to refund the money, but your refusal to accept a new free review does raise questions. Which statement feels to you designed to manipulate you into capitulating. So you say, just refund the money, I’ve written enough about this; since, after all, you’ve written like ten messages to them about it as they try to fatigue you into submission like a bull in a bullfight, running slower and slower as more and more swords wiggle in its bumpy back. Then he responds that he’s the only one who can issue the refunds, so if you could please quickly explain your reasons for requesting the refund. One final hurdle. But no, it will probably lead to more hurdles …

Is it a scam?
Is it an iffy enterprise?
I don’t know.
They use the initial reviews to discover which books are good enough to offer to help promote.
But the promotions seem a little dishonest because readers are offered the sense that the best books are chosen, while the promoted books are actually the ones that meet some minimum standard of worthiness and that then pay more money (after the initial review) for the promotion.
Also when you, goaded on by “or your money back”, sign up, you don’t think you are signing up for a possible future paid promotion, but for immediate value, something that would satisfy you now, which if you’re an author without an audience, would be, you know, some readers, a review that caught enough of the book’s essence and was read by enough potential readers that it would get some meaningful number of likeminded readers to try reading your book.

They could, apparently, sell your books.
This is what that offer of 30,000 books sold for $20K has told you.
And this in turn makes you think, what is the relationship between advertising and success?
You’d always thought the books would eventually catch a fire on their own.
Does that ever happen?
Sometimes.
And if it doesn’t, does it mean the book doesn’t deserve to sell anyway?
If so, propping up sales with relentless advertising seems like cheating.
But maybe if the book never catches a fire, it just means the right people never read it, and with advertising maybe they would.

Anyway, an unsatisfying and exhausting experience.

And why did you do it?
That level of desperation where you let yourself be fooled.
That level of hopeless hope where you send the pretty girl from some far flung country your hard-earned money so she can come to you and be your bride, even though her profile keeps telling you she’s in a different far flung company than she was the day before, and even though her Whatsapp account is flagged as a business account, and even though there is no plausible reason why she would be interested in you.

Authors get lonely too