PEEKABOO! NOW YOU SEE ME… NOW YOU DON’T!!
With the deluge of internet self-publishing predators, making the right choice can be beyond daunting. Foreign based self-publishing scammers are ubiquitous. And, they have tools in their arsenal to dupe even the most conservative, skeptical, and savvy scrivener.
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” This quote, attributed to Mark Twain, aptly describes how a novice can be quickly taken by all the ‘bling’ on an Internet self-publishing website or advertisement. Vibrant colors mirroring national publishing icons such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s trademarked logos (click on that link to see Amazon’s trademark infringement lawsuit), contrived testimonials touting their publishing prowess, and implied, false endorsements ascribed simply by cutting and pasting logos from venerated media outlets like CBS, NBC and ABC all serve to fool these scammers’ future victims! Throw in a well known U.S. city as their “publishing base,” and you can quickly be taken into an alligator roll as I once experienced first-hand.
Looking beyond the superficial self-publishing website and advertisement ‘bling,’ aspiring authors face yet another level of deception: a dubious or masked IP address employed by these predators.
Unscrupulous and predatory self-publishing scammers often hide or mask their IP address. How can this be? Welcome shady email service providers, where a predatory publisher’s IP address makes them appear to be located in New York City, New York (the publishing capital of the world), or any other familiar city in the U.S. However, the scammer can (and often is) located overseas.
One one of these email service websites says, “When an (sic) user send (sic) an email using (company name removed) webmail, the IP address of the user will not be exposed in the headers.”
That company in particular is headquartered in India.
Publishing a book represents an investment of time, money, and energy, and is often an author’s legacy or lifelong dream. It is critical to detach from emotion, and take measured and careful steps on such a quest.
In my self-publishing folly, my partner and I failed to do our homework. We were taken by the ‘bling,’ impetuous, and naive. Every indication has pointed to our Senior Consultant’s firm being parked in Southwest Asia, and not Folsom, California, Seattle, Washington, or Tampa, Florida, as was represented to us.
So, how can you find out if a company is REALLY located in the U.S.? It’s actually not that hard!
1. Contact them. Chat or email is fine. If the salesperson writing back to you has poor grammar, punctuation, spelling, or syntax (that’s the easiest one to notice!), RUN! Remember to never, EVER do business with any firm that spams you or cold calls you (telemarketing). Almost all of those scammers are located overseas and they use call centers to try to dupe authors into handing over their money.
2. Read everything on their homepage…not just the first two or three lines of text. Most of these foreign companies have obvious typos in their service descriptions. That is because the person who wrote the copy is not a native English-speaker.
3. Ask the person you’re corresponding with point-blank where they are located. Angela Hoy at WritersWeekly has engaged several of these “publishers” through Facebook after seeing their advertisements there. One told her they have locations “everywhere.” When Angela pushed for an address, the sales rep provided it and Angela Google mapped it. It was a tiny house in a run-down neighborhood. The exact same day, she was engaging another sales rep at one of the scam publishers and the address that person gave led to a cinder block apartment complex in the projects. These were very clearly NOT real addresses. Yet another one gave an address to a building but Angela used Google maps to “drive” by the building multiple times. Every business there had a sign out front. There were no signs for that publisher.
4. Google the address (not just using Google maps). Many of these companies use mail forwarding services or “virtual offices.” In other words, they pay the landlord to make it look like they are located there. Pro Tip: If that address pops up as a virtual place for rent (many will!), you know you’ve caught the scammer red-handed!
5. There is one scammer in particular that is placing numerous ads on Facebook but under several company names. The ads are all designed very similarly. The funny thing is, they all have the EXACT same typo in them!
6. If you really want to have some fun, search the images of the employees appearing on their website. Some even put fake author pictures up there. Angela Hoy at WritersWeekly has caught many firms doing that. The images are from stock photo agencies and the “employees” and “customers/authors” are professional models with their pictures appearing all over the web. Read this:
If you, in any way at all, suspect that a company is not located in the U.S., you are very likely absolutely correct in your assumptions. Remember that, if you hire someone overseas, and if things don’t go right for you, you won’t be able to sue them and you’ll never get your money back. Only hire U.S.-based publishers and publishing service providers!
You can find U.S.-based print on demand publishers here:
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JAMES M. WALSH, ESQ., is a former Navy JAGC officer and a recipient of the American Bar Association’s coveted LAMP Award for excellence in military legal assistance practice. A rolling stone, J.M. has globetrotted most of his adult life. After the military, J.M. pursued commercial real estate development, leasing, and asset management. He resides in Catania, Sicily. He spent almost twenty years in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne, Erie & Lackawanna Counties. His handiwork as an editor and author is interspersed throughout this novel. Leo A. Murray fondly refers to J.M. as his collaborative, literary ‘Coach’ or ‘Lieutenant.’ Agnes claims that he has gypsy in his heart and rabbit in his feet.
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Author: By Angela Hoy – Publisher of WritersWeekly.com
