I was approached by a publicist, YourOnlinePublicist.com. They purported that their (unnamed) editor-in-chief in the UK home office had asked the US office to contact me to publicize The Eagle and the Dragon, because he had read it and thought it was great. As discussions went on the price went way up. I could find nothing by Google about this operation, other than their own website, and a check of the website indicated it was written by someone for whom English is a (recent) second language (Thanks, @jannert, for that catch). On my last contact with them, I first asked for the UK website, as I had been unable to find it. The individual said they had closed the UK office and moved their operation to the US, apparently forgetting about telling me , in a previous call, that he had discussed the referral from the (closed) UK office, and that their operation was based in Britain, expanding into the US... apparent untruths. I then discussed the quality of their website (two grammatical errors in the very first sentence of their "About Us" page, with many more to follow). I explained that they don't get a second chance to make a good first impression. If they can't sell themselves to me, I certainly don't want to pay them money to try to sell me. Steer clear!
mygeneral rule of thumb is that any publicist who has to resort to cold calling isn't very good at their job
I had this happen once before a long time ago, when I was trying to get published I start to get uncomfortable, and just stopped replying to the people. Fortunately they didn't get anything. However, it's only years later when I look back at they claim to be willing to publish do I believe it was a scam. Cuz my early writing is terrible, LOL!
Are there any 'publicists' out there who are NOT scammers? Might be good to get a list of them going, if they do actually exist.
I think the alliance of independent authors has as list , but tbh hardly anyone offers publicity services (alone) for self published authors because the market isn't there. We don't need most of what normal publicists offer.. press, print adverts, radio, tv etc.. all we need is facebook/AMS/bookbub and those are so simple that most people can do them themselves There are legit services that will do a whole package edit/cover/marketing … bookbaby for example. I wouldn't, but if you were cash rich and time poor its an option
And ran into two more scammers, who will go unnamed. Got me really excited, the first one, talking about getting my book into a movie or TV series, but as a cold call it got me suspicious and they only wanted $6K to do a book trailer video and a screenplay, and register my book on a database used by Hollywood. They claimed to have six big name partners. Problem was, their website did not list their big-name partners, nor did it mention the database. There were no success stories, and the About Us listed only three supposedly satisfied customers. The sample video trailers were so bland and generic as to be worthless. Contact Us had no address. The second one was about the same, but I talked a bit with the head of the operation (so he said) and found out he had all of ten employees, and apparently has not put anyone into movies or TV, or he would be actively advertising that success story. And I found out he had not read the book, not did he have a synopsis in front of him from one of his staff who had. Just what was on Amazon. Watch these guys, they are very good at feeding your ego, but don't give them the time of day. Good thing their price is high enough that I think most of the people on this site wouldn't go for it, even if they were legit, which they are not.
we'll get your book made into a movie is nearly always a scam (unless its an actual real studio contacting you directly, which isn't likely ) - there's another bunch who I had words with recently on facebook who are charging people $87 per year to be on their database which apparently 'the biggest names in the industry' regularly use. Who are their industry contacts I asked … that's close hold information that they can't share but they are big, huge, gargantuan bigger than Lucas apparently (I'm guessing that its a really fat bloke who runs a kebab truck at universal) How many people from their list have had films made of their books ? Well you see they can't discuss other authors because of the data protection act … sure Wilbur You can see where this is going … shortly afterwards they deleted my questions and blocked me from commenting on their page. - always a sign of a completely transparent company you want to do business with....or not
If someone genuinely wants you or your work, they won't just disappear if you play hard to get. I'm pretty good at spotting BS, but if I'm not sure or am mildly interested I ask difficult questions. Remember that difficult questions are only difficult if the answers are lies. That said, I once got offered work writing for a radio show. The guy running it must have emailed me a dozen times and I just ignored him, putting it down as a scam. In the end his persistence made me respond, albeit rather rudely, but we got there in the end. Scammers might have elaborate set-ups, but they rarely persist when totally blanked.
