The reason behind this post is that there are people out there eager to con you via your desire to be a writer, to self-publish or get published, and to reach people with your work. At the end I’ll have some tips about the warning signs writers need to look out for in order to avoid getting scammed, but first let me take a step back and share with you two other interesting stories in a different field.
These stories come from a post by copywriter Doberman Dan about how internet marketing gurus make the worst clients and, more importantly, how they’re often not telling the truth about themselves.
THE MULTIMILLIONAIRE WHO HAD NO MONEY
One such guru was selling nutritional supplements and going around the country selling a $2000 course and bragging about “a multi-million dollar health and wellness business.” But when it came time to pay for the copywriting Doberman Dan did for him he ducked him for months and then said he couldn’t pay because he didn’t have any money. DD did some research and found out that the guru was averaging $12,000 a month in sales—not bad but hardly enough a multi-million dollar business. He was lying twice: he did have money, but not as much as he claimed in his ads.
THE MAN WHO REVEALS WHAT “THEY” DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW
The second guru has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infomercials selling “how to make money” and nutritional products. The product for which he wanted copy written is a 14-CD program that basically offers instant riches, based on secret “information that the wealthy, powerful and influential don’t want you to know.” The promise: “It’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE TO FAIL once you know and use the secrets!”
That would be handy, wouldn’t it? Yet this guru decided not to use DD’s services because he charged too much. Wait a minute…why not just use the secret information and generate a few million extra? (For the record, DD didn’t plan to take the job anyway and named a big number just to see what they’d say.)
WHAT HE PROBABLY DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW
DD doesn’t reveal the names of these two but it wasn’t difficult to figure out that the second one is Kevin Trudeau. On the sales page for the CD set, Trudeau says he used to be a member of “The Brotherhood” but decided to break his silence and make these miraculous methods available to anybody who is willing to send him some money.
Wait! Am I foolishly mocking the very system that, according to the sales page, could teach me to become “a millionaire or EVEN a billionaire, improve my health, experience quality business/personal relationships and live the life [I’ve] only dreamed of”?
It’s not like there’s no proof—the site specifically says that “A lawyer named Bill (from Indiana) made over 2 million dollars in 24 months.” I’m glad they mentioned that Bill is from Indiana. Otherwise I might have been sceptical that he’s a real person.
Mr Trudeau says he “decided to risk his life and reveal the closely guarded secrets.” I hope there isn’t a gang of ninjas on their way to his mansion at this very moment.
DO YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO SPARE?
I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering whether attaining these vast riches would take up too much of your time. Fear not! The site tells us that Mr Trudeau, who knows we are busy people, “took some of the most powerful concepts taught by the Brotherhood (for attaining miracles in any area of life) and distilled them all into a process you can use to attract money or manifest any other desire. In most cases, the entire process, start to finish, takes only about 5 seconds.”
Five seconds! In the time you’ve spent reading this, you could have made several fortunes. Mr Trudeau says due to applying this secret information, “I’ve had servants including a butler, private chef, chauffeur and bodyguard.”
Just think, five seconds from now you could have your butler reading this blog to you while your bodyguard sorts out those noisy neighbours.
THE BODYGUARD ISN’T THE ONLY KIND OF GUARD HE’S HAD
Ooops, there are a couple of details the sales page doesn’t mention, but Wikipedia does: “Trudeau's activities have been the subject of both criminal and civil action. He was convicted of larceny and credit card fraud in the early 1990s, and in 1998 paid a $500,000 fine for making false or misleading claims in his infomercials. In 2004, he consented to a lifetime ban on promoting products other than his books via infomercials.” Along the way he did two years in the slammer.
Maybe that’s why, if you click to buy the CDs (now a bargain $99), you are redirected to a site run by somebody other than Mr Trudeau.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WRITERS?
The takeaway from this sounds obvious: the internet makes it easier than ever to tell lies about yourself, how much you make, and the results people will get if they fork over their money. With brilliant copywriting, too-good-to-believe offers can tap into our gullibility with the ease and elegance of a Barcelona pickpocket.
The writing niche isn’t as rife with charlatans as the “how to make money” or “instant cures for all your problems” arenas, but it has its share. Here are some of them:
The vanity publishing industry is still alive and well and now feasting on people who don’t realize they can self-publish e-books inexpensively. They make it sound like formatting an e-book is a dark, mysterious art, getting an ISBN number is an ordeal, and you won’t get anywhere without the boilerplate press release they’ll write you for a few hundred additional dollars or pounds.
The “make big money writing articles” scamsters are also every active. Usually they ask for a subscription fee in exchange for a list of markets which turn out to be bogus, out of date, or paying next to nothing.
In the case of at least one of these, attempts to get a refund go nowhere and you find your credit card still being charged after you have tried to cancel your subscription.
There are also companies offering to shoot book trailers for you, either with you speaking to the camera or using screen capture. These are not cons, but the resulting products are of questionable value. I’ve seen quite a few authors pitching their books on video who obviously had no guidance and whose videos are more likely to put people off than to turn them on to the book.
The latest angle is “Make big money writing for the web.” The only people making big money writing for the web are copywriters who have a track record of sales pages that have brought in big money.
Another one that’s new, at least to me, is companies offering to create and broadcast TV commercials for your book. I saw one of these the other day—for $5000 they would create a TV ad with a reach of half a million people.
Sounds like a lot of people, doesn’t it? Here's what Wikipedia says about "reach": "Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial."
THE WARNING SIGNS FOR WRITERS
Here are a few warning signs. Beware of:
- Any agent who charges you fees to read your material (Here is one example, and here are the 20 agencies about which the Writer Beware blog has had the most complaints.)
- Any agent or publisher who requires you to hire someone they recommend (for example, as an editor, publicist, or PR person) --here is a post about one such publisher.
- Any publisher that advertises that they’re looking for submissions. The legitimate publishers are swamped with material and have no need to advertise.
- Any contest where the prize is less than equal to 50 times the entry fee.
- Anybody who claims they can show you how to make your book a best-seller (unless they’re talking about a one-day Amazon best-seller, which I’ve written about here before and which means nothing if you care about being honest with your readers)
- Anybody who claims they can show you how to write a good book in a week or 14 days. Yes, you can write a book in 14 days. Just not a good book, unless you’re a genius, in which case you should be able to figure it out yourself.
- Any service that offers to write a screenplay version of your novel. Ask them which of the scripts they’ve written that way have been optioned or sold and verify that information if they give it.
- Any service that offers to send your manuscript or screenplay to lots of celebrities, producers, decision-makers, etc. They'll probably send them, all right, and they'll be dumped as soon as they arrive. Here you can read about one example of a service like this.
- Any service that offers to put ads for your book or ebook on TV with a “reach” of a lot of people. Ask them what time your ads would be on, what the actual (not potential) viewing figures are for that time, and contact information for a few writers who have taken advantage of this deal so you can find out how it worked out for them.
- Any service that says there's easy big money to be made writing for the internet. Here you can read the warning about the most notorious of these (read the comments as well as the post and you'll see the experiences people have had--this group advertises widely).
Don’t feel bad if you fallen for any of these. I have an embarrassing and expensive internet-guru related story in my past and it’s only human to want things that seem too good to be true:
Endlessly rising house values? Great!
Endless rises in the standard of living? We’ll take it!
Spending more money than we have (whether a family or a country)? Sounds good to us!
The bill arrives eventually.
(For friendly guidance writing your book from idea through to publication, get my book, "Your Writing Coach" published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other booksellers.)
