By Monica Sampson
Book marketing scams cost writers thousands of dollars. When you think about it, book marketing scams are similar to psychic scams. Stay with me. The two scams are similar from a critical focal point. Both book marketing scams and psychic scams prey on a person’s deep desires to achieve a goal.
Why book marketing scams are easy cons
In the book world, the goal could be to write a novel that earns a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Or the goal could be to sale enough books to earn a full-time income as a writer. Winning literary book awards, securing a movie deal or building rewarding relationships with national and international book clubs are other goals that book writers have.
A person who visits or telephones a psychic, on the other hand, might have a goal of discovering the right job to accept, the right town to move to or the right relationship to invest in. It’s these achievements that can lead to inner happiness, peace and deeper life engagement.
No wonder people fall prey to these scams. But, people don’t just fall prey to book marketing scams, some people could come to believe in the scams to the point that they defend the scams. Still, other book writers might learn about the scams and start scamming other writers.
Signs to detect book marketing scams
At the core of scams is a desire to make money fast and easy. Check out these signs that you might be dealing with book marketing scams:
- Promises that are not tied to factual analytics
- Focus on bestselling authors, bestselling books and the growing human population – a focus that can create the belief that just because other writers have made it big and just because there are billions of people on the planet, you could sell tons of books
- Advertising how many people have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, as if being on those platforms will bring you lots of book sales if you invest in their book marketing scams
- Broad range of book marketing without proven results
- Gives you little to no information about their target audience’s demographics
- Connects their book marketing scams to your deepest book dreams
- Not hearing any writers you know mention how their book sales increased after using similar book marketing services
- Produces more page or video views but next to no new subscriptions or book sales
- Book review marketing scams that leave you doing the bulk of the work to contact book reviewers and try to get your book reviewed at sites like Amazon.com, especially when those very book reviews could be pulled by Amazon.com
- Highlights their number of social media followers instead of their number of book sales
- Low grade level writing that instills reader trust
- Apologies from the person running the book marketing scam that she forgot to tell you that there were fees tied to services she introduced you to a day or so ago, as if she simply forgot to tell you about the fees when she first reached out to you (these apologies may go on for three to four paragraphs and be written in a way that instills trust in you – be careful)
- Lack of legitimate book marketing references, places like major television, major radio and major magazine and newspapers
- Slow build that leads you toward investing more and more money in the book marketing scam
Keep yourself safe from book marketing scams
A low number of book writers go big. Yet, large numbers of people convince themselves that their book is going to be a bestseller. Admittedly, the facts of just how rarely this happens can be difficult to accept, let alone digest.
If writers don’t research the book market and accept how tough it can be to rise to the top in the industry, they might turn to book marketing scams in the hopes of selling lots of books. At best, writers who deal with book marketing scams might see a very short spike in book sales.
Over the long term, these same writers could fall into the trap of believing that their books will sale using the scams if they just tweak one little thing. Maybe they tell themselves that the book marketing scams will work if they tweak their book blog, website, social media posts or travel to more book conferences.
That might be one of the biggest achievements that keeps book marketing scams going. That shared, the best way to avoid becoming prey to book marketing scams might be to accept facts. Talk with people who have reached book sales goals that you want without using scams. One or more of their strategies could prove fruitful.
Build your own book buyer contact list, accept that achieving your book sales goals might be a very slow process and gain deep value from each connection that you make with a book buyer. Above all, if you truly know that you are meant to be a writer, keep writing.
