Book Scams - IV
Continuing the scam alerts. This week we'll look at a couple of new-to-me scams that came within a week of each other.
This particluar Friday afternoon, I received a phone call from someone claiming to represent the Strand bookstore in London. They were interested in purchasing eighty copies of Night Shadows, forty for each of their two stores. I thought that was great. They said they were going to purchase them through Ingram Spark, a legitimate distribution company where a lot of bookstores receive their products. I thought that was great. They were calling me to see if, because they were purchasing eighty copies, they could receive a discount. I told them that the price wasn't up to me and that the price was determined by my publisher.
In this case, I'm not sure where the scam part was supposed to be. In my case, once I told the person that the publisher set the price, we ended the call and that was it.
The illogical part of this was that the person would call me directly. She should have known how the process works with Ingram Spark. No need to call me to ask for a discount. I can't contact Ingram to lower the price.
The second scam call came the following Tuesday. This was someone claiming to be from the Spotlight Network TV channel and offering me a chance to be interviewed by Logan Crawford.
Now, Logan Crawford is a real person. He does conduct 10-15 minute interviews. I don't know the range of his audience, but I'm thinking not high. I may have seen him in a couple of movies, but otherwise, I'd never heard of him. I visited the Spotlight website and there is a series of interviews.
However, I was waiting for the catch. Meanwhile, the person wanted to discuss Night Shadows. She kept calling it "your wonderful book." However, it was quite apparent that she hadn't read the book because she couldn't get Reznik's name correct, and she thought he was a private investigator. Also, she thought the story took place in a small town. Well, Des Moines is not Chicago or L.A., but it certainly isn't anyone's idea of a small town.
She asked me a few interview-like questions to which I gave the best answers I could since I hadn't had time to think of answers. She also mentioned that Logan had contacts in Hollywood that would potentially turn my book into a movie.
Then the catch. She was talking about how she would market this interview to a lot of social media platforms and she let me know that Logan had a wide reach with his program. For marketing purposes and the interview, I would invest only $1000. Okay, $999.
I asked her to send all the details to my email. Then I looked up the scam and copied/pasted several URLs for articles warning people about this in a reply to the email.
You can check out the articles from these sources:
领英推荐
How To Avoid These Scams
Again, I reference the comment made previously regarding foreign accents. While I'm not putting all callers from foreigners in the same boat, this is a great tip-off for when you get contacted out of the blue about something cool related to your book.
Listen to the information they provide. Verify. Like with this Spotlight scam, it was so easy to spot her as a fake because of the information she gave about my "wonderful book." Or should I say, the lack of information?
Don't pay to be interviewed. As Allen's blog suggests, work with local media for publicity.
Yes, marketing does require an investment. Go with trusted people and watch your budget. Yes, sometimes the investment doesn't pan out. But, you made the effort with legitimate people or firms. Learn from those mistakes and try again.
Watch the hype from anyone who calls or emails. Verify references.
I'm not putting all of these people who contact you in the same scammer boat. Some are legitimate people. However, if they can't provide references or stats, then be wary of giving them any money beforehand. You may never be able to contact them again.
Let me know what scams you've encountered over the years.