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

4 replies

Lovetingles2 · 12/02/2009 16:23

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.

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MNHQ

AlexiaMumsnet · 12/02/2009 23:00

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

Local doctors?

MNHQ

GeraldineMumsnet · 13/02/2009 13:20

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.

MNHQ

AlexiaMumsnet · 13/02/2009 13:49

I've a added couple of additional incentives

MNHQ

GeraldineMumsnet · 13/02/2009 15:34

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.

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