REAL OR SCAM
I recently received an email extending me an offer to present my latest book to a book club via a video discussion. It sounded like a great opportunity to get free marketing for the book, so I accepted. But there were some requirements – the usual bio, head shot, and a QR code. No problem. But they also wanted a trailer and a 3D rendering of my book, I assumed for advertising. And since I didn’t have either of these things, they recommended someone who could do it for me for not a lot of money. The ‘not a lot of money’ turned out to be a LOT of money, at least for me on my budget. I mentioned this to an old friend with experience in business, and she opined it might be a scam. She actually did a deep dive on the organization and found out there was a solid report that it was indeed a scam. I asked the person who first emailed me how she had found out about my book – it’s YA and I haven’t done much marketing. She said she got it from a list. Not completely convinced, I asked my book cover designer how much he would charge for the trailer and the 3d rendering and discovered he would charge a lot less. I then told the person who emailed me that I had doubts about the organization’s validity and received two video streams to convince me. On the video streams were a number of authors who had apparently done the book discussions. I decided to look them up. I only found one on Facebook, but none of her books on Amazon. The others had no Facebook pages and no books on Amazon. No websites for any of them. Most of my author friends are on Facebook, have a blog or a website and sell their books on Amazon. I cancelled. This may have been a legitimate offer to help me market my book, and if so, I missed out, but if this was a scam, it was a darned good one. It played to my vanity and desire to expand the market for my books. I came very close to biting. My words of the day: Do your research. And thanks to my friend. 0 0
