It can still be hard to distinguish between legitimate efforts to promote a product, and “blog spam.” In many ways, it’s similar to other e-mail campaigns where text is supplied for you, with an instruction to send to your Congressperson or Representative. Exactly what makes it “spam?” That’s pretty hard to pin down (And no, I don’t necessarily believe it’s like porn: “I know it when I see it.”)

I just gotta say I love my kindle and the cheap books. My taste is a bit rough but I enjoyed (deleted book name) by (deleted author name). It can be a bit vulgar at times. Be warned. But it’s cheap. (deleted link) She is the bestselling author of (deleted author name). (another deleted link) 2 books for under 2 bucks. THe kindle will own publishing.

This exact comment has been posted twice on TeleRead under two different names. Further, the post has been copied verbatim onto at least twenty different blogs.

Is this someone sharing a heartfelt recommendation or is this someone flogging a book? Are these repeated messages a pernicious form of “blog spam” or are they an essential pathway for communication? Anyone providing a comment forum faces questions like this.

TeleRead is clearly not hostile to genuine ebook recommendations, and it recently featured a post that highlighted the ebooks of authors who read the blog.

Are you saying the book doesn’t deserve to be published? Because, as someone who’s read Boyd’s book, I can say that it is as publishable as anything else out there (it’s not Lawrence of Arabia, but it’s highly entertaining and well-constructed). Good for Boyd!

In an era where advertising and promotion are running headlong into blogs, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever we’ll all be talking about next month, it’s not surprising that unconventional promotional tactics are getting more and more attention. But they don’t all have to be bad… even the over-used ones.

If you extract a phrase from the message above, i.e., “My taste is a bit rough but I enjoyed”, and perform a search you find multiple hits on a variety of blogs. Maybe it is inevitable that self-publishing and micro-publishing leads to promotion via blog spam. Is this the future of publishing and advertising? I can answer that question for you. But first you must read my book on the topic “Super-Success Through Ultra-Spamming!!!! How to Become Rich and Famous by Irritating Everyone!!!””