My Writing Journey - Sophisticated Scammers

 

It's difficult out there!

    As soon as you put something of any modest value out into the world, there will be those sharks out there who smell blood in the water. Somehow, they think you have money that they can siphon off by offering fake services, fake clout, and fake advertising for.

    Now, I'm certainly not writing with any real thought about "getting paid". Of course, it would be nice, but if there's one thing I've learned in life is - Never be Desperate. As soon as you put emotion into any trade or deal, you have lost perspective. And that is probably the most dangerous thing to lose.

    So, I've released a book onto Amazon. I'd like for as many people as possible to see it and hopefully to read it. If my work resonates with people, then maybe money will come, but that isn't what I'm after. I have a story that's been burning in my mind for decades. I have to get it out into the world. And I want to make it the best, most enjoyable work that others will actually want to keep coming back to. That's the perfectionist in me and it has taken many years to finally build up a small degree of confidence that maybe I've succeeded in that goal with my first book.

    But the reality is, in order to let people know that my book exists, you have to market it. You have to promote it as best you can. So you begin the search to find what are the reputable ways to advertise and spread the word.

    ( In my previous article, I broke down the mechanics of whom I've advertised through and the results. Go check that out if you want a more business-oriented look at advertising. )

Still, you have to be open for those wonderful, serendipitous opportunities that do exist, but are extremely rare.  This is where the scammers lay in wait. 

When I post on X, I'll occasionally get approached in my DM's about a book club, a cover artist, or a film adaptation opportunity. Maybe I'm stupid, but I'm willing to entertain these opportunities because you never really know where it may lead. When I read the DM or email, I'm immediately in super suspicious mode. How do you tell if it's a scam or not? Do opportunities like this really just pop up out of nowhere? I didn't search them out, they're coming to me - can I trust it?

I've recently been considering trying to see what traditional publishing might offer. I guess those thoughts came after I watched Project: Hail Mary and thought it was a pretty decent movie. I enjoyed the Martian and I knew that both came from books by the same author. I hadn't paid much attention to who the author was, because honestly, between writing, my day job and my family, I don't do much reading for entertainment. I will read books to analyze them to understand what works and what doesn't, but more often than not, I'm reading books and articles on the craft of writing. Fleshing out characters, different story types, story beats, improving dialogue, etc. 

After watching that movie, I must have come across an article somewhere that talked about how Andy Weir published his books. Now, I might have this wrong, but from the article I read, it sounded like a literary agent approached the author, seemingly out of the blue. It appears that Weir had built up something of a following through blogs (I'm still in the research phase to discover how he did this) and then he decided to self-publish his first book - The Martian.

Apparently, with the help of his audience, his book skyrocketed immediately. Something like 35,000 copies in a few months. That number is insane and must have somehow attracted an agent to do the unthinkable - reach out to the artist. And the rest is history.

The point is, sometimes it does happen. It's not unthinkable, but it is ridiculously rare. That's something to keep in mind when you are approached by people wanting to 'help' you. Now, I would've been extremely skeptical if I had been in Weir's shoes, and from the sounds of it, he was too. I mean think about it - the literary agent that reached out to him wasn't from a well-known publisher or well-known power broker of a literary agency. It was from some one-man operation who has little track record in representing well-known authors. No offense to Mr. David Fugate and Launchbooks, but from Weir's perspective, it must have seemed like a complete shot in the dark.

From the article I read, Weir set some ground rules on the rights he was willing to let Mr. Fugate handle and it took some convincing from Fugate for Weir to move away from the self-publishing route. And I believe it's safe to say that Mr. Fugate did an exceptional job in making Andy Weir an almost household name with two great books being turned into two great movies in under a decade of effort. Honestly, that is almost unheard of.

Magic moments can happen. But you have to do your diligence to spot the scammers. As an example, I was approached on X by some account that had been around for several years and would occasionally post some vague blurb on why film adaptations of books are a good thing. They tried the flattery route, saying how they enjoyed my book and believed that it was a good candidate for adaptation. They asked for an email address, which I provided.

In the email, they identified themselves as belonging to (LegitName) Productions and that there was a standing Netflix deal for IP's they believed in. Those two things are true. (LegitName) Productions is a real company and they do in fact have a partnership with Netflix. The email was even signed by a person who shows up on IMDB as working for that company.

How exciting!

But there was something off about the email. My scam sensors were pinging. Even then, it took me a second to have more confidence this was a scam than not.

The first email I received from them was a vague collection of platitudes with no real 'action' item to it. It just asked at the end that I needed to let them know if I wanted to continue the process of discussions.

Well, they hadn't asked for money. They introduced themselves and talked about their company and their mission and why they thought I would be a good fit. This is the kind of thing I'd expect from a legitimate company. But there was one thing that was 'off'.

As explained, the company identified in the email was (LegitName) Productions, but the email came from a website called (LegitName)entertainment.com.

With absolutely no experience on that company or how any of that works, at first I noted it as odd, but felt like maybe it was legit. I've heard of companies either having multiple sites or operating under a subtle variation of what's on the masthead. The difference between entertainment vs production seemed trivial at first. I responded to the email without doing any real research to sniff out whether it was a scam or not.

The email I received back was another very legitimate looking email - especially for someone who has no clue about how the process works. They simply gave me a PDF that listed some generic items they would like me to work up in a word document and return to them. It seemed benign enough. A query letter, a book synopsis, a paragraph on why I think my book is a good candidate for adaptation and so on. Still no ask for money.

Now, in the email, they did say that they are wanting those materials back soon and that if I was having difficulty completing it that they did have a service that could assist, but there was no sense of pressure and there wasn't even a link or reference to who or what that service might be. I'd assume that if I responded with an ask for help, then they would provide the reference.

But this is where they went wrong. I found it odd that if they were approaching me with an opportunity, why wouldn't they be able to do their own write-up on my material? Wasn't a query letter something where I'm asking for them to consider me? I'd never written a query letter, so I began my research.

I read up on what a query letter is, to find out that it is something in the publishing world, not in the movie adaptation world - at least not in the way that I was being asked to provide. I put a handful of questions into chatGPT and it immediately came back with information and sources that said this is not how the industry works. 

That's when I looked closer at that email address. It was generic. Info@(LegitName)entertainment.com. If I was approached by a specific person, why wouldn't they provide their direct email address?

I navigated to the .com address of the email and saw that DNS did take me to the web page, but it was nothing more than a 'Site doesn't exist' page plastered on it. It didn't even redirect to the real (LegitName) Productions website, which I navigated to as well.

Now there's a slim chance that this still could have been a legitimate interaction, but there were just too many red flags that went off for me to trust it as genuine.

And do you know who gave me the most information on what the publishing industry process should actually look like? David Fugate's website for his agency - Launchbooks.  He has a publishing guide that you can purchase and download, should you want to. The information he provided can also be found in many other places; but given that Andy Weir trusted this agency, and it seems to have worked out well for him, I thought 'Why not'. I purchased his guide... which is honestly kind of outdated. It describes a publishing market that existed in the 2012 era, but enough of his information was still valid for today to be useful. I think the grind is harder, the algorithms have shifted, but perhaps the traditional publishing route hasn't changed enough since then to make it irrelevant. I honestly have no way of knowing about that part, as I am still learning on what the curtain looks like before I can start to peer behind it.

Long story short - do your research. Be suspicious of what you find until you have multiple reference points that make you more confident than not that the person or company are genuine. Be doubly suspicious about people reaching out to you without you first reaching out to them. Some opportunities do work out that way. Sometimes people see something in your work that draws them to you. And maybe I'm way too cynical, but I don't have all kinds of money that I can just throw away on hopes and dreams. I'm not desperate, but if I fall for the scams... I may just get there.