SCAM WATCH
New scams targeting writers are highlighted attention by Victoria Strauss in several forensically detailed posts for the excellent Writer Beware website. In short, if you are contacted by anyone – either by email or phone – claiming to be a publisher or agent interested in traditionally republishing your selfpublished novel, be very careful. It is not that this really can’t happen, and very occasionally it actually does, but that is part of the ingenious rottenness of the scam, that it has a level of plausibility of something that is a real, if highly unlikely possibility. A genuine agent or publisher will never ask you for money.
The fake publishers and agents will usually claim to be US based, but are often in reality located in the Philippines. They run various fake companies with regularly changing names, Chapters Media, Paper Bytes Marketing Solutions and Blueprint Press among them, and also have websites claiming to belong to various agents. These agents can be entirely fictitious, but some have impersonated real agents with impeccable reputations, making the scam all the harder to spot. Though the photos used are never of the real agent, but will have been taken from a stock photo or legitimate business site. It can all seem very convincing, and some writers have been conned out of thousands of dollars.
The scam works by putting pressure on a writer to say that there is major publisher interest in reprinting their book, and possibly even the potential for a film or TV deal, but that it must be done quickly and that various additional services will need to be paid for to meet the deadline. If you ever get contacted in this way beware, it’s a scam. No agent or publisher will contact you and then start asking you for money. The second the idea of you paying anything at all, break off contact. Cons like this depend on people being swept up in the excitement of the idea of getting a publishing deal, but remember, if something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
You can find out much about how these scams work at https:// accrispin.blogspot.com