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Aug 27, 2018 · Check Alli’s vetted list for publishers clearly marked in red with a history of problems. These are definitely ones to avoid. You will find alerts for problematic book publishers, such as AuthorHouse, Dog Ear Publishing, Dorrance Publishing, and Page Publishing, just to name a few.
- Riding the Coattails of Publishing Influencers. If you Google “Anne R. Allen,” about halfway down the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) — before a link to this blog — is an ad for a notorious vanity publisher.
- Vanity Publishers Posing as Big Five Publishers. Never underestimate the chutzpa of publishing scammers. One of the Philippines companies that broke off from the Author Solutions scam machine has been posing as “Hachette US” and may be masquerading as other members of the Big Five.
- Fraudster Marketing Companies that Use Names of Respected Publishing Professionals. Mass-spamming the general public with press releases or tweets is worth absolutely nothing.
- Boxed Sets That Promise USA Today Bestseller Status. I warned people about boxed set scams last year, because there were some that devolved into toxic cults, but there are new scammers in town, and charities have been ripped off as well as authors.
- By Anne R. Allen
- Phishing Scammers Are Stealing Manuscripts
- How to Stay Safe
- Never Pay An Agent An Upfront fee.
- Real Publishers Don’T Make Offers on Books They Haven’T Read.
- Traditional Publishers Aren’T Paid by Authors; Authors Are Paid by publishers.
- Million-Dollar Advances Mostly Go to A-List Celebrities
- Agents Rarely Solicit Unpublished Authors
- Book Review Scams Are Everywhere
- Beware Junk Marketing Packages
2020 was a terrible year in so many ways. But one group seems to have thrived: the scammer community. Publishing scammers are everywhere now. I hear about new ones every week, each more heartbreaking than the one before. And more outrageous.
Yes. This is happening. It’s a bizarre and complicated scam targeting traditionally published authors, often famous ones. But unknowns have been hit too. Authors will get an email that appears to be from their agent or editor, asking for the latest draft of the WIP. But it’s not from the agent. It’s from a scammer. The unsuspecting author doesn’t k...
Plenty of scammers show up in my own inbox. I usually know enough to send them directly to spam, but I know some writers will be caught by them. And it only takes a few successful hits to keep these crooks going. Here are some basic things you need to know to stay safe. And so does your sweet next door neighbor who’s got a half-finished memoir and ...
I thought fee-charging scam agents disappeared a decade ago, but they’re ba-a-a-ck. The old-school scammers set up “agencies” that either charged reading fees and “copying and postage” fees, or they had cozy relationships with “editing” companies and demanded the author pay a hefty fee for a bad edit. The contemporary scammers are much bolder. They...
If the only reason a company contacts you is that you put the word “writer” in your profile, then be prepared to meet a publishing scammer. I saw a sad little post on Facebook a few months ago from an author who was over the moon because a publisher had approached her saying they were interested in “her book.” She was surprised they didn’t know it ...
Yes. We live in the age of self-publishing and “hybrid publishing.” Unfortunately, a lot of iffy presses pose as “self-publishing assistants” or “hybrid publishers” when they’re just overpriced vanity publishers. There are some very good companies that offer self-publishing services. Companies like BookBaby and Lulu offer excellent formatters and d...
If anybody approaches you with promises of an advance with more than three zeros after it, do some serious investigating. Especially if you don’t have an agent. Memoirs especially don’t tend to sell in large numbers, so unless your book is a high-concept novel or a biography of a major celebrity, be very wary. Some of these scammers are promising u...
Yes, I do know of authors who have been solicited by legit agents, but they were journalists or well-known short story or essay writers who were multi-published in venues other than books. They were not newbies. Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware warned us in December about one of the current scams that snags the dewy-eyed newbies. They approach a w...
Authors are obsessed with book reviews, especially on Amazon. That’s probably why solicitations by paid book review services are the most common scams I find in my inbox. Most of the contemporary scammers have the sense not to promise Amazon reviews any more, because Amazon now has fierce penaltiesfor paid reader reviews. (Paid and exchanged review...
These have been around for at least a decade, and they’re still going strong. (Edit 2/5/21: a reader recently reported a nasty junk marketing company called Book Writing Hub. Our reader paid over $5000 for “marketing” that was not only junk, but nearly non-existent.) There was a time when Tweeting your book title might grab the attention of a possi...
This is why most writers will warn people away from these kind of schemes and call them 'scam': they market to aspiring authors and bank on the excitement of seeing your book in print and being a 'published author', couching it in language that makes it seem as if they've chosen your work to make it a success.
Jan 8, 2021 · It’s time again for Writer Beware’s annual look back at the schemes, scams, and assorted crazy sh*t we encountered in 2020 (and I’m not even talking about the pandemic). WHAT’S IN A NAME? THE NEWEST SCAM TREND. Scammers lie, cheat, and misrepresent. They may claim credentials they don’t have, or professional relationships they don’t ...
May 16, 2021 · And there’s a new horrible scam just reported by Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware: criminals are extorting writers by sending obscenity-laced messages threatening to give your book 1000s of one-star bad reviews if you don’t pay them for good reviews. This is apparently happening at Goodreads right now.
People also ask
Are Author Solutions scammers posing as 'Hachette US'?
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Are book reviews a scam?
Are lurking predators coming up with new publishing scams?
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Are Author Solutions deceptive?
Aug 13, 2020 · Scammers–the same Philippines-based Author Solutions copycats that I’ve featured numerous times in this blog (also see the long, long list in the sidebar)–are impersonating reputable literary agents and agencies in order to bamboozle writers into buying worthless “services.”
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