I’d love to give the scammers at Fawcett Publications a call for one of my video take downs, but I’m waaaay too busy. So I thought I’d share with you just how laughably inept their swindle is.
I got an email from “Blake Wallace,” their “Assistant VP,” who is impressed with my work and wants to help me reach a wide audience (see email below). I checked out their site and had a good laugh.
First, their “head office” in Anaheim, CA and their “regional office” in Rochester Minnesota are both apartments, according to Google Earth. Their “regional office” in Skokie Illinois is shared with Penguin Book Writers, a ghost writing service. They imply on their Penguin site that they have ghosted scores of bestselling novels, including TJ Newman‘s FALLING and the screenplay version, too! (See screen grabs).
They also imply that their expert ghostwriters wrote the Julie Andrews autobiography, the Philip Roth biography, and Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson (see screen grab).
Imagine my surprise when the photo for one of their top ghost writers, “JD Greear”, actually belongs to Emmy award winning writer/producer Phil Rosenthal (see screen capture below), creator of Everybody Loves Raymond. That one gave me a big laugh. How dumb and lazy are these scammers??
According to Google Reverse Image search, their photo for ghost writer “Gena Palumbo,” actually belongs to author Genevieve Wheeler, author of Adelaide. And their photo of ghost writer “Remi Blackwood” was stolen from Helen Elaine Lee, a professor at MIT and author of the novel Pomegranate.
It gets even better. They have a disclaimer in itsy-bitsy letters at the bottom of their Fawcett Publications site that says:
“Disclaimer: Fawcett Publications heavily draws its inspiration from Wilford Fawcett but is, regardless, an independent entity.”
And yet their logo says they were founded in 1919… the same year that Wilford Fawcett founded his company (see screen grab below). What an amazing coincidence.
They also claim to have 19 #1 NY Times bestsellers and have sold over 100 million books. And yet, their head office is in an Anaheim apartment. Clearly, those ridiculous claims “heavily draw” from the real Fawcett, too.
This is one lame-ass scam.
Hey Lee,
Read your comments regarding Fawcett Publications.
I engaged them to write a movie script which they have just completed so now I am deeply concerned about the process. Please be so kind as to email me because I have some questions I would like to ask you.
Many thanks,
Sid De Beer
aussiesid@optusnet.com.au
+61 416 034 007
You’ve made a huge mistake. They are total, complete frauds. You should be concerned. Do not give them another penny. They screenplay that they (or, more likely AI), wrote is worthless. Hollywood doesn’t just buy scripts, they buy the writer and his or her experience. These swindlers in the Philippines have no experience. Whatever you paid is money you have lost and will never get back. Again, I can’t say this strongly enough — do not flush more money down this toilet. You’ve been swindled, you’ve been conned, you’ve been taken — don’t make it worse by engaging with these people any longer. And, sadly, they are likely far outside the reach of any legal remedy (like suing them). Always do your research **BEFORE** signing any contracts or paying people like this any money. If you’d Google’d these people first, you not only would have found my post, but they are on this list of scams that Writer Beware updates regularly: https://writersweekly.com/angela-desk/a-list-of-publishers-that-all-authors-should-avoid-at-all-costs
Consider this a very expensive lesson learned….