Robert Wack

Well, this is something I didn’t expect. I mentioned before the new (to me) expectation that authors are supposed to do the lion’s share of the marketing and promotion of their work, and that the publishing industry is fragmenting into a jungle of “consultants” seeking to help with every step in the editing, publishing, and marketing process.  Part of that is authors establishing a social media presence, “creating a brand”,  “finding your readers”, etc.  And I thought just writing well would be enough.

I created a Bluesky account, having abandoned Twitter years ago, to start working on my “presence” and “brand”.  So far, it’s been pretty unexciting, but then I got a follow from a pretty successful Canadian author, Iain Reid.

Wow!  A published guy with movie screenplay credits following little old me!  Soon, “Iain” and I were chatting through DMs, and it didn’t take too long for “him” to suggest someone he knew who could help me market my books. The messages directed me to a shady website of a Nigerian woman who purportedly had a business marketing authors. It became clear pretty quickly this was shaping up to be some kind of scam, and I blocked the account.

Then I got another, from someone purporting to be J.B. Turner, a very successful British thriller author. Now wiser, I strung this person along, and when they asked what I was working on, I copied and pasted a summary of one of the real J.B. Turner’s novels, barely changing the details, and said it was a cool sci-fi thriller.  I think this broke the chatbot the scammer was using, because the response to this was, “That’s great! Do you want me to introduce you to her?”, which in the other scam patter was several responses down in the script.  Blocked.

Then I was followed and received messages from “Marina Lewycka” another real, successful British author.  That one got blocked pretty quickly.

Completely coincidently, I recently subscribed to Writer Beware, a fantastic blog that summarizes current scams preying on authors trying to find their way in the publishing jungle. The recent lead story?  “Return of the Nigerian Prince: A New Twist on Book Marketing Scams”

There are good resources out there, as well as legitimate consultants and services to assist authors, but man oh man, do you have to be careful.  Writer Beware, indeed.