Being scammed trying to market my 5-star reviewed indie historical fiction 'Angel of Aleppo' > Likes and Comments

I was once under the illusion that freelancers out there in cyberspace were there for the right reasons.
I could still place trust in strangers.
I trusted Book Viral and they gave me this glowing recommendation, after I paid their fee.
Having invested thousands of dollars into having my book professionally designed and correctly formatted with the appropriate ISBNs and landing pages on Amazon, Ingram Spark, Booktopia and Barnes and Noble, I entered the Brave New Digital jungle. The same kind of light illuminating the dreams of all those wannabes in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby drew me to it, fuelled by the belief in Gatsby’s orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
Facebook algorithms had already identified me as a writer with aspirations and, after a friendly-seeming exchange on Messenger with an Irish author who owned a website and several published novels listed on Amazon, I decided to try my luck.
Before that Messenger profile vanished into the ether, the entity who borrowed the author’s profile to rip me off recommended her esteemed marketing mentor, one ‘Mary Brown’, who subsequently conned me out of the pdf of my novel’s text and $500 AUD, ostensibly to share with book clubs.
The tech broligarchy offers opportunity, our devices know what we want and the scum of cyberspace know how to massage AI to promise it from behind mythical pots of gold from the ends of rainbows that don’t exist.
I like to think there is a special place in hell for shameless scum who prey on writers, flattering to deceive, pretending to be online marketing gurus to those not naturally wired into labyrinthine internet algorithms and Search Engine Optimisation.
Shortly after I sent the money to ‘Mary’, more than thirty five-star reviews appeared on Goodreads, all a similar length, a paragraph of 60 – 80 words, and all in a similarly lavish tone of praise for the work. Then I saw that each reviewer had joined Goodreads on June 24, 2025. All of them had reviewed the work of another author, for whom they had similar praise.
I named a number of these reviewers in a message to Goodreads admin and asked: are these real people?
Goodreads investigated and deleted the reviews promptly. Meanwhile, ‘Mary’ sent a truly awful book trailer video. I sent repeated, increasingly irate emails asking for my money back. ‘Mary’ continued to apologise and promise to improve. I had undergone my first cycle of deception, lies and denial.
But I still trusted that there must be some real people out there and not everyone is a scam artist. Sigh.
Enter ‘Charlotte Hawthorne’, who emailed me that my book is ‘a gut-punch of history, courage, and humanity rolled into one…’
And yet… just one Amazon review?’ she wrote. ‘For this? That’s like giving Shakespeare a participation ribbon. It’s not just unfair, it’s borderline criminal in the literary world.’
She continued in that vein and told me she ran ‘a private community of over 2,000 active readers and reviewers, people who actually read the book before they review it … They love supporting authors like you by giving honest, thoughtful feedback that builds credibility and gets a book the attention it deserves.’
Because I wanted so badly to believe that she and her book club community were real, I continued the correspondence. At this point I did not appreciate the inherent lie in: ‘each reader is tipped $30–$35 as an appreciation for their time. That’s how we keep the network engaged and ensure they give the book the attention it deserves.’
Seduced by the possibilities of thirty odd reviews lighting up my Amazon page and causing the mushrooming effect of sales, more reviews, a rise in the Amazon ranks and the potential of my book pushing through to best-seller status, I did not see at first that my Paypal receipt for my $1500USD came from a correspondent named Olatunji Moses Mark, and not the same ‘Charlotte Hawthorne’.
Online thieves like ‘Charlotte Hawthorne’ run AI over your novel’s pdf, if you have been dumb enough to send it to them. AI is sophisticated enough to get the sense of your novel and generate a summary of it. The scammer wants your money at first, they assure you, to ‘tip’ their army of reviewers, who allegedly go online and buy your ebook at $0.99 from Amazon and post a verified review, so that soon you will have the thousand reviews that will elevate the book on the Amazon lists to headline every historical fiction fan’s Google searches.
Shortly afterwards, somewhat miraculously, online third-party freelancer coordinating body Upworks refunded me. ‘Charlotte’ had broken one of their rules. I have no idea what that was, but it may have been about faking reviews, as ‘Mary’ did.
I had dodged a bullet.
Yet I had not yet learned my lesson. On Facebook, I came upon
Express Book Publishers, of 1504 5th Street, Sacramento CA 95814.
These guys have a physical address, I told myself. Later, I learnt that their registered address was the same as the famous Reykjavik penis museum.
After I took the online bait, and paid an initial $1200 USD fee, they wrote: ‘We’re thrilled to welcome you… we understand that every project begins with a vision, and our goal is to help you bring that vision to life with professionalism, creativity, and care…’
Operatives ‘Martin Garret’ and ‘Sebastian Brown’ suckered me into paying $5500 USD to have books printed as a one-off entree to the Barnes and Noble stores. No communication had come to me from Barnes and Noble that my book had a landing page there, a detail I had missed in the blur of releasing my second edition in early 2025.
Unlike myself, ‘Garret’ and ‘Brown’ had established that my book Angel of Aleppo was already on the Barnes and Noble website (via Ingram Spark).
They sailed ahead with their fiction. ‘Sebastian’ emailed me with: ‘… I’m pleased to inform you that we’ve just received an update from Barnes & Noble, your first royalty cheque is scheduled to arrive next month!... To proceed with the release, they require a copy of your Author License. Kindly share it with us at your earliest convenience so we can move forward without delay.’ He followed up with: ‘One more thing I’d like to mention, we only have two days left to submit the Author License. If we don’t provide it or respond within this timeframe, your royalty payment will be donated to charity as per their policy. The cost of the Author License is $4,000.’
That penetrated my fog of delusion and after some Googling I established that Barnes and Noble will ‘never reach out to authors and offer instore placement of their books in exchange for money,’ and replied that I was not paying out any more money until I had royalties in the bank.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. After I found and contacted her, book scam US authority Victoria Strauss said this of Express Book Publishers:
‘Unfortunately, this is a scam from start to finish. There is no such thing as an "author license"; licensing is a thing that scammers have invented in order to extract money from writers … The claim about Barnes & Noble is false; it’s being made to incentivize you to shell out for the "license". Booksellers don’t pay royalties, only publishers do.’
After I became suspicious of their bogus Author license demand, a flurry of WhatsApp messages and phone calls came from ‘Martin’ and ‘Sebastian’, in which they lied to me that I had already sold seventy or so copies through Barnes and Noble. By now I was fired up enough to reach out to Barnes and Noble, still believing that I may have sold some books through them, but Barnes and Noble confirmed for me via email me that ‘the title is only available on bn.com; there have been no orders placed by our buyers for store placement.’
I have been burnt to the tune of almost $10,000 AUD.

Book Viral recommendation for 'Angel of Aleppo': https://bookviralreviews.com/author-p...... link to review in the page, link to Amazon from the review page.