Writer Beware: Bogus Offers of Help

I’m going to dive into a specific case of a “beta reader” here, but the principles are the same for just about anything related to the process of getting a book published.

First, a reminder of the general rule: If an organization is pretending to be a legitimate traditional publisher and they ask you for money, then they’re not. They’re one of a vanity publisher, a hybrid publisher, or a scam. Of those three, the only time you’re likely to see value for your money is if they’re hybrid, and even then check references, then see if you can check authors who have used them but aren’t on the reference list.

This morning, someone posted this on a writer’s group:

My name is Karen [redacted] I’m a Beta Reader who helps authors improve their work with clear, thoughtful feedback. If you’re preparing to publish, I’d love to support you—with both feedback and professional formatting to get your book ready for readers.

I was going to post the rest of the pitch, but the post was been removed, either by the group admin (or by the poster after my response to asking for references). “Karen” offered to be a beta reader, to provide feedback, and to help with book formatting because “she” just loves to help authors.

UPDATE: Now “she” is commenting on posts, so I got the full text again, now above.

The first two flags are right there in the pitch. There’s no mention of genre. It’s not often that someone is an avid reader of any genre, and even if they are, how much genre-specific feedback could they offer? Suspicious. Second is the mention of “book formatting”. That sounds like something one might be charging money for. My first thought is that this is a lead in to an outright scam, where “Karen” loves your book so much that “she” wants to hook you up with a friend in the [scam] publishing business. For only US$1,500 you can be $5,000 poorer! (Seriously, that’s how it works, once you send money, they know they have a mark and they keep asking for more money for printing, marketing, etc. etc. until you either clue in or run out of money).

There’s another possible risk here, and it’s huge: you send your nearly-finished manuscript to someone you don’t know, next thing you know, your book is up on Amazon under another name, and since they “published” first, getting it taken down is borderline impossible. I can’t think of a worse scenario.

Here’s a general process to go through when checking anything like this out: go to the user’s profile and take a look at their personal posts, where they claim to be from, and their friends list. Reverse image search their profile picture with TinEye.

This is what I got for “Karen”:

• “Karen’s” surname is a common given name, not a surname. Okay, maybe they’re using two given names for privacy reasons but… suspect nonetheless.
• The profile image was just some stock shot of a pen on paper. That’s not even worth searching. But if they have a head shot, then TinEye is great. These days there’s fewer hits because the scammers are using AI to create new people each time, but if they’re lazy it’s not uncommon to find the image listed on scam tracking sites. Still, a pen and paper is pretty weird for a personal page. Flag number three.
• There were no posts to this account before December 4, 2024, roughly five months ago. That’s suspect. Flag number four.
• “Karen” claimed to be born and raised in New York City. Let’s take a look at the 400+ friends associated with the account. Almost all of them are based in India, and nearby Asian countries. In the first 200 or so, not one in New York, and only two in the US[LN]A. Flag number five.
• The post feed is all news-y, current posts feature the current president doing various things, then back in December they’re Biden doing various things. Not a single personal or reading-related post. Flags six and seven.
• Now we do a web search, there’s no indication of this person on any of the reading-related sites (Goodreads, The Story Graph, etc.) Flag eight.
• Head over to Linkedin (if you can stomach it), search the name there. Not a single profile with that name. Flag nine.
• There’s no blog/website/presence at all under that name, save for this Facebook profile. Flag ten.

Ding! Ding! We have a loser!

Five flags is more than enough to call this a scam, but I thought I’d go through the whole process to illustrate what the first steps should be to avoid getting ripped off. Even when someone passes these checks, you’re back to the general rule above: obtain and check references. The number of people out there looking to take advantage of authors who are desperate to get their work out there is off the charts.