Now It Can Be Revealed (My Scammer, That Is)

When The Red Headed Money Book Lover contacted me via email, she was quick to provide screenshots of how much her reviews had driven sales of authors' books. Of course, the book titles were blacked out, and of course, who would compile a list like that and post it online for her to screen-grab? Nobody. It was a realistic-looking fake. Unfortunately, in my excitement to be reviewed by a blogger with thousands of followers (another of her "screenshots") I wasn't thinking rationally. What Amy Mulholland (she spells it as "Aimee" on her site) is, is a very savvy spoofer. 

From the looks of her website, she hasn't reviewed a book since, I don't know, 2005? (She continually changes the dates of her posted reviews.) What she apparently considers her big draw is her review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", because it never moves from its prominent spot at the top of her homepage, and that book was published in 2005. I'm guessing it was the last book she ever read. In the twenty years since, she's instead worked on creating a very realistic scam, if no one bothers to look too closely.

(For more details on my scammer, this post and this one describe her grift in detail.) 

I don't care to give her any undeserved clicks, but if you really want to check out her site, it's redheadedbooklover dot com. 

Her posted review policy hits all the right notes:

"As a mother, wife and a woman who understands the need to budget and how expensive the self-publishing industry can be for authors, I try my hardest to make my fee cost-effective and a reasonable price for the high level of service I provide. I do not believe in extorting an author for my benefit, my goal with Red Headed Book Lover has always been to help authors in their journey as an author and to help them grow with a review..." 

"Customer service is important to me, I have dealt with many companies who have poor customer service and it is frustrating! That is why I provide a customer service that I would like."

"For those of you that do not know, my website has a strong theme of supporting military charities through wonderful books. The sales made from my affiliate links for Amazon are all donated and split between four military charities and my author spotlight service fee is also donated equally between four military charities."

"If I am hired by an author to write a book review, and I can’t award the book four or five stars, I will refund the author the full amount of the book reviewing fee because that is how firmly I believe in not posting negative reviews."

My hunch is that Amy relies on authors not checking back, but rather assuming that her review is posted. Maybe they've contracted for many reviews and they lose track. Maybe only suckers like me agree to her additional $27.00 author spotlight, so there would be no reason for them to expect her to contact them for:

• An interview between the author and me which will include a variety of questions
• An author biography about the author which will inform readers about them, their life and their work
• Book preview(s) of the author’s work and links to their social media and author pages

What I do know is that she's well prepared just in case an author does dispute the transaction, because as soon as I filed my PayPal dispute, she agreed to a refund in the blink of an eye. 

I went to a lot of work preparing my case unnecessarily. I gathered dates, quotes from her site, a screenshot of the financial transaction, and formatted them into a document I provided to PayPal. I figured she'd at least put up a fight, so I needed to be ready! (In case you're wondering, the price for just a review is $77.00, so in total I paid Amy $104.00.)

I wasn't about to let this scam slide. $104.00 is a lot of money to me; maybe not to Amy, but as a mother, wife and a woman who understands the need to budget and how expensive the self-publishing industry can be, I needed to get my ill-spent money back.

I should note that I never would have agreed to her scheme had she not also made sure to get her site included in various published lists of book reviewers. Just my luck, that's how I found her site in the first place, so when she came calling, I was already familiar with her (well, not familiar enough, obviously). 

"...my goal with Red Headed Book Lover has always been to help authors in their journey as an author and to help them grow with a review, a spotlight and even tips and tricks that I have learned over the years..."

I'm going to repeat this ad nauseum, for myself as much as for my fellow authors: NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH AN OUTFIT THAT COLD-CONTACTS YOU. A successful business lets customers come to them, not the other way around.

What does one do, then, if they stumble upon a scammer by accident? I submitted to probably a half dozen book bloggers based on the listmakers' recommendations. I don't remember why I never submitted to Amy; maybe because she didn't list her price on her site, but indicated that there definitely was a price, and I was only searching out free reviews at the time.

Well, if everything looks great (and please, really look) and you decide to fork over your marketing dollars, use PayPal. I've had to deal with my bank in the past for various issues, and they were great, but slow. As I noted, my PayPal refund was immediate.

And now, case closed. All that was left for me to do was to expose her here. My hope is that, unlike me, other authors will do their due diligence and this post will pop up in their Google search.

Now, if I could only sell some books...