Would you recommend paying $4,000 to a publishing company to promote my book?  I already have a friend create a video promoting the book once it is out?  The publishing company is pushing their services vs. my friend's video.  I am out of money.

I highly doubt the company would be able to offer RoI. Selling books is hard and even the top publishers don't have a worked out formula to make a book successful. I would suggest that you draw up your own marketing plan utilizing the free resources available - twitter, FB, book oriented social networks like GoodReads, LibraryThing, sending the work out in any online communities specific to your topic and getting reviews. If you start seeing some uptake, you can consider using the service from the company for doing it at scale. Or instead of paying one company all the money, you can identify what is working for you and find specialized providers for doing more of that.

I would emphatically recommend you NOT spend $4,000 on ANYTHING without getting at least 3 quotes. And if you are "out of money" as you say, then I would get a minimum of 10 quotes because every penny counts when you're broke. Actually, if you're really out of money, I wouldn't even consider spending $4,000 because that would mean just going into debt. You can get a ton of marketing for free if you know how to hustle (see http://www.tckpublishing.com/the-best-way-to-market-ebooks-with-a-limited-budget/) Most publishers suck at marketing (I know this is a horrible generalization, but it tends to be true). With $4,000, you could buy... Facebook ads and get 10,000 to 30,000 Facebook Fans in the US who love your (insert book niche or topic here) A full-distribution press release from all the major press release distributors and still have a few grand left over More than 4,000 pens monogrammed with the name of your book and website and hand them out to people Exactly 4,000 one-dollar bills, throw them in your living room in a big pile and play with your kids And a lot of other things... So think twice before spending that kind of money on "marketing"

Most of these companies are scams. It's not individual marketing, but a one size fits all solution. They don't care if it generates results or not, they just want your money.

Absolutely not. Anyone who's asking money to promote your book isn't a publisher, they're a service agency, and if they're passing themselves off as publishers, they are not to be trusted. You'd do better at buying $4K in book copies and giving them away to booksellers and people you respect in your niche as a way of getting your name out there. There are any number of things you can do to promote your product more cheaply than this and likely with greater ROI. Rich »∵« http://twitter.com/RichTatum

No, no, NOOOooooo.  Don't spend a dime on marketing through your publisher.  That's not normal in the publishing business.  The best money I spent on marketing was with a reputable firm that specialized in authors.  They worked for a small retainer, sent me weekly updates on what they were doing, and actually got me results.  For sure don't spend the money with your publisher.