So talking about the Bedruthan competition,.......

[Lovetingles2]

Sorry, MNHQ, but I think you're taking the mickey now!
Ok, so you want publicity for the book, fine,...
if mumsnetters want to put up a poster for your book, fine
but making it the entry requirement for a decent comp!!?? NOT fine!
1/ What do you do if you have nowhere to put up the poster? I live in a tiny village, everyone knows everyone, can't think of a better way to out myself quite frankly
and I'm sure the vicar and all the elderly villagers here would lurve to have a Mnet poster with a quote from Shitemum on it!
2/ Come on,... Bloomsbury are a big publishers, they have publicity and marketing budgets, was this their idea to market your book? Perhaps you'd like to pay the marketing budget to posters who will display your publicity then. Cheeky, I think and unfair.

Strictly you only have to order the posters. Doesn't say anything about putting them up

Tis the principle LadyM!
Can't believe Bloomsbury are doing this book for altruistic reasons, so they should spend some money on publicity.

Yes Mumsnet is being unreasonable. Please could we have a sudoku challenge to win a Bedruthan holiday or something other than doing the marketing for a book!

bump for MNHQ

MNHQ, you know I'm right don't you?
That's why you haven't answered...
go on... change the entry to a review or a poster

Sudoku challenge

Lovetingles - what about your living room window? A bit like advertising your political affiliation around election time.

agree with them - tis kind of like when we have to spam our friends.

Oh and just ordering and not using them is randomly wasting trees

(sorry alexia )

pointless, puzzlerocks and a waste of paper, I'd only be advertising to sheep! we've got no neighbours

You could turn it into papier mache maybe

mmm... could do

papier mache fruit shoot perhaps, maybe a nipple shield or 2...
got it!
paper mache sausage roll, just like the ones in Greggs.

lovetingles

oh go stick up a poster! I'm sure someone will have them??

Local doctors?

Can you believe that is actually in my tenancy agreement that I can't stick posters up in the windows?!?!

Does it say you can't paste them to the brickwork?

Alexia!!!...It's just so dodgy!
I am really interested to know whether this is Justine/Carries idea or Bloomsbury's?
I tell you how I see it...
so Mumsnet/Bloomsbury publish books based on our collective wisdom, hopefully they stand to make a profit. Ok, fair enough, we've signed away our copyright by posting on this site.
To then ask the people who made this possible for MN/B, to publicise said book, when they stand to make nothing, is cheeky in the extreme.
Now as you are well aware we are in serious recession, there are posters here who can't possibly afford a holiday this year, me included.
To then offer a holiday competition where the entry requirement is publicity for MN/B smacks of thoughtlessness and greed.
It makes me wonder if MNHQ are rubbing their hands together with glee, laughing at how they can hoodwink us into doing the publishers job?. Lets be honest Bloomsbury must be over the bloody moon, they stand to save a packet!
It is really horrible and I think you should change the entry to posters or something else/review
I'm so disappointed in MNHQ, obviously this is your business, you want to make money, but you seem to be taking advantage of the people who have helped make your business a success.

I agree with everything lovetingles has said.

I would feel embarrassed putting a poster up advertising a book in my doctors surgery. There are people who come to the doctors who are probably not that well off and can not afford to buy books on every aspect of motherhood. I would only put a poster up for the book if it is available free of charge, like the weaning books etc the health vistors dole out.

Thank you Womble. I was starting to think it was just me!

I'm in agreement, much as I like the idea, MN was a site that provided support for parents not a marketing machine for a publishing house.

Would love to win a stay at bedruthan ( had a night of our honeymoon there!) but will not be entering on the basis that I am providing cheep publicity.

tbh the flogging of products is getting at little carried away, christmas cards now the books what next??? afaik none of the money is going to charity but please correct me if i'm wrong as it MAY change my opionion.

Our reasoning behind making ordering posters an entry requirement was simply that we think the book's great and we're hoping to publicise it to mums who might not yet know about MN (and the posters are fab). Hence suggesting GP surgeries, playgroups etc. Yes, it'll be great if we make money from the books, but the main thing is to get all your collective wisdom about parenting toddlers out there. As you know, we have different entry requirements for different comps each week. But we don't want to exclude/upset anyone, so we'll add some more entry requirements for Bedruthan - one will be to add a review of a buggy and the other (for mums who are beyond the buggy bit) will be to add a review to gifts for mum (what with mother's day coming up and all that). Alexia will amend the competitions page shortly.

Thank you Geraldine, I appreciate you taking my concerns seriously.
One more mini moan, sorry.....
I do find MNHQ's general reluctance to acknowledge the financial gains in publishing these books bizarre. I know you are all wonderful, but you cannot survive on altruism.

I've a added couple of additional incentives

Lovetingles, just to add, Justine explained the reasons for doing the book on another thread. I'll copy it here. Hope it helps:

1. To take all the brilliant and funny advice that gets posted on here every day and to sort it and put it in a compact and portable form. We think there's really something in the pooling of knowledge and experience so that you get a collective wisdom and importantly the idea that there's no one right way of doing things. If the MN books are going to have one overriding principle then it's just that: "There's more than one way to skin a cat". In short we thought we could create some fabulous and really helpful books. Books that are modern, democratic, funny and that you can be proud of owning because of all those reasons. A parenting manual you can leave on your coffee table and not be embarrassed about.

1. To spread the word about MN because we think it's useful - and folks should know about it.

1. To make some dosh. We need cash to pay for the site as we don't charge for access (and don't want to). We have lots of costs now - fancy servers, people, office, shed, Morning Papers exorbitant round up fee, not to mention sausage rolls. Yes we have advertising but we are quite restricted about what advertising we'll take and by whom - we probably turn down as much as we take. We reject a lot of companies and formats - SMA, Milupa, Nestle, Macdonalds have all waved big cheques in front of us in the last year or so - cheques that most other parenting sites would snaffle up. We did not and we're quite happy not to because merciless pursuit of profits is not what we're about (we didn't earn a salary for the first 5 or so years of MN for goodness sake) but it means that if you want a site that runs well we have to be smart about how we fund it.

Bear in mind also that not surprisingly it's tough out there in the advertising market world and probably going to get tougher - we were very much hoping that one big putative ad campaign was going to tide us over for the next little while but it's just been pulled. Blooming Marvellous has gone into administration owing us a fair bit of cash - if we are to avoid the pitfalls of being entirely reliant on advertising which is I gather very cyclical, then we need to have some other strings to our bow.

Thank you mumsnet for adding other ways of entering the competition.

Would it be possible to do a cross promotion with the NCT whereby you advertise the NCT on Mumsnet and the NCT run an ad for Mumsnet and the new book in their magazine? Just a thought.

Thanks from me aswell, now I have no excuses!!!