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.
The TL;DR on this is always, always, always dig deep into any organization offering publishing services and do your due diligence. There are many ways to spend a lot of money and receive little value. Here’s the result of my digging into one of those services.
I’m part of several writers groups on a variety of social media sites. Earlier today, A fellow going by the name of “John Stokes” posted a link on one of these sites to waitlistr.com, saying something along the lines of “Apply to get on the waiting list for high quality Canadian book production services”. The image attached to the post referred to Agora Publishing.
A wait list? No reputable publisher I know of has a “wait list”, especially not one offering self-publishing support. They might have a slush pile, but not a wait list. This aroused my suspicions. It sounds like that well-worn marketing technique “false scarcity”. Better get on that wait list quick, or it will be years before they get to you! Right. Let’s check that out!
I left a comment saying that authors might want to check references before spending any time and/or money on this, and “John” deleted the post. Bad move, “John”. Now I’m curious!
First, as always, I check with Victoria Strauss’ Writer Beware blog at https://writerbeware.blog/ and https://writerbeware.com. There’s nothing there, but there was a Twitter post from her indicating that there have been complaints. You’ll have to find that yourself, since I’m no longer linking to sites that support fascism, and Strauss hasn’t made it to Mastodon yet.
Next, I thought I’d look up Agora myself. What we get is a nice looking home page, but most of the links on that page just replicate the same information. There’s no evident content beyond that. Here’s what the home page looks like:
Looks okay, I guess. Save for the fact that the address is a PO box in a shopping mall and it’s an awfully thin site for 23 years of publishing. I figured I’d see where it’s hosted, so I did a quick IP address lookup and got 165.140.159.91, which appears to be a VPS at Scala Hosting. Noted.
Next, I wondered what all these sites that were “talking about Agora Publishing” actually had to say. None of the images actually link to websites, and I’d never heard of any of these publications, so that requires a little searching.
First up, the Toronto Business Journal found at tobj.ca, which we can find at (drum roll) 165.140.159.91:
There it is, in the footer: developed by agorapublishing.com. Well, that’s an independent, objective source, isn’t it? For an extra bonus check the sidebar which features some COVID-19 conspiracy theory garbage and (surprise, surprise) self-publishing services through Agora. There’s more cross-links there too if you want to really dig into the mind of this person.
On to the “Canadian Business Daily”. That site doesn’t come up, but there’s a YouTube channel of that name that links to agoracosmopolitan.com at, you guessed it, 165.140.159.91! Here we find… well it’s not a business journal, that’s for sure. All I can say is if I were an incel trolling for women to “neg”, I’d build a site that looked a lot like this one.
If you can stand to scroll down, you can find insightful business articles like “Are demonic clones now running the world?” Seriously.
Moving on, we have “Le Canadian” https://www.lecanadian.com/ (yes, also at 165.140.159.91):
This is pretty much the same whacked out content as the other sites, still featuring dating events in the past. There’s no explicit mention of Agora, but the contact page lists “National Co-Managing Editor: John Stokes”. So, another independent journalistic source there. Is this starting to smell the same for you? I bet it is!
Next up we have “The Ottawa Star”, a non-responsive site, if I managed to find the right one. And finally, the glowing, independent review that would be found at “Toronto Capitalistocracy” [wut? LOL], if the site could ever be located. I found nothing referencing this ludicrously named site.
I was going to dig into “John Stokes” a little more, but I got blocked real quick. That’s great defence of my remarks there, bro. Nothing to hide, eh?
But there are ways around being blocked. I’m not planning to dig any deeper, but here’s the source for his profile image:
He’s cropped it, of course, but it’s good to know that “John” makes a good “Man in Blue Longs Sleeves Smiling at the Camera while Sitting on an Office Chair”. (Credit to Yan Krukau, who I imagine has never met the person behind the “John Stokes” name. https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-in-blue-longs-sleeves-smiling-at-the-camera-while-sitting-on-an-office-chair-7792769/). Needless to say, I won’t be convinced that a “John Stokes” exists until I see some official documentation.
Now, should you be masochistic enough to find some of the books available from Agora, be prepared for lots more conspiracy theory and the like. I’ll spare you what else I’ve learned.
It is probably redundant to say this, but if you’re looking for help self-publishing, Agora is not an option I’d recommend.
Update: A friend did a reverse lookup on the phone number and found Xcheaters-Reviews.com Magazine Publishing Montreal, QC. That site is dead now, but a LinkedIn page describes it as “Xcheaters-Reviews.com is an an eclectic lifestyles oriented magazine which includes investigative analysis and sightings reports on UFO and alien sightings.”, which sounds consistent with these other sites. Meanwhile there is an (also defunct) xcheaters-bistro.com, which was located at the same mall, same “BP” (which seems to be an attempt at “box postale”, or “bag postale”, except in French it’s CP “Case Postale”). Here’s a capture from the Facebook page:
Same phone number too! None of this seems to be based on the name xcheaters.com, which looks like a sleazy “casual dating” site based in Cyprus. I can’t see anything to say that they’re related, but opening a bistro based on the name of a sleazy dating site is curious, to say the least. Especially with all the dating-related content on those “business” sites. Possibly it’s just an outdated attempt to get some search traffic and route it through an affiliate link, or maybe it’s just deranged. It’s hard to tell.
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