Dear spammer,

I had a vague idea what I wanted to talk about today, and then your e-mail arrived. Thank you for providing me with a much more entertaining topic.

You proclaim yourself to be a publisher called "Fantasy & Fiction Worlds." Of course, "publisher" is a slightly misleading term, since according to your web site, "Fantasy & Fiction Worlds is a brand new editor. We only publish, for the time being, Mr WH Sanders' works." So I'm guessing this is your way of saying the work is self-published, and that it's Mr. Sanders himself spamming my inbox.

The best part? Your e-mail included a four megabyte PDF sample of Mr. Sanders' e-book.

ETA: It's been pointed out that there is a professional SF/F author named William Sanders, who works with Helix and has recently put out a few books through Norilana Press. To be clear, there is no way this is the same guy.

Normally, I try to be a fairly nice guy. But if you spam me with an attachment that would have crashed my system if I tried to view it from home*, then you're fair game.

Let's start with your e-mail, shall we? "BE SWEET, TRANSMIT THIS BOOK TO YOUR FANTASY FANS FRIENDS, THANKS"

Um ... no. See, I like my friends. Of course, you go on to say, "you may therefore transfer this file by email to your friends if you so wish, that will certainly please them." Well, gosh. If the spammer tells me this will please my friends, who am I to question?

As for the excerpt itself? Well, here are a few tips which will certainly please you!

1. Papyrus-regular? Not the most legible font to use for your book.

2. I can understand setting security on your PDF. But dude, you disabled the printing function for your 112 page masterpiece. This does not please me!** Though I suppose a printout wouldn't be all that legible anyway, thanks to the parchment background you use on every page.

3. When people say your first sentence needs to hook the reader, they mean you need to catch the reader's interest and draw them into the story. They do not mean that reading your first sentence should approximate the experience of jabbing a fishhook into your flesh.

4. You state that "All business and reproduction rights belong to the Publisher."*** This would be more convincing if you hadn't peppered your excerpt with images swiped from the web. To be fair, I suppose it's possible you actually bought all of those swords and helmets, photographed them, then deliberately pixellated the photo edges to make it look like you had copied them from an online medieval reproductions shop. If that's the case, I offer my most sincere apology.

5. Are editors an endangered species in your land? What about spellcheckers?

In conclusion, when choosing how to promote your masterpiece, please remember that there are effective ways to build word of mouth and get your name out there. There are also ineffective ways. Then there are the ways that give self-publishing a bad name and piss people off to the point that they publicly mock you.

You chose poorly.

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*That's right, some of us are still on dial-up. My daughter has to go to grandma and grandpa's house to get to the Webkins site. I'm such a cruel Daddy.

**Or it wouldn't if I actually had any interest in reading your work.

***All your reproductive rights are belong to us!