When you disguise your intents, when you mislead someone in order to make a sale – whether of a book or a service – makes you a slimy piece of crap scammer.
Avoid doing it.
You want people to be genuinely interested – and you want them to feel fulfilled afterward, not cheated.
Don’t sprinkle your book descriptions with bogus (keyword: bogus) comparisons to well-known authors. Just don’t, unless it’s for real. A book I’ll be publishing from KW Taylor later this year reminds me of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, so I’ll say that… but I wouldn’t about any book that didn’t make me think of that.
And when you misrepresent yourself as having a conversation when it’s really a thinly disguised sales pitch… well, then you get people like me using you as an example of what not to do on the internet.
As I replied in this thread: I am far less worried about pirates than I am douchebag asshats
who disguise their self-promotion attempts to market their anti-piracy
wares as a discussion. Check out Alliteration Ink’s piracy policy right on over here.