Scams

Buying Praise

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The following comment from Bill Williams was posted in the back-blog discussion a blog entry of mine regarding an iUniverse author who feels that I’ve "pissed on her parade" by slamming vanity presses. Her book was positively reviewed by bookreview.com, which is notorious as a place to go to buy positive customer reviews and have them posted on Amazon (I wrote about them back in 2004).

Lee,

I checked with a friend of mine who had a positive review of a book
of his posted on the bookreview.com website. He said that he had not
paid for the review and it was one that had been cross-posted at
Amazon.com by the reviewer. Was my friend lying or can you get a review
at that site without making payment?

Bill

I replied:

Your friend is probably telling you the truth. I just looked myself up on Bookreview.com and, lo and behold, found many of my books reviewed there…all by Harriet Klausner.

It seems that Klausner’s reviews are cross-posted there as well as on a dozen other sites and blogs. I suspect your friend was reviewed by her as well.

However, her reviews on Amazon are credited to her, NOT bookreview.com. When the bookreview.com reviews are posted on Amazon, "bookreview.com" is usually noted as the reviewer. Bookreview.com reviews are not taken seriously by anyone because of their reputation of being bought-and-paid-for…and thus worthless.

I quote from the bookreview.com site:

"Get your book listed on BookReview.com!

Our Express Review Service guarantees that your book is placed at the top of the reviewers’ pile. At a cost of $125 per book, this service guarantees that one of our professional reviewers will read and review your book within 15 business days of receiving it. The review will be posted on BookReview.com as well as Amazon.com and will be eligible to become a BookReview.com Book of the Month. Please send bound books only. No .pdf files or unbound manuscripts.

Once the review is completed, you are free to use any part of it in your promotional materials as long as BookReview.com is credited.

Publishers, Publicists and Literary Agents can click here to check out our Bulk Discount Program.

Do I have to purchase an Express Review in order to appear in your database?

    No. You can submit your book through our regular review channels. We receive hundreds of books each day and can give attention to only a small fraction of them. Simply submitting your book does not guarantee that it will be read and having your book read by one of our reviewers does not guarantee a review. Only purchasing an Express Review guarantees a review.

They also suggest:

Some hints for new authors:

   1. Our reviewers love collecting autographed books. Sign your book before sending it and you’ll have a much better chance of getting read.
   2. Please don’t send us a loose manuscript. Convert it to Palm Reader format and send it via email if you haven’t got a bound version. Or take it to a Kinko’s and have them bind it for you.
   3. If you’ve submitted your book correctly and you haven’t seen a review posted after a month, feel free to email us. If you still don’t see a review, it is likely that your book didn’t inspire the reviewer who chose it. If you’d like us to pass it on to another reviewer, you can email us the request. Remember, we prefer not to post negative reviews, so if we don’t like it, we probably won’t review it.
   4. If you passionately believe in your book, and you are having trouble getting it reviewed, please check out our New Author Listing and Express Review Service. "

What’s interesting is that even though you can buy a review…and in BULK… and get preferential treatment if your book is signed…they still pretend to be objective and unbiased. This is how, in part, they describe themselves collectively in their Amazon reviewer profile:

"[..]We pledge to offer unbiased reviews of books from a variety of publishers on a multitude of subjects and genres. Established in 1996, we also offer Express Review Service and New Author Listings"

Funny, they don’t mention when touting their lack of bias that you can buy a review for $125…but that’s because they don’t see an ethical problem with paying for a review, as they explain in their FAQ:

"Does purchase of an Express Review guarantee a good review?

    No. Our reputation was built on honest, straightforward reviews and we will not compromise our integrity by posting false reviews. Please use our Express Review service only if you believe deeply in your work.

Will anyone know I’ve purchased a review?

    No. You are paying for the right to go to the top of the review pile. Your review will be as unbiased as any other review on our site, so there is no reason to flag it as a "paid" review."

The writer who emailed me, and criticized my stance on iUniverse, was not reviewed by Klausner…but by Bookreview.com, which would indicate that the review was probably purchased. That said, I suppose there is a slim possibility that the review was not purchased…in which case, I owe her a sincere apology.

Indiana Attorney General Prosecutes Airleaf

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The Airleaf Victims blog reports the terrific news that Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter has filed a lawsuit against Carl Lau, founder of Airleaf and Bookman Marketing, for violating the state’s Deceptive
Consumer Sales Act by "taking money without providing
the promised services in return."

"More than 120 people
are named in the lawsuit, including many from Indiana who lost
thousands of dollars,” said Carter. “In fact, hundreds more may have
lost money. They paid for services. Airleaf did not deliver, and now,
those consumers deserve refunds.”

[…]In addition to consumer restitution, the attorney general’s office is
seeking civil penalties of up to $5,500 per violation, as well as
investigative costs.

The action doesn’t go nearly as far as the Airleaf victims would like — or Lau deserves — but hopefully it will send a strong message to the vanity press industry, especially those ex-Airleaf execs who have started their own POD-presses.  Writers Beware notes:

Airleaf has spawned several publishing enterprises run by ex-staff–including Fideli Publishing, a fee-based publisher whose marketing packages bear an eerie similarity to Airleaf’s, and Brien Jones’s Jones Harvest Publishing,
which also charges fees for publishing and offers many Airleaf-style
services (Writer Beware has gotten some advisories about Jones
Harvest’s email solicitations,
and Mr. Jones has recently chosen to reimburse several Jones Harvest
authors who alleged performance problems). If you trace the family tree
backward instead of forward, you arrive at the Big Daddy of POD vanity
publishing, AuthorHouse, where Brien Jones was employed before he
co-founded Airleaf’s predecessor, Bookman Marketing. It’s a tangled web
indeed–which, sadly, is not unusual in the murky world of vanity POD.

Unfortunately, many Airleaf victims haven’t learned from their mistake…and have simply moved on to other POD vanity presses, including those run by former Airleaf execs.

The Mail I Get

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I got this email the other day:

Have you ever heard of "Writers Book Publishing Agency"? That’s the name. Seemed a bit generic to me, so I am suspicious. Their web page indicates that they are a reletively new lit agency, and are seeking authors. Having tried to obtain an agent for a year now, they sound too good to bet true. Their client list went like this: Joe, who is an electronic engineer wrote his first book…..etc….etc.  Mary, a housewife, is working on her second novel in which she…..etc…..etc. I know the authors need their privacy – but…….does this not sound suspicious to you?

Of course it does. And it should sound suspicious to anyone with an iota of common sense.

They are a well-known scam that has also gone by the the names "Children’s Literary Agency," "The Literary Agency Group, Inc" and "ST Literary Agency,"
among others. Your first tip-off that they aren’t legit should be their name:  "Writers Book Publishing Agency." What reputable agency would call
themselves that? Agents aren’t book publishers.

If the name of the company wasn’t tip-off enough, you’ll notice they don’t list a single author among their clients, only plumbers, housewives and, well, other suckers.

Writer’s Beware lists the "agency" among their top twenty worst agents. You can find out more about them here:

               
   

Writer Beware

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Victoria Strauss has an excellent post up today on her Writer Beware blog with great advice for aspiring writers about what to look for before signing with a small press. It’s a must-read for those considering signing with a POD press.

J.T Ellison also offers up some good advice today on How To Avoid Scams over on the Murderati blog:

The biggest problem new writers are faced with is desire. You’ve
worked so damn hard, have slaved away writing your book, and you WANT
to get it out to the reading public. We understand. We were there once
too. But DO YOUR HOMEWORK! There are several easy steps you can take to
ascertain whether the offer you’ve been approached with is legitimate.
Because that’s the problem with scams. The veneer of legitimacy can be
shiny and obscuring.

They Never Learn

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The Martinsville Reporter-Times reports that the FBI and the U.S. Postmaster have launched a joint investigation into the business practices of Airleaf Publishing/Bookman Publishing, a notorious vanity press scam that went bankrupt last year. Let’s hope this is just the beginning of a national crackdown on the deceptive practices of the vanity press industry.

But its hard to feel any sympathy for the Airleaf victims. Any reasonably intelligent person could have seen that Airleaf (and its previous incarnation Bookman Publishing) was a sham.  Even if the aspiring authors were too blind with desperation and naivete to see the scam for themselves, a simple Google search would have turned up plenty of resources (including my blog and others) that talked about the company’s many deceptive practices and false promises.

They made a dumb, costly, and humiliating mistake.

So you’d think that now the Airleaf victims would know better than to ever get involved with a POD vanity press again.

Well, you’d be wrong.

Incredibly, many of them are once again writing checks to vanity presses, including Bonnie Kaye, who founded the Airleaf victims blog and whose relentless efforts are largely responsible for Airleaf’s fall and the subsequent federal investigation.

She’s now a customer of CCB Publishing, a print-on-demand vanity press that she calls her "new publisher."  CCB’s former Airleaf clients include John Krismer, who has written a book that reveals this:

Few realize a New World Order plans to replace our constitution with a
Single World Government, nor that our Federal Reserve Bank is privately
owned and is not subject to oversight by Congress or the President.

[…]George H. W. Bush, the undisputed “Overlord” of the Shrub Dynasty, in
his State of the Union Message in 1991 said: “What is at stake is more
than one small country, it is a big idea – a new world order.” Did We
the People ever agree to this treasonous act of turning over our
nation’s sovereignty to a Single World Government?

Uh-huh. This is the kind of unpublishable swill that the vanity press industry thrives on. Is it any wonder he has written a check to another POD printer?

I applaud Kaye for going after Airleaf and bringing the company down…but she’s still foolishly writing checks to a POD vanity press and deluding herself into thinking that she’s "published." By doing so, and praising the company to other Airleaf customers, she’s perpetuating the myths that the vanity press industry thrives on. How sad.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Some other former Airleaf clients have become customers of Jones Harvest, a vanity press that is run by former Airleaf employees!  Those  particular Airleaf customers aren’t victims at all. They are brain-dead morons.

Don’t Expect the “Truth” about Self-Publishing from Someone Who Runs a Vanity Press

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Earlier this month, I told you about a scam called "Beneaththecover.com," which purports to offer authors inside news and expert advice about the publishing industry when, in fact, it’s just a front for a bunch of vanity press and book promotion hucksters selling their wares.  This point was driven home the other day when one of their so-called "experts," vanity press publisher Yvonne DiVita, offered this outrageous lie in a post she had the chutzpah to title "POD Myths Dispelled – Get The Scoop Here":

In today’s
emerging digital world, if you truly want to attract that big name
publisher, use a professional POD firm to self-publish because the big
name publishers are watching.

The best way to attract a publisher is to write a good book, not blow thousands of dollars having it printed in POD form by a vanity press. If anything, printing your book in POD is more likely to prevent a publisher from taking you or the book seriously.

DiVita is one of a pack of POD vanity press hucksters who prey on the gullibility, desperation, and ignorance of aspiring authors. She argues that vanity presses aren’t merely printers but real publishers because they pay more attention to their authors than real publishers do.  What she neglects to mention is that vanity presses like hers make the vast majority of their money off their authors, not from booksales, and that all that attention they slather on their clients (not authors, ladies and gentlemen, clients)  is to convince them to spend even more on their worthless services.  She writes:

IF authors don’t sell enough books with their publisher, POD
or otherwise, the author isn’t trying hard enough. I’ve worked with
traditional publishers, and they require an extensive marketing plan
from authors before they will consider publication. And research shows
that books published by traditional publishers sell around 150-300, on
average.

That’s right, blame the author for the fact that their POD vanity press books aren’t sold in stores and are unlikely to sell to anyone but the client… and then back it up with pointless "facts."

I’ve had over two dozen books published by real publishers. No editor has ever asked me for an "extensive marketing plan" before considering my books.I’ve also asked a few published friends…and they have never been asked for marketing plans, either. But they are novelists, and perhaps they would be asked for one if they wrote non-fiction. So let’s give DiVita the benefit of the doubt and say publishers want marketing plans along with non-fiction book proposals. To which I say… So what?  How is that a persuasive argument for going to vanity-press instead of a real publisher? You’ll need a marketing plan either way. The key difference is that a real publisher will pay you and a vanity press will ask for your credit card number.

I’ve scoured the web and I can’t find any "research" that backs up her outrageous claim that most books published by genuine publishers sell only 150-300 copies.

The closet statistic I could find to her numbers was a 2004 Bookscan study that tracked sales of 1.2 million books sold that year. According to their figures, the average book of any kind published in 2004 sold 500 copies. The study noted that only 25,000 titles sold more than 5,000 copies each,
500 sold more than 100,000 copies and only ten sold more than a million
copies. But the figures are controversial, because the sales were not broken down by genre, like fiction or non-fiction, nor did they differentiate between titles from large
publishers or small ones, traditional publishers or vanity presses.

But lets pretend her figures are right. How is that an argument for going to a vanity press? Authors published by real publishers whose books only sold 500 copies in 2004 were still paid to be published.  They earned money, though not as much as they’d hoped.

By comparison, most vanity press authors will lose money because they paid to be published. But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at the 2004 sales figures from iUniverse, the biggest name in self-publishing:

18,108: Total number of titles
published

792,814: Number of copies
printed

14: Number of titles
sold through B&N’s bricks-and-mortar stores (nationally)

83: Number of titles that sold at least 500
copies

Out of 18,000 titles and nearly 800,000 copies printed, only 83 authors sold more than 500 copies. Good God. Think of all the money that authors lost …and how much iUniverse made. That’s the business that DiVita is in…and it’s a profitable one. For the printer, not the author. 

So what is the truth about POD self-publishing companies? It’s obvious. Vanity presses are in the "author services business", not the publishing business which, in a rare bit of candor, even DiVita concedes on her vanity press website:

Windsor Media Enterprises specializes in author services. We  offer idea development, manuscript critiquing, editing, proofreading, formatting and cover design, for new and existing authors.

And for that, they charge you a price and that’s how they make their money. That is their business. And if your book,  by some miracle, manages to sell a few copies, they make a little more. 

A vanity press will tell you any lie they can to convince you that they are real publishers (when they are merely selling editing and printing services), that self-publishing is the route most successful authors take (it’s not), and that you have as much of a chance to sell books with them as you do going with a traditional publisher (you don’t).

Is Yvonne DiVita really someone qualified to give writers sound advice? Or is she someone with a clear conflict-of-interest hoping to coerce naive authors into buying her product? The answer is obvious, and it came right from the founders of Beneaththecover.com  when they tried to solicit my brother Tod into being one of their experts:

Beneath the Cover is a cooperative venture for building marketing platforms of everyone involved.

That’s what should be written on the masthead of their home page, not "Where book industry professionals who know almost everything go to discuss news, insights, and evolving industry issues." And it should be stated in big print on each and every piece of "advice" that they give.

Dumb and Dumber

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Back in 2006, I wrote about a TV bootlegger who bought advertising on Google to promote his various websites.  Now it turns out that the moron has been using the address of a Winnipeg newspaper as one of his many false return addresses:

If you want to keep it secret that you’re selling pirated DVDs, it’s
probably not a good idea to use a major Canadian newspaper as your
return address.

Over the last few days, several packages of pirated DVDs have been shipped to the Winnipeg Free Press from disgruntled customers around the world.
The packages originated from entities called DVD Avenue.TV, DVD Store, AllMyFavoriteShows.com and Expediteur,

Gary Osmond, the Canadian Motion Picture Distribution Association’s
director of investigations — anti-piracy operations, said the DVDs
received by the Free Press are connected to the massive seizure of thousands of counterfeit DVDs by the RCMP in Montreal just before Christmas.

More than 200 DVD burners were also seized by police and eight people
were arrested who are facing fraud charges under the Criminal Code and
Copyright Act.

But Osmond was surprised to hear the DVD pirates had used the Free Press’ address.

"They’re not too smart," Osmond said.

"In Montreal, they used post office box numbers for Canada Post or
private companies. There was one legitimate address in Montreal, but it
was a hole in the ground with a building being constructed.

"Yours is the only legitimate address and the first in Winnipeg."

I Knew This Was Coming

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Victoria Strauss reports that BookWise has gone — surprise! surprise! — into the vanity press business, a natural extension of their multi-level marketing scheme. They are charging gullible aspiring writers $6000 to "publish" their books and for "intensive training" at their WriteWise (aka PublishStupid) seminars taught by "Industry Experts" who, outside of BookWise founders author Richard Paul Evans and get-rich-quick huckster Robert G. Allen, have no actual industry experience.

Their "expert" faculty consists of the teacher of the Info-Preneuring Teleclass for the Enlightened Wealth Institute, a self-published cookbook author, and three authors who write fiction exclusively for the "LDS market"  ("work consistent with the standards and principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ").  I guess Lori Prokop, Michael Drew, and Brien Jones were unavailable.

You will also get such amazing benefits as "an official BookWise review" and your photograph taken  with BookWise founders Evans and Allen. Wow! Where do I sign up?

BookWise thinks that "anyone who is a serious writer" would gladly pay $20-30,000 for all of this,   so six grand is a bargain. But "serious" writers know better than to take seminars from vanity press publishers and industry know-nothings who have a clear profit motive and glaring conflict-of-interest behind their "teaching."

This is no ordinary vanity press scheme. To lure in as many suckers as possible, BookWise is offering a $1000 bounty for every paying sucker their multilevel marketing associates can bring in. Prepare to be spammed. But wait, there’s more, as Victoria reports:

There’s another twist to the story. For writers accepted into
WriteWise, Richard Paul Evans and Robert G. Allen will become their
literary agents, receiving, according to the WriteWise brochure, "the
standard agency fee [of] 15% of the royalties that an author receives
from the publisher." The brochure makes it clear, however, that not
every book will be shopped: "…depending upon circumstances, BookWise
Publishing may also present your book to other major publishers." In
this arrangement, most of the benefit is on the agents’ side: they
don’t actually have to do anything for you (unlike in a normal
author-agent relationship), but if they do, they get paid twice.

These guys are taking the vanity press scam to a whole new, and truly sleazy, level.

Behind the Cover of Beneaththecover.com

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Book marketer/publicist Michael R. Drew has put together a site called beneaththecover.com under the guise of helping aspiring writers with expert advice…except all the "advice" is coming from publicists and self-publishers looking to sell their services to the unwary.

In an apparent bid to legitimize their effort, they have been reaching out to "hundreds" of authors, hoping to convince them to provide free content to the site. I’m one of the authors they contacted. Lehi Drew wrote, in part:

Just wanted to let you know about our trend-setting website. And I’m
hoping you’ll like it enough to accept our invitation to become a
contributor. You see, I’ve seen your blog site,A Writer’s Life, and I
think you’re a great writer..

Our website is dedicated to professionals of the book industry, and it’s called Beneath the Cover (www.beneaththecover.com).  It also has an associated blog site, Push the Key (www.pushthekey.com).

What’s in it for you? As a contributor, your name and blog site will be
constantly seen by hundreds and even thousands of book industry
visitors every day. At our site, we draw people from every level of the
book industry, including authors, writers, marketers, publishers,
editors, and agents.

Your Articles. As visitors see your articles on a regular basis and
enjoy your style and the substance of your expertise, they’ll become
familiar with your writing, your expert reputation, and your marketing
platform.

Wouldn’t it be great if you sent a manuscript to a publisher or an
agent and they responded with, “I’m familiar with your work on Beneath
the Cover, so I took the time to go over your manuscript. Let’s talk.”
Wow!

Wouldn’t be great if a publisher got my manuscript and said "Lee is so damn witty and good looking, we’ll give him a $1 million contract without reading a word!"  That’s about as likely to happen as the ridiculous fantasy Beneath the Cover is trying to entice me with. I ignored Lehi’s email. So, a week later, she tried again.

First, let me reassure you that this is not part
of a mass mailing from a list of names/sites that I bought or got from
someone else. I AM mailing to hundreds of writers like yourself, but I’ve been to each site personally.

So, it’s not a mass mailing, but they ARE contacting hundreds of writers. Hmmm. She went on to say:

You,
obviously, have had a lot of experience writing. I can see that, not
only by the fact that you’ve done screenwriting, but by the number of
books you have listed on your blog. I am confident that this shows that
you have great insight into how the book industry works. 

I would very much like for you to become a weekly contributor to Beneath the Cover. I
think that because you’re an experienced author, that you would have
advice for other authors trying to get published and writing.  I really
think that, plus your knowledge of the industry, would make you a good
fit with us and our other contributors.

I responded that if she really read my blog, she’d know that I wouldn’t be the least bit interested in lending my time, effort, or good name to help them sell promotional and self-publishing services to writers under the guise of offering "advice."  In fact, if anything, my advice would be to avoid their site. I also said:

Your site is an outgrowth of Michael Drew’s book promotion business and, not surprisingly, the majority of your contributors come from the self-publishing industry or are selling book promotion & marketing services…
which creates a real conflict-of-interest when it comes to the "advice"
they are giving.

Your contributors have something to sell, and so does
Drew. The only thing that I or any other published author would be
doing by contributing to your site would be lending our credibility to your underlying effort to advance the promotional and
self-publishing services your experts are selling.

I don’t see any published authors among their experts, so it  looks like their "not a mass mailing" to hundreds of authors hasn’t worked. I guess real authors are a lot smarter than the hucksters think we are.

UPDATE:  They also contacted my brother Tod, asking him to contribute to their site. He asked them what they pay…and they said not a dime because "Beneath the Cover is a cooperative venture for building marketing platforms of everyone involved." At least they were honest with him about their real motives (though it’s pretty obvious to anyone who visits their site). I’m surprised they haven’t brought in Lori Prokop  or the experts over at Airleaf  as contributors yet…

The Mail I Get

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I received this email today from a complete stranger. It’s a good example of how NOT to sell a book. 

Please order my book XYZ at http://www.publishamerica.com
and tell all your friends about it to. I have attached a release letter for you
so you can read what it is about. Please order it and then tell all your reader
friends so they can order it too. Maybe then I can become on my way to wealth.
Thank you for your time.

By "release letter," she means a press release from PublishAmerica that  contains an incoherent, one-paragraph summary of the book’s plot and some lies about the company being a "traditional publisher." I’m trying to imagine how anyone could think that this pitch would sell any books.