Writer Beware

Latest Posts

From Motionflick Studios to Snow Day Film: The Evolution of a Book-to-Film Scam

Solicitation from Motionflick Studios for inclusion of the author's book in the September Producers Film Pitch event, claiming interest from Paul Dano in creating a "an impressive pitch deck" for the event and asking the author to submit a screenplay

JUN 7, 2024June 7, 202441 COMMENTS

The Hollywood dream has always burned bright for writers...and scammers and dodgy operators have always been eager to take advantage. The method may change--from the coverage grifts and pay-to-play snail mail catalogs that were a staple of the pre-internet days, to the impersonation and fake film company scams of today--but the aim is the same: to trick writers into spending money for nothing.

Last July, I began getting reports of solicitations from a company called Motionflick Studios.

Everything about this email said "bogus", from the solicitation itself (solicitation, as regular readers of this blog know, is one of the first signs of fraud these days), to the implausibly large option fee, to the absurd notion that an established Hollywood figure like Paul Dano would be personally creating pitch decks.

Guest Post: Disney, Books, and the Copyright Claims Board

MAY 31, 2024May 31, 20245 COMMENTS

Writer Beware has been covering the Copyright Claims Board since it started accepting cases in 2022. A small claims court for copyright matters, the CCB offers an alternative to the expensive court battles that previously were the only path to resolving copyright disputes, providing creators with a streamlined, inexpensive method of adjudicating cases of infringement, misuse, and other alleged malfeasance.

As Michael Capobianco has reported, writing and book-related claims make up a minority of CCB cases (so far, anyway). One of the more interesting ones involves an author's allegation that Disney, which contracted with the author to publish the author's books in North America, violated the author's copyright by continuing to sell ebook editions even after the contract had terminated.

At last checkin, the case appeared to have gone quiet, with no new filings since July 2023. Recently, though, the CCB issued a determination. In today's guest post, Jonathan Bailey of the invaluable Plagiarism Today website takes a look at the outcome.

CONTESTS AND AWARDS

Alert: A Scammer is Impersonating the Alliance of Independent Authors

Invitation to submit your book for the 2024 Best Indie Book Award.

Dear [redacted]

This notice aims to inform you that The Alliance of Independent Authors has partnered with BIBA (Best Indie Book Awards) to give ALLI author members a 95% discount on participating in the 2024 literary contest. Best Indie Book Award® (or BIBA®) is an international literary contest recognizing outstanding achievements by indie authors.

Authors are encouraged to submit their books for the 12th Annual Best Indie Book Award Contest on or before May 30th. Use the referral link below to submit your book, all genre(s) categories have been paid for by being an ALLi author member.

https://allianceindependentauthors.booksaward.org/[redacted]/Official_Entry.html

kind regards
ALLi Support Team

MAY 17, 2024May 17, 202411 COMMENTS

If you've received this email, beware: it's a phishing scam.

The Alliance of Independent Authors has confirmed to Writer Beware that it did not send this email, which I'm told was received by both ALLi members and non-members. The scam solicitations are personalized with writers' email addresses and names, and the "Official Entry" link at the bottom is also personalized (which is why I've redacted part of it).

Note the fake email address (ALLi's real email is @allianceindependentauthors.org). The scam domain is just 8 days old:

CONTRACTS

Contract Critique: Dashtoon

MAY 10, 2024June 3, 20247 COMMENTS

Dashtoon is a startup (founded in late 2022) digital comics creation platform that promises to revolutionize the comics industry by allowing anyone to create their own webcomics using generative AI, and to distribute and monetize their creations via the Dashtoon app. Licensed in Delaware USA and doing business as Dashverse Corp, it's yet another shiny entry into our new AI-crazed reality, and has garnered venture capital investment and positive media coverage.

Via its Authors Program, Dashtoon also licenses books and stories and turns them into comics, covering all production costs and paying authors a royalty. It also appears to be looking to license already-published comics for distribution on its platform. Here's an example of the emails it has been sending out (this is a form email; I've seen several of them):

I've also had the opportunity to see a number of Dashtoon contracts, both exclusive (for book adaptations) and non-exclusive (for distribution of already-published work).

GUEST POSTS

Guest Post: How a Book Really Becomes a Movie

Header image: Clapperboard lying on top of an open book (Credit: Billion Photos / Shutterstock.com)

APR 12, 2024June 7, 202426 COMMENTS

Book-to-film scams are extremely common these days. If the publishing industry is opaque and secretive, the movie biz is even more so, and scammers take full advantage.

From disreputable marketers claiming to take your book to pitch events, to fake agents offering to represent you to major production companies, to scammers impersonating those production companies themselves, hordes of fraudsters are soliciting writers by phone and email with tempting-sounding "offers" and "opportunities" that they promise will route your book directly to the silver screen.

In reality, of course, the fraudsters have no Hollywood connections. The sole aim of these solicitations is to trick you into paying large amounts of money for products or services--screenplays, pitch decks, "cinematic trailers", and more--that you don't need and that may not even be delivered.

OVERSEAS SCAMS

The Scam of “Book Licensing”

Header image: hand holding a sheaf of $100 bills that are disintegrating and flying away (Credit: evan_huang / Shutterstock.com)

APR 5, 2024April 7, 20257 COMMENTS

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the common scam of "book returns insurance", in which scammers take something real (book returnability, a normal element of book publishing and selling) and spin it into a nonexistent "service" (a kind of "insurance" product, which you supposedly have to buy if you want your books to be returnable) for which they can charge big bucks.

Today's blog post focuses on the similarly deceptive scam of "book licensing". Like "returns insurance", this fictional item is based on something real (the licensing of rights that's necessary for publication) that scammers have distorted into an imaginary requirement they can monetize (a book license you supposedly must obtain in order for your book to be published or re-published).

To be clear, there is no such thing as a "book license"--at least, not in the sense that scammers use the term, meaning an item like a driver's license or a fishing license that you have to take steps to acquire and must have in order to do the thing associated with the license. As the copyright owner of your work (which you are, by law, from the moment you write down the words), you have the power to grant licenses for publication, but you do not have to obtain any kind of license or permission in order to do so. By re-framing licensing as something authors have to get, rather than something they are empowered to give, scammers turn the reality of licensing on its head.