The Five Weeks Are Up

No, I haven't forgotten about being scammed; not hardly. The drop-dead date for my book review to be posted was five weeks, and that's today. Bear in mind that the "reviewer" claims that three weeks is her norm, "but in extenuating circumstances....blah blah blah."

So, I'm not quite ready to jump the gun and contact PayPal for a refund. Unlike this person, I want to do everything right and not allow the scammer to complain that I didn't wait exactly five weeks. "I was all ready to post it today!"

Pulling up her website makes my blood boil. I think I was initially so flattered to be approached (again, by a blogger who is included on a well-known promo site's list of book bloggers) that I overlooked BIG RED FLAGS. Sure, I noticed that the most prominent book review on her page is for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", a book that was released in 2005 (!) But I figured she featured it upfront to show her reviewer "cred", when in all likelihood it was the only book on her website she actually read. As a matter of fact, all the books she highlights are old, old releases: Gone Girl, The Silver Linings Playbook, to name two. I'm pretty sure bestselling authors aren't counting on an obscure reviewer's take to...do what? Everyone in the world has heard of these books; nobody has to dig up a bush league website to learn about them.

I do have to hand it to her for her ingenuity, though. When one pulls up the reviews for a particular genre, the dates on them are spaced exactly three weeks apart. Clever! One does wonder, though, with all the date updating and calendar flipping, how she has time to read any books. Just maintaining her website has to be an all-consuming task. 

"What do you do for a living?"

"Well, I change the dates on website posts."

Another factor that stands out, and this might be because I'm currently focused on book covers, is that every book she "reviews" is pretty. I've seen plenty of self-published books, and a lot of them have really bad covers. Since she's contacting obscure writers at random, and since many of them are susceptible to scams, one would think she'd end up with her share of visually ugly books to review, but no! They're all so pretty! Shiny!

Clicking on her "testimonials" section, I scrolled down to the comments and found something interesting: all the author comments are written in the same style. As a writer, I'm pretty good at recognizing "voice". I definitely have a voice, and I'm pretty certain no one writes like me (good or bad), Just try replicating the voice of this blog ~ you can't, because only I know how my mind works.

One comment made me laugh:

"Naturally, I was interested and leery at the same time. This leads me to investigate, search, and analyze just who she is. After assessing mountains of information on (name redacted) from her website and all that I could find in reviews she wrote. I am convinced that this person is “the real deal.”  (bolded: mine)

Well, like me, this person (if it's actually a real person) did NO investigating, because "SCAM" hit me square in the face on the first page of Google results. I wonder what the "mountains of information" were, because the mountains I found were all extremely crumbly.

Also interesting is that she has 19 pages of comments:

 

...except each page shows the exact same ten author comments.

Face it; all scammers are not created equal. A few are just damn good at what they do. An author can't be expected to turn into a professional detective every time he receives an unsolicited offer. Most email scams are blatant. In fact, I just heard from "Clara" again, but at least she changed things up a bit. Now there was no mention of the several book clubs she belongs to. But while Clara addressed me as "Dear Great Author", she still wants to know what my book is about. (And come on, Clara, at least personalize your canned messages.) Clara should already know what my book is about. But there is the occasional one who really works her scam. No Name (for now) is one of those.

We authors have to pound this into our heads: Anyone who contacts us out of the blue is NOT legit. 

Successful entrepreneurs don't need to do cold calls. A successful provider of any service has people knocking on their door, not the other way around. Whether it's via email or direct messaging on social media, ignore it. 

Just the other day I was contacted on Instagram by an outfit/person called BooksBrew, so I pulled up their profile, found their website and took a look. Every section reads like this:

Dapibus id interdum fusce sed odio massa tellus amet, faucibus nibh consequat justo  

In case you've ever wondered:

“Lorem Ipsum” is a type of placeholder text known as “dummy text.” It’s commonly used in the design and typesetting industries to demonstrate the visual form of a document without relying on meaningful content." 

Unlike No Name, this guy/gal couldn't even be bothered with setting up a realistic-looking website. But these people count on us to not look.

There was a time when I wanted to respond and give the messagers a piece of my mind, but in this day of nefarious online criminals, it's just too risky, especially with email. Easy enough for someone to plant a virus or other malware in your system. Or to hack your social media account.

Simply hit delete. That's all. Block them if you want, if they don't take the hint the first time. 

As for No Name, she's good ~ apparently too good for me to see through. That's not an excuse. It is a hard lesson. I'm just drumming my fingers, waiting for Monday to roll around so I can lodge my dispute.

If there is one positive takeaway from this episode, it's that I can share my experiences with you, and if you're new to the author game, you won't have to learn the hard way. 

 

 

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