Writer Beware

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Failing the Reality Check: Independent Literary Recognition Guild and Acquisition Database

Header image: "Real" fading away and being replaced by "Fake" (Credit: Net Vector / Shutterstock.com)

NOV 29, 2024March 30, 202516 COMMENTS

From time to time, scammers create faux organizations or publishing industry groups in order to enhance the appearance of legitimacy or to run a fraud. Some of these are quite elaborate, with large, well-designed websites (and, occasionally, text plagiarized from legitimate sources they're imitating). I've covered a few of these sleazy efforts over the past couple of years.

Herewith, a couple of new outfits that flunk the reality test.

I became aware of the Independent Literary Recognition Guild (ILR) thanks to comments on another of my blog posts from writers who'd been contacted to buy ads in its magazine. (The pay-to-play magazine racket--whether the fees are for interviews or ads--is a well-established pitfall for writers; I've written about it a number of times. Even when not a scam, it's a dubious investment, especially if you can't determine subscription or circulation numbers.)

PUBLISHING SCAMS

Book Guard: “Anti-Scam Protection” That’s Anything But

NOV 22, 2024December 1, 202430 COMMENTS

The writing world may have reached Peak Scam: the point at which the extreme prevalence of writing scams can be leveraged to create a protection racket to exploit the victims of those scams.

Kind of like paying the people who'd beat you up and burn down your business to defend you against the people who'd beat you up and burn down your business. Nice little sum of money you lost there, let us help you lose some more! (Also see my post from last week, which features a protection racket run by a scammer impersonating Writer Beware.)

Meet Book Guard. Its motto: Peace of Mind is not expensive, it's Priceless! Its purported mission: to protect vulnerable authors against "deceitful schemes that promise success."

OVERSEAS SCAMS

Dogging the Watchdog Redux: Someone Else is Impersonating Writer Beware

Header image: WOOF in cartoon lettering on a cartoon explosion background (credit: Kapitosh/Shutterstock.com)

NOV 15, 2024November 15, 202428 COMMENTS

A bit over a year ago, a scammer (I never was able to determine which one, but it's highly likely it was someone on this list) sent out a large number of emails under my name, using a fake address (writerbewaree@gmail.com), offering to provide "guidance" to authors to protect them against scams and help them "connect with well-known traditional publishing houses".

The aim, it turned out, wasn't to rip anyone off, but to troll me. Since trolling isn't any fun unless the trollee knows about it, the scammer also sent the emails directly to me (twice), with the subject line "Writer Beware, the Watchdog and Dog Victoria Strauss" (hence the title of my post about the episode, which also used the graphic above). Maybe because I didn't respond, or maybe because I mocked them publicly, the troller never dogged me again and I never got any other reports of those particular fake Writer Beware emails.

Unfortunately, there's now another Writer Beware/Victoria Strauss impersonation attempt. And this one seems designed not just to troll, but to defraud.

EDITORS AND EDITING

Edioak and House of Pages: Lots of Questions, Questionable Answers

NOV 1, 2024January 13, 202521 COMMENTS

I've heard from a number of writers recently who've been invited to join a venture called House of Pages. The contacts, which mostly seem to be via contact forms on the authors' websites, look like this:

What is House of Pages? According to its website, it's a cross-promotion network where authors can pair with other authors to expand their visibility to different audiences. This isn't a new idea, nor is House of Pages the only group cross-promotion venture; still, it appears to have signed up a lot of writers already, and cites various success statistics. And it's free to join.

At the moment, House of Pages doesn't appear to be fully open (there's a contact form, but no way to sign up directly)--but according to contact person Melissa Smith, to whom I reached out for comment, it will fully launch next week. (You can see Melissa's full response, along with her response to several other questions I asked, at the bottom of this post).

BUSINESS OF WRITING

Just for Authors: Writer Beware’s Go-To Online Resources

Header image: A black and white photograph of a cat sitting in front of a computer screen, watching images of other cats

OCT 25, 2024October 25, 20248 COMMENTS

I'm blogging over at Writer Unboxed today.

Writers often ask me why, with all of Writer Beware’s warnings about bad actors in the publishing world, we don’t also provide recommendations or endorsements of the good guys. “You’ve got this gigantic list of scammers on your blog; wouldn’t it also be helpful to recommend reputable agents and publishers?”

There are several reasons why we don’t do this.

OVERSEAS SCAMS

Some Rare Accountability for a Fake Literary Agency Operation

Header image: screenshot of SunStar Cebu news headline:

A Lapu-Lapu City BPO was shut down for operating without permits and allegedly engaging in online scams.

OCT 5, 2024October 5, 202411 COMMENTS

The vast bulk of the publishing/marketing/fake literary agency/impersonation scams on which I've expended so many words are based in the Philippines (though they do their best to make themselves look local to their preferred American and Canadian victims by maintaining fake business addresses and phone numbers).

Many operate in their home country as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies, innocuously claiming to be third-party vendors that provide business-related services (such as staffing, call center operation, customer support, and the like) to companies that don't want to perform those services themselves or want to save money by employing lower-priced workers overseas. This is just a facade, however. The real business is running writing and publishing scams in the USA and Canada, under one or more entirely different names.

Example: Innocentrix Philippines, which operates or has operated more than 20 publishing, marketing, fake literary agency, and fake movie company scams (you can look them all up here). It's an insanely lucrative business.