Support for Indie Authors discussion

Thank you Caroline for warning! It is truly revolting to see such acts.

Caroline wrote: "Earlier this year I was contacted for a book tour, foolishly I did not investigate this as I should. What happened was my book was hijacked and offered as a download on sites located in another county. I stopped most of it, got my money back and even had GoodReads delete spam 1 star reviews on all my books! (about 20 of them!)

He's back and I am warning you. If you get an email from:
Erin K. Ison - look carefully at the email addy. It is actually from Jim J.
patricidy6r@gmail.com, the guy that tried to spam me.

If you receive a offer of promotion from either of these folks mark the email as spam and block them. The site he directs you to is [deleted] and you pay Verge Soft Promotions.

Be careful Indies, all I ever received was one FB post, one GR review that disappeared and the rest was a rip off.

Be Safe"

Deleting the original message. Most of it is posted here as it's good to be warned against pirates and other scum. I am deleting it because of the link. Links are against our rules anyway, and I don't want anyone clicking on a potentially damaging web site.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, shady people will exist as long as people exist. It's good to wan others (without links next time, please).
I faced an increase in spam lately (on my work e-mail, unrelated to writing) - I am mentioning this because of the current situation, and encroaching X-mass, the number of spammers and other dirty tricks of all sorts in circulation will likely increase.
Stay aware. Don't click inknown links. Don't follow anything that sounds suspiciously easy to be true.

The main thing about all of this is both indie authors and either new and or young
advertising, promotional or marketing business's find the scamming and rip offs
naturally cause fear and extreme caution in those new to the industry as well as severly back lashing on those of us who are genuinely doing everything within their power
to help promote and create major interest and awareness to the amazing novels
written by these special authors

Thanks for sharing.

I have been disappointed in blog tours. Most of the bloggers didn't seem to be reading my books and I'm not sure how many followers most of them have. None of them posted reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Just disappointing.

I'll repeat this again. Rule of thumb: If they contacted you, delete or hang up. They are scammers who want your money for doing very little for you. Legitimate companies have more business than they can handle and won't call or email you without you contacting them first.

Vanity presses...Don't use them. You can do what they promise for a whole lot less including paying for a good editor.

Promoting your book for movies--scam. $5000 and you have no guarantees from them. From what research I did, only one person ever got a contract and that was cancelled prior to the movie being made.

You can do what all these people promise. It takes time and energy, but you can do it. Forget these money hungry scammers and do it yourself.

Thank you for the good information. I was contacted by someone on my Goodreads page asking to do a review and then asking me to pay for them to promote my book. I told them that it sounded an awful lot like paying for a review. They insisted it wasn't, but I didn't agree to anything. I told them they were welcome to review my book anytime they wanted.

If I get a "review" or "promotion" email from ANYONE using a gmail address that does NOT have a Goodreads page that is clearly being used, I just trash the email. I've been scammed enough in my 68 years....sheesh! As for "blog tours," I only know of one honest (and Christian, she claims) blogger who does blog tours but she's a YA author (I am not, I write for adults, period)...if she contacted me for one, I'd go with it. YOU MUST INVESTIGATE the "blog tour" person or blog before agreeing! My two cents...

Thanks for the warning! I probably would’ve fell for it.

Got an email today from this person, their email is now: chintu74guns@gmail.com

They said:

Hi,

I am a review tour organizer promoting books, e-books and audiobooks. I promote both published as well as unpublished books (including ARCs, books on pre-order, etc.). I have more than twenty thousand reviewers within my network. I have reviewers for every genre you can think of. I also have around 2,000 social media followers. If you are SERIOUSLY interested in getting honest reviews for your book on Amazon and Goodreads, you may contact me.

--Erin K. Ison

Just got that one, too, James, exactly. This seems the time of year they crawl out of the woodwork more. And yes, avoid 'Anna' and 'Jenna' for sure. Made one mistake there and wholly regretted it!!!!

Suggest that you buy a copy of "The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages: A Directory of Book Bloggers, Blog Tour Organizers & Book Review Businesses" by David Wogahn. It is available on Kindle.

Agreed on the Yellow Pages. I'll pick one up. If anyone cold-emails me about reviews or blog tours, I delete them on general principle. As for blog tours, yes--vet carefully. My first was a rip-off. I write sf/f/r, so why was one of my stops a blog on green living?

Hello,
New to the group with a question.
I just had a near miss by signing with what turned out to be a vanity press that was masquerading as something else.
Is it ok to mention the details here to warn others?

Lou wrote: "Hello,
New to the group with a question."

Sure. Just don't include links.

Alrighty then. An author friend had signed with Next Chapter a few months ago and seemed happy. The NC site talks about how they do foreign sales, marketing, and are a Bookbub "partner." I sent them my book, Farm Hall. I received a contract offer.
The contract mentioned nothing about marketing, and had 10 other red flags or omissions that I considered red flags.
I sent those to NC.
The response was "you would probably be happier with a traditional publisher," and said they didn't have people on staff to answer my questions. Really?
Anyhow, I'd be ware of them. They also did not have any authors listed with them any earlier than March of this year. I do not think it has been long enough for my friend to have a royalty payment from them, and be able to see if NC is what is should be.

thank you for the warning. Really appreciate. Hugs

Julie wrote: "Watch out for those red flags! The Alliance of Indie Authors is an excellent resource and place to find out about scam publishers. They have a list of hybrid publishers and their rankings. Below is..."

Sorry Julie, no links :(

As others have said, if they contact you, they are suspect right there. They are not connected to BookBub in anyway. They were Captiva, a company with many complaints and changed their name to New Chapter two years ago. They have a very poor track record and the owner has been connected to Author Solutions, a company that has many arms. Workers from author solutions open up their own sites and call them selves publishers or marketers, or any thing that will draw you in. New Chapter does take part of your royalties and the do no marketing and their site shows that they aren't selective at all in the books that they publish. So yeah, avoid them.

Is the Alliance of Indie Authors the same site as Alliance of independent authors?

Thanks so much for the warning. I've had several "people/companies" reach out to me through email and Facebook, claiming they hunt for great books.

I was almost tempted, but did a little research first, and decided against them. Indies have it hard enough without getting scammed on top of everything else. Warnings like this are invaluable so, thanks again.

Beware of Fastbooktours.com
They take your money and don't provide the services offered. When I insisted that they give me what I paid for they sent me a threatening email from anonymous telling me to disappear. Terrible company and lousy service. Run don't walk.

One bookblogger that I've noticed on Twitter (can't recall her name) said that she's shutting down her book blogging business at the end of the year. She said book blogging just isn't a thing anymore.

I hired a book blogger to help advertise my second novel. I don't think it helped much at all, but I did get a few reviews and I got insight into the real genre of my work.

Blogging tours used to be the thing until these companies started up and were trying to promote books of the wrong genre on blog sites. The bloggers these companies used were not that well known and most of them were not around very long and didn't have a large following. They did it for the promised money.

There are some bloggers out there who are still in the business and have a good following but those you need to find and contact on your own. Same with the podcasters (which is what many are doing now).

Get to know what these people do, their genres and how they run the blogs and podcasts. As one person said, you want to be relentlessly helpful, so make comments, follow them, listen to their podcasts or read their blogs. Offer to help them.

Do not push your book, but help out where you can. Then when you do contact them for promotion, they will recognize your name and be more willing to help you. (This comes from a professional marketer who has been marketing books for over 15 years successfully).

The paid book tours never really worked that well, but getting on the better blogs did. Today, it's podcasts. So you might want to research podcasts that are in your genre and start getting known to the podcasts trough comments, emails, etc. prior to trying to promote your book to them.

B.A. wrote: "Blogging tours used to be the thing until these companies started up and were trying to promote books of the wrong genre on blog sites. The bloggers these companies used were not that well known an..."

Great advice B.A. :)

B.A. wrote: "I'll repeat this again. Rule of thumb: If they contacted you, delete or hang up. They are scammers who want your money for doing very little for you. Legitimate companies have more business than th..."

Was this a site called TaleFlick?

Gail wrote: "B.A. wrote: "I'll repeat this again. Rule of thumb: If they contacted you, delete or hang up. They are scammers who want your money for doing very little for you. Legitimate companies have more bus..."

TaleFlick is very suspect.

Thank you

Blog tours aren't so great for sales but are quite useful for getting reviews that you can use quotes from (good idea to ask the bloggers permission to use quotes from their review). My most recent blog tour was set up by a blog tour organiser and it went really well. It wasn't a company though, it was an individual, and I contacted them, they didn't contact me. I ignore any emails from companies offering promotional services.

L.K. wrote: "Blog tours aren't so great for sales but are quite useful for getting reviews that you can use quotes from (good idea to ask the bloggers permission to use quotes from their review). My most recent..."

Same here L.K. My rule of thumb is if they contact me it must be for their benefit, not mine :)

L.K. wrote: "Blog tours aren't so great for sales but are quite useful for getting reviews that you can use quotes from (good idea to ask the bloggers permission to use quotes from their review). My most recent..."

The last blog tour I did had plenty of bloggers sign up for it. I sent out copies of my book, one to Finland even. Then when I see what the blogger posts about the book, I start to wonder if they even read it. What they said about it was basically the back cover description. A (very) few of them seemed to actually read it and they made some nice comments. Did it impact sales? Very difficult to say.

It must be the season; I've received a slew of offers to review my books in just the past few weeks.

Of course - Black Friday and Christmas are coming - both vigorous discount seasons, and who would make a discount without reviews, right?

I have a whole folder of them (I keep them as evidence for some reason!). The common thing they seem to have is:
- gmail address (although I would not be surprised if they update their scheme to others)
- they are 2 types: the literature student and the person with the xK reviewers ready for you
- they don't have any verified website links in their message (goodreads, social or otherwise)
- they might send you a PDF with a list of things they do but never real proof
- They have auto responders and rarely reply to actual questions


I learnt that:
- There is no point banning one because once they get hold of your email address, they just seem to send more from others
- There is no point thinking of one company because they can just make up new names as they do email addresses
- Don't reply. It is our sense of urgency and hunger for reviews that attracts those bloodhounds.
- I agree with Deborah If I get a "review" or "promotion" email from ANYONE using a gmail address that does NOT have a Goodreads page that is clearly being used, I just trash the email well, I put it in my self-made spam folder
- I agree with L.K. and ignore any emails from companies offering promotional services. As B.A. and Eldon remarked, if they are contacting me, it is for their benefit not mine

If it isn't anyone I contacted I put them to spam. I get very few of these in my email box. It's like the ones that say they can market my book and I didn't contact them or the offers to publish my book. They all go to spam. I don't care if they are legit or not. If I didn't sign up for you email or contact you, you go to spam.

Has anyone gotten phone calls from "marketers" or 'blog tour" companies or any possible scammers? Just wondering, because I think some possible scammer in LA (so she said) phoned me yesterday and I could barely understand her (likely foreign) English...she could barely even pronounce the word "trilogy"! Before I hung up I told her that this call better not be a scam, and kind of laughing, she replied it was not a scam. Well, she didn't call back at the appointed time (I'm in Central Zone, she said she was in LA, Pacific Zone). Just wondering if anyone here has gotten possible scam phone calls--out of the blue, of course, as this one was.

Deborah wrote: "Has anyone gotten phone calls from "marketers" or 'blog tour" companies or any possible scammers? Just wondering, because I think some possible scammer in LA (so she said) phoned me yesterday and I..."
Hi Deborah,
No, I have not (thankfully) but after a little discussion with some colleagues here, I decided to ignore, delete (or in this case hang up on) anything unsollicited. It is faster and causes less headaches.

My rule: Email or phone, if it's unsolicited, it's a scam.

I'm with Roxanne. Any unsolicited emails or calls are scams. I listened to one and started laughing. He was "promoting" a marketing plan with promises of 100% more sales than I'm already getting. 100% of 0 is still 0 since I've been letting the book languish until I can redo it and the cover. He wanted $2000 for this "Marketing" plan. I could get more sales by spending $250 for a few promos with places like FreeBooksy and get a few sales--probably more than I'd get for the $2000 he quoted me. I hung up on him and blocked the number. Emails go right to trash. .

B.A. wrote: "He was "promoting" a marketing plan with promises of 100% more sales than I'm already getting. 100% of 0 is still 0 since I've been letting the book languish until I can redo it and the cover. He wanted $2000 for this "Marketing" plan. I could get more sales by spending $250 for a few promos with places like FreeBooksy"

True, I'm in similar position, leaving my book without any push until I have the third book of the trilogy close to release (currently working to finish #2 in the next 9-15 months) so I can then try to push them at once.
That said, I'm surprised none such attempts had reached me yet.

Roxanne wrote: "My rule: Email or phone, if it's unsolicited, it's a scam."
Pretty much. Sure, you can end up being called by someone who pressed one number wrong, but those cases are very rare these days (when I was 15-ish, someone called me to fix their fridge because they made a mistake writing a number they saw somewhere).