Re-publishing scams are big business. If you are an author with some older back-list titles and any kind of web presence, you already know. Constantly blocking phone numbers from callers all reading from the same script. My Cat flip-phone appears to have no limit to the number of phone numbers I can block.
Featured image courtesy of Times of India.
Here’s a new one that is going around.
Your first massive red flag is Whats App Only. Professionals don’t use Whats App to communicate.
Second massive red flag is “had a quick thought that might help.” Any successful person who “had a quick thought that might help” will just send the thought. Trying to establish any kind of dialog would consume their valuable time.
Ah, but the cherry on top was
Gmail, where most scammers operate from. Notice the doubling of letters? Even if Tracie Peterson has a Google Alerts searching for use of her name, it won’t find it.
No, I didn’t receive this scam, someone forwarded it to me. If you attempt to communicate they have a re-publishing scam involving a joint marketing thing that will cost you $600 or something like that.
Why these re-publishing scams target back-list titles
You are the product. People try to figure out why the $600 to N-thousand re-publishing fee would be worth anyone’s time. They are thinking small. Twelve plus year old titles have a really high probability of not existing in ebook form. Either they never were or the author deleted their account on the site selling the work. Said self-publisher, who probably spent months or years trying to get a real publisher to publish their work is a target for the “free money” ego stroke.
How it works – Part 1 – The Setup
- They email, usually direct call, working from a script, talking an author into “republishing.” Usually they just want the EPUB file and cover artwork. Sometimes they ask for the PDFs used to actually print the book. If they ask for those they will also ask for some “display copies” because there is a book fair, usually at a Florida college campus that they wish to display your books. The better scams will even send you a picture of your title on a table or shelf with other titles in what looks like a cheesy convention booth.
- Most wait until after that to hit you for anywhere from $600-N-thousand for a joint campaign because they got great feedback on your work from the book fair.
You know, that folding table could have been bought on a garage sale. The usually dark colored cloth “fake walls” you see could just be blankets purchased from Good Will hanging on a rod. They only need twelve square feet anywhere in the world to take that photo.
How it works – Part 2 – The Fork
Ebook
Epub only strips any DRM your file might have had, adds a set of nasty viruses to the file and re-uploads it to all the big book piracy sites. You are only a small target. The millions of Freetards on the Internet will happily download your “new work.”
This is why they need 12+ year old titles. To Freetards and the book piracy sites, it’s new. It’s from a time when not many titles were ebook. Nobody has heard of the work. All of your marketing stuff will dutifully be pasted to the piracy site. Freetards will download the virus infested stuff directly to their iMbecile phones, most of which have zero antivirus software, yet the iMbeciles put their credit card, passwords, and banking information on the thing because they want to wave it at checkout.
You aren’t the target, you are the product. Owners of iMbecile phones are the target.
Y’all didn’t read my post about book piracy in India. It used to focus on geek/technology books so Indians could come to America to take American jobs. Now it is everything. India still uses cheap lead based ink. They print and sell your title on the street for a couple of dollars. Many of these scammers are working for tech companies because the tech companies installed book-on-demand printing to avoid tariffs, taxes, and shipping costs of getting training manuals to India.
Again, you are the product, not the target. If they can get you to pay for the print run it’s a win-win.
Costs publishing industry an estimated $36 million per year.
