I'm laughing as I read this, jumping down and up and down to the footnotes. If I asked a Random Person how books are "promoted," I suppose that they might come up with some Rube Goldbergian process that sounds something like what Senior Literary Agent Michael Lockwood of ??? (I couldn't understand it either) Press describes.
That same Random Person also thinks that picture books are written in 20 minutes, and are always about a Grandchild or a Beloved Pet and teach an Important Lesson, and we know how that goes.
Well anyway. Glad you posted this. Better you than me.
Every time you wrote "Random Person" I could only read it as someone pretending to work for Random House ("Hello, Brian! I work for Random Person, which is the arm of Random House that will help you get your books out to more readers! If you pay me $10,000!").
Sooo tired of those. The most interesting one for me was an email about one of my picture books, which did well, but it is not a recently published book. It used the name of a legit film company, with logo and names of actual people who work there, saying they wanted to talk to me about making a movie of the book. I didn't respond to the email, but checked with the actual company to confirm no one worked there with that name. I'm still wondering what their specific plan was for scamming someone in the process of offering a film contract.
I still don’t understand how they find my phone number and a private email address and associate it with my book work….and not the email that’s actually on my website. Maybe Meta is selling that data.
Yeah that's a whole other baffling thing. At this point they are the only people who call our landline. And my email isn't that hard to figure out, but you're right, is different from the one on my website.
A lot of times they're just dialing randomly. Reason the advice is never respond. Once you respond even if it's to say f*ck off, there's a bot out there that clicks and lets the scammers know "got a real human being here".
That seven outta twelve! <shakes head> It's like they are trying to use that gross "negging" thing. Something for me to look forward to someday, I guess! LOL!
Good alert you wrote! And necessary. The scammers are out there, in force. I have a rule of thumb: "If someone contacts me out of the blue, I assume it's a scam". I can risk to turn them down. I cannot risk to be caught by their lies. – I recently wrote an essay about scammers that I might post on Substack soon. I have been wondering about the deeper roots of that widespread phenomenon. For now, let's be grateful that most of the scammers are so clumsy!
The ego appeal is profitable and it costs next to nothing to send these scams out. Anyone who bites is pure profit. Every once in a while they catch one of these outfits and put the guys in charge in jail which is pure schadenfreude for me. I love when I can use the word schadenfreude!
Yep, from time to time they catch one them. I find the people who do these scams especially scumbag-esque because they're usually preying more susceptible such as the elderly. So yeah, I get a nice little schadenfreude hit when I learn a scam ring was busted.
I'm laughing as I read this, jumping down and up and down to the footnotes. If I asked a Random Person how books are "promoted," I suppose that they might come up with some Rube Goldbergian process that sounds something like what Senior Literary Agent Michael Lockwood of ??? (I couldn't understand it either) Press describes.
That same Random Person also thinks that picture books are written in 20 minutes, and are always about a Grandchild or a Beloved Pet and teach an Important Lesson, and we know how that goes.
Well anyway. Glad you posted this. Better you than me.
Every time you wrote "Random Person" I could only read it as someone pretending to work for Random House ("Hello, Brian! I work for Random Person, which is the arm of Random House that will help you get your books out to more readers! If you pay me $10,000!").
Well. If the shoe fits.
Sooo tired of those. The most interesting one for me was an email about one of my picture books, which did well, but it is not a recently published book. It used the name of a legit film company, with logo and names of actual people who work there, saying they wanted to talk to me about making a movie of the book. I didn't respond to the email, but checked with the actual company to confirm no one worked there with that name. I'm still wondering what their specific plan was for scamming someone in the process of offering a film contract.
That's so sneaky! I'm sure at one point they would have explained very logically why you needed to pony up some money to make it happen.
I still don’t understand how they find my phone number and a private email address and associate it with my book work….and not the email that’s actually on my website. Maybe Meta is selling that data.
Yeah that's a whole other baffling thing. At this point they are the only people who call our landline. And my email isn't that hard to figure out, but you're right, is different from the one on my website.
A lot of times they're just dialing randomly. Reason the advice is never respond. Once you respond even if it's to say f*ck off, there's a bot out there that clicks and lets the scammers know "got a real human being here".
I get these phone calls ALL THE TIME about a book I published many moons ago. It is so baffling.
That seven outta twelve! <shakes head> It's like they are trying to use that gross "negging" thing. Something for me to look forward to someday, I guess! LOL!
Good alert you wrote! And necessary. The scammers are out there, in force. I have a rule of thumb: "If someone contacts me out of the blue, I assume it's a scam". I can risk to turn them down. I cannot risk to be caught by their lies. – I recently wrote an essay about scammers that I might post on Substack soon. I have been wondering about the deeper roots of that widespread phenomenon. For now, let's be grateful that most of the scammers are so clumsy!
The ego appeal is profitable and it costs next to nothing to send these scams out. Anyone who bites is pure profit. Every once in a while they catch one of these outfits and put the guys in charge in jail which is pure schadenfreude for me. I love when I can use the word schadenfreude!
Ha, I'm glad I set you up to use schadenfreude! I've never heard of one of them getting put on jail. That is satisfying.
Yep, from time to time they catch one them. I find the people who do these scams especially scumbag-esque because they're usually preying more susceptible such as the elderly. So yeah, I get a nice little schadenfreude hit when I learn a scam ring was busted.