BooksGoSocialReviews of bgsauthors.com

Lawrence from BooksGoSocial contacted me and refunded me in full, which I greatly appreciate. I purchased the Gold Plan for $225 for 60 days of promotion, no extra charges! Yeah, right. They ran through my $75 ad budget in 2 weeks and then asked for $150 for advertizing AND $75 'admin fee'. Zero new reviews and my revenue was $30. I did get a video "consultation" which was more "I can do whatever you want, Amazon ads, FB ads, Instagram...whatever. Well, if I knew what was best I would've saved $225 and done it myself. Do not recommend.

I recently purchased BGS's Book Launch Marketing package, hoping for a supportive and collaborative experience to launch my book. Unfortunately, what I received was a far cry from my expectations. After weeks of silence and multiple reminders, the only deliverables were a NetGalley entry (which thankfully worked well, hence 2 stars, the rest of the service is only worth 1 star) and confirmations of information I already knew. The promised promotional graphics, Amazon optimization, social media campaigns, and ad support were nowhere to be found. Despite paying a substantial sum, I felt completely abandoned and unsupported. When I requested a cancellation and refund, the response was swift - almost suspiciously so. It left me wondering if they were deliberately avoiding working with me. I explicitly asked for feedback on why this was the case, but received no response, leaving me feeling even more bewildered and insecure. As an author launching a book, you crave a partner who will guide you through this overwhelming process. Instead, I felt completely alone, left to grapple with unanswered questions and a lingering sense of insecurity. It's disheartening to invest in a service that promises so much, only to be met with silence and a lack of transparency. While I appreciate the prompt refund, I would have much preferred a proper collaboration and support. The experience has left me feeling unsettled and questioning my own work, even though my book has received positive reviews elsewhere. If you're seeking a reliable and communicative partner for your book launch, I'd strongly advise looking elsewhere. BGS's lack of transparency and communication left me feeling frustrated and unsupported, and I wouldn't want any other author to experience the same.

I really want to like this service, but I don't. I hired BGS to help with Amazon ads management, and do some other promotions for my book. Long story short, Books Go Social dropped the ball multiple times, changed the terms of their service after I already paid for said service (and gave a perfunctory apology after I nagged them about it), and didn't perform some of the promised social media promotion/advertising and book review promotion. They did eventually do the SM promo and book review promo, but they initially didn't want to do the book review promo as advertised. Eventually, they relented. BGS’s general approach to the Amazon ads is interesting and, to a certain extent, works. In that respect, I do appreciate the ad setup and maintenance. The ads did bring in more book sales, so I consider that aspect of it a success. But, overall, the service didn't work as advertised on the BGS website—BGS wasn't able to bring ACOS in line where it needed to be, and while conversions were part of the equation, a big part of this came down to the keywords they used and some of the bidding strategies they employed. When I contacted Mr. O'Bryan about the growing number of problems, his response was to minimize the problem, push the blame onto my book (e.g. you need more reviews, you need better ad copy, etc). I did take one of his suggestions and changed the ad copy to his suggested copy. Result: conversions held steady for a little while, then tanked. This isn't the fault of the book. This comes down to his poor ad copy. This is exactly what I suspected would happen given the quality of my ad copy for the book, but wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. As my doubts grew, I started questioning some of the decisions being made, and pressed Mr. O'Bryan for more answers and more transparency. It finally came out that he didn't understand the USP of my book (which is right on the cover and in the subhead), nor did he understand the premise of the book (which was clearly laid out in my ad copy for the book). Nor did he even know I had published another book in the same general category, with some audience overlap to the book he was helping promote. This is not the level of service I expected. Mr. O'Bryan writes this off as "Some books don't sell well" and "You're in a competitive niche". Yes, I know I am in a competitive niche. I know this because I came to BGS *after* hitting #1 in my chosen book categories, and top 5 in several other categories, and after the book already had some sales under its belt. Mr. O'Bryan knows this because it was disclosed during onboarding. It was a grind to get those sales, which is why I hired BGS to help augment sales from other promotional efforts. What would have made this a much better experience is if Mr. O'Bryan and BGS had set better and more realistic expectations for what he could do (and couldn't do), and also take some time to read the book (skim it, even), read the ad copy, and really take some time to understand what he's promoting. He could have also owned his company's mistakes early on, and worked to correct them. Being more transparent about his business, not changing terms mid-project, and fulfilling all promised services as advertised would also help improve his business. Edit (1/8/24): Four days ago, I received an email from Mr. O'Bryan stating, "We don't have any unspent budget so nothing to refund you". Meanwhile, I didn't ask for, nor did I expect, a refund at this point. I did, however, express my dissatisfaction with BGS's services, but assumed it was far too late to be refunded for anything and so I didn't even bring it up. Almost immediately after my negative review was posted, I receive a refund notification and several emails from Mr. O'Bryan. He apologized for the bad service, but went on to "ask", "I ask you to not try to wreck out business". I am not in the business of wrecking businesses, but I do occasionally leave reviews when I think a service was exceptionally good or bad. In this case, I received exceptionally poor service, and (finally) an acknowledgement from the business' owner (in his words) that, "I have not got this right with your book." As a final note, Mr. O'Bryan flagged this review for "containing harmful or illegal content." I invited Mr. O'Bryan to correct any misstatements of fact or errors on my part, and to spell out exactly what part of my review is "harmful" or "illegal". If there are any errors, this review will be updated and corrected. As for whether you should do business with him, I can't answer that for you. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it's worth trying.