This Topic was moved here from General Chess [move by] GMTonyKosten.

Boki - it seems like this is the consensus view so far (admittedly though only a few people have spoken!). But I´m curious - would you have a problem if this post was posted by the publisher themselves or not? For me this seems to be taking things a bit too far - for example what happens if (a hypothetical case which I hope won´t happen) a publisher decides to come along and open 20 new threads for his "forthcoming books" even if many of them are more than a year away? If we accept advertising as OK then theoretically they would be in their rights doing this.... My own view is that the book threads should be started by someone with a genuine interest in the books who happened to see the book is coming out on the publishers website - this is what usually happens and there are enough people on this forum keeping track of things, that I dont think we´d be missing much.

No actually, it was to be Chess Publishing General, Discussion since it's ChessPub business and not just miscellaneous chess chat.  I dunno that it matters now, but that's where this belongs.

MNb wrote on 02/03/10 at 22:28:45:


I was actually referring to IM Andrew Greet who started a thread on his book "The Accelerated Dragon"

Yes it should.

MNb wrote on 02/01/10 at 01:32:46:


I still stick to this. If Antillian referred to Rudel making propaganda for his book on the Colle-Zukertort using a pseudo and without making clear that he was the author, I did and do object.

If an author advertises for his/her book under his/her own name - and PsychoCowboy made very clear who he was - I don't expect him/her to tell us how bad it is. At the other hand I consider myself intelligent enough to decide if I need PC's DVD no matter how many arguments in it's favour he brings up. So advertising for chess products is not a problem for me at all, on the contrary, I welcome it, as long as I am free to slate it if I want to. Eg Eric Schiller advertising for his work on the Frankenstein/Dracula here will be in for some nasty comments.

I find these posts quite helpfull given the fact that Everyman just put their announcements between the already published books on their website (unless their release is nearby). That is also one of the reasons that I don't really believe Everyman is behind the posts.

Well evidently then I have got the wrong end of the stick as they say. I am not Simon Williams by the way  - not that strong - he´s a GM by the way, who plays a style of chess a million miles away from mine. I dont think he'd be caught dead playing the QGD for instance.

Actually thinking about it you´re right in a way though, this whole subject of advertising I hadn´t even considered before Markovich suggested deleting the Dutch thread, which somewhat took me aback, since as far as I could see there were far more likely candidates for deletion than that! The issue there for me was that the thread had not been started by the publisher/author. So probably had that not been in my head it would not even have occurred to me the other day that a thread which started off like that (with a link and publisher blurb) could be an advertisement. If the consensus is that this type of post is fine then so be it, I must have seen at least twenty posts like this before and probably it never occurred to me because the subject was not in my head.

I suppose the rules should be clarified a bit though - for example is it OK for a publisher (Everyman, Quality chess or whatever) to directly open a new thread in their own name about an upcoming book? If people agree its OK then theres nothing more to talk about. If not then all that needs to be confirmed is that the poster is a genuine poster and not representing a publisher, but if people are not that bothered either way (which seems to be the case) then anything goes! I myself like book threads, but would prefer if they were started by sombody who is genuinely interested in the book itself for one reason or another.