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On Scams Targeting Writers
May. 19th, 2025 06:02 pmThere are scams targeting everybody in every walk of life, but in my other job, writing, I find there are several persistent types of scams. Anon, a list, but first a general thought as to why.
Writers have a story they want to tell. They think it's a good story, because they like it, and they usually have somebody else who tells them that they like it. (That somebody may be their mother, who kept their kindergarten fingerpainting on the refrigerator until it yellowed with age, but Dear Old Mom is a somebody.) So, it is very easy for a writer to become convinced that if they just Got The Word Out people would buy and like their stuff. Alas, this is not entirely true - you can get the word out to me about your gay Regency romance until you're blue in the face but I'm not buying it. (Not saying there's not a market for that, just that I'm not a member of that market.)
Herewith cometh the list:
1) Interviews: This is (to me) a fairly new one. Somebody with a Filipino accent and a bad VoIP line calls you and asks you to appear on a TV interview. A bit of Googling on the interviewer's name will produce a number of hits proclaiming them to be an "award-winning TV journalist." A deeper look will reveal that these links are self-referential and that the person in question used to work on-air for a major market US TV station but is no longer affiliated with it. The scam is that if you want your interview to stay up on their sparsely-visited website for more than an instant, you need to pay. You are also heavily encouraged to pay for (scattershot and spam-y) marketing to drive traffic to said website.
2) Marketing & PR firms: This is a more ongoing and broader category. It runs the gambit from the Filipino calling you to be a publicist and represent your book at international book fairs to websites promising to market your book to their "thousands of online followers." Frankly, since I don't like to talk to marketers on the phone, I have no idea if the "publicists" do anything. The online folks will at least put your ad on their feed, but I find that I typically have better uses for my money. (We all have people we follow on socials who are constantly plugging something - when was the last time you actually clicked on a link they sent you?)
3) Publishing sites: This is the granddaddy of them all, going back to the "vanity presses" of yore. The harder they work to proclaim that "we want to get you published" (bonus points if they mention "New York publishing gatekeepers") the less likely it is that you'll get anything of value back. Basically, you (over)pay, they deliver just enough so that you can't sue then they laugh all the way to the bank.
Again - writers have a story they want to tell, and there are a host of people who promise you that they can help. For a price, of course.
Writers have a story they want to tell. They think it's a good story, because they like it, and they usually have somebody else who tells them that they like it. (That somebody may be their mother, who kept their kindergarten fingerpainting on the refrigerator until it yellowed with age, but Dear Old Mom is a somebody.) So, it is very easy for a writer to become convinced that if they just Got The Word Out people would buy and like their stuff. Alas, this is not entirely true - you can get the word out to me about your gay Regency romance until you're blue in the face but I'm not buying it. (Not saying there's not a market for that, just that I'm not a member of that market.)
Herewith cometh the list:
1) Interviews: This is (to me) a fairly new one. Somebody with a Filipino accent and a bad VoIP line calls you and asks you to appear on a TV interview. A bit of Googling on the interviewer's name will produce a number of hits proclaiming them to be an "award-winning TV journalist." A deeper look will reveal that these links are self-referential and that the person in question used to work on-air for a major market US TV station but is no longer affiliated with it. The scam is that if you want your interview to stay up on their sparsely-visited website for more than an instant, you need to pay. You are also heavily encouraged to pay for (scattershot and spam-y) marketing to drive traffic to said website.
2) Marketing & PR firms: This is a more ongoing and broader category. It runs the gambit from the Filipino calling you to be a publicist and represent your book at international book fairs to websites promising to market your book to their "thousands of online followers." Frankly, since I don't like to talk to marketers on the phone, I have no idea if the "publicists" do anything. The online folks will at least put your ad on their feed, but I find that I typically have better uses for my money. (We all have people we follow on socials who are constantly plugging something - when was the last time you actually clicked on a link they sent you?)
3) Publishing sites: This is the granddaddy of them all, going back to the "vanity presses" of yore. The harder they work to proclaim that "we want to get you published" (bonus points if they mention "New York publishing gatekeepers") the less likely it is that you'll get anything of value back. Basically, you (over)pay, they deliver just enough so that you can't sue then they laugh all the way to the bank.
Again - writers have a story they want to tell, and there are a host of people who promise you that they can help. For a price, of course.
