#vanity-press — Public Fediverse posts

Common Scams for Authors, Artists, and Musicians

Ever since my first book was released, my inbox has been flooded with messages from people who all seem to want to help me make it big: publishers, curators, editors, experts. And I’m sure they’re all genuine, right?

No, no—I’m not that naive. I’ve actually been dealing with these types of scammers since I was a kid.

But sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between someone who is truly interested in your work and someone who just wants to use you to make a quick profit…

And for the past month or so, I’ve noticed many of my creative friends have been plagued by these same emails.

I’ve put together a list of the top five scams that are currently raging against authors, artists, and musicians. It’s not just so that you can avoid wasting time and money—I think the biggest thing here is avoiding disappointment. After all, when you find out someone’s validation was only a pretense for them trying to sell you something, it kind of sucks.

But before I get into all of that, let me tell you about my childhood experience.

Kids are Easy to Scam

When I was in 5th grade, I wrote a poem about tigers for a school competition. It won third place, so I was pretty proud of that accomplishment.

I was even more proud when a publisher showed interest. And if you were actually in front of me right now, you’d see that I was making air quotes around the word publisher.

Basically, I got a letter in the mail from some company that was putting together a poetry anthology. I have no idea how they got my information in the first place, but they said how much they loved my poem. In fact, they wanted to include it in their upcoming collection. And despite the fact that they were rapidly approaching their printing deadline, they had made a spot just for me.

All I had to do was sign a couple of forms and attach a check for the administrative costs.

It certainly sounded legit to me at the time, but remember: I was in 5th grade. Years later, I can see it for what it really was… a scam.

So without further adieu… and yes, I will eventually finish this story… let’s jump right into the list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3q-QM91pqU

Scam 1: The Instagram Feature or Art Gallery

Even if you’re not an artist, you’ve probably encountered something like this. Post a cool picture on Instagram and some random account with 100,000 followers will comment and say something like “Love this! DM me!” or “I want to feature this!”

If you bite on that hook and message them, they’re usually pretty quick to reply with their pricing. Don’t worry, it only usually costs somewhere between $20-100 to be featured. And again, I’m using air quotes around that word, featured.

It might seem like an exciting opportunity to get your art or picture in front of a hundred thousand viewers, but the truth is: most of those followers are fake. They’re bots. And the only real human interaction on their page comes from other people like you—some of whom fell for the trap.

There’s certainly worse ways to spend $20, but in this case, you’re probably just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Scam 2: Book Clubs and Paid Playlists

This applies mainly to authors and musicians. If you’ve ever written a book or a song, someone is going to offer to put it on a “list” somewhere to show it to people. For authors, this is usually a “Book Club” (very commonly, they’ll mention something about Goodreads). For musicians, this is usually some sort of Spotify playlist.

I get at least one of these emails every week.

If you reply, they’ll send you their pricing. As part of the research I performed for this post, I did inquire back to some of these offers. The most recent Book Club price I received was $186 to be featured. The playlist quotes usually range between $5 and $50 per month.

They’re all fake, y’all.

Yes, it’s a real playlist. But nobody listens to it. Yes, it might be a someone with a website that says “book club,” but there won’t be any actual readers out there discussing your book because of it.

Delete these emails and move on. If you want to do your due diligence, go look at the sending email address—the address, my friends, not the sender name—does it end in gmail.com? And if you’re still not convinced, go ahead and ask them what the cost is.

Hang on, let me just elucidate a little further on that because it seems to currently be fooling a high number of people. If someone—let’s just call them Alex—from Goodreads emailed me, I’d expect their email address to [email protected]. Right? If instead we have something like [email protected], well then there is something fishy going on.

Scam 3: The Overpayment

This is a classic scam that has been around pretty much for as long as electronic payments have existed. It applies to anyone who sells their work.

What happens—usually—is something like this: a stranger will inquire about purchasing your most expensive item. And if you only sell low-priced merchandise, they’ll be asking you to quote them on 100, 200, maybe even 1,000 of them. It might be the biggest order you’ve ever seen. And they’re probably in a rush to get it secured.

They’ll send you payment electronically, except it won’t be for the agreed upon price. It will be for more. Like… significantly more. If you had a $2000 quote, they’ll probably send you $3000… $5000… $10,000. Expect to hear a flimsy excuse about why this happened. “Oh, our company has a policy where we can only send wire transfers in increments of $10,000” or “Oh, our accountant messed up.”

Rather than reverse the payment (which, by the way, you can’t really do with wire transfers in the first place), they’re going to ask you to refund the difference into a different bank account. Can you smell the con yet?

The account they used to send you the money was stolen. The wire transfer they sent you was fraudulent. They’re in a rush because they’re fighting against the bank’s fraud detection timeline. When the bank discovers the fraud, they will take that money right back out of your account.

Poof. Gone. Like it was never there in the first place.

…but… that “refund” that you sent to their other account is a legitimate transfer. You’ve now lost that full amount.

Crazy, right? And yes, your intuition probably should have tipped you off about this one from the very beginning, but sometimes the size of the potential order causes folks to ignore their higher reasoning. I’ve personally seen people fall for this in amounts that exceed $100,000. That was a bad day for them.

Scam 4: The Podcast or Radio Interview

Have you ever wanted to talk about your work on a podcast? Congratulations, this scam applies to you.

Let me start out by saying that I book guests on my show quite regularly; however, I have never charged a single person for that. I have also never been charged to appear on someone else’s show.

Scammers will often impersonate a large podcast or well-known radio program. They’ll send you an email praising your work—your book, your art, your song—and invite you to come be featured in front of thousands of listeners.

But before you can book your slot, they’ll ask you for a “media contribution” or “production fee.”

Of course, you can also receive plenty of genuine invitations to podcasts over email. I almost always email potential guests. Well, sometimes I use Instagram or Messenger, but it’s normally an email introduction. Just use your best judgment. Check the sender’s email address. Google their address and see if it’s tied to any real accounts. Or better yet, try to contact them through another, more verifiable method to test the legitimacy.

And certainly don’t pay anyone for this type of service. Guesting on a podcast is a reciprocal relationship. The host gets content; the guest gets publicity. Nobody needs to pay anybody here.

Scam 5: The Interested Publisher

This scam applies mostly to writers. Perhaps you wrote a poem, a manuscript, or a book. It could even be that a blog post somewhere has caught someone’s attention.

Either way, you’re going to get an email from a publishing company, offering to support your next project. After a little back and forth, however, it will eventually become clear that they’re looking for some sort of up-front payment, like an administrative overhead charge or a printing fee.

Sometimes, this is just a twisted form of a vanity press—so let’s quickly discuss what that means. A vanity press is a type of publisher that will print anything as long as you pay them. You could calculate Pi to a million digits and have it printed in size 14 font over almost a thousand pages in a book with a really nice leather-bound cover. They don’t care. They’ll print it.

Hey, actually… that sounds like a pretty cool book idea. Anyone want to split the printing cost with me?

Vanity Presses exist for a reason. People work really hard on their books. Sometimes, they want to see that effort manifested in physical form, even if they can’t get it accomplished with a traditional publisher. Maybe it’s a grandparent who wants to write down their life story for the grandkids. Maybe it’s just someone having a little bit of self-indulgent fun. That’s all fine and dandy!

But what’s annoying is when 1) the vanity press tries to hide the fact that they are a vanity press, offering you promises of exposure, or 2) they just fraudulently collect money and don’t actually print anything at all.

I recently got an email from someone posing as a legitimate, traditional publisher, which asked me if they could take on one of my upcoming manuscript projects. Although they claimed to be from a real company, there were a number of clues in the email that told me it was fraud. If you’d like to see all those red flags for yourself, just watch the video I made. Always remember: Check the sender’s email address!

Why This Works

It feels really good when someone validates or shows interest in your work. If you create anything, I probably don’t need to explain that to you.

“I really liked your book.” Damn, you did? Let me write another one!

“I enjoyed your recent podcast episode.” Wow, someone actually listened to that?

One of the best experiences I’ve ever had as a musician happened at the first open mic I played. A stranger in the audience approached me after my performance. He was carrying a notebook. He showed me a page where he had written one of my lyrics down and told me why it was meaningful to him.

I learned that day that my music can have an emotional impact on someone. And while he probably doesn’t still remember me or my song, I definitely remember him. It was a big deal to me.

Validation is disarming. It gets our attention. It’s a hook. And you can ride that wave right into being taken advantage of.

The Golden Rule

In legitimate industries, money flows toward the creator. If you’re in a situation where it’s the other way around—where money is flowing from the creator toward someone who is “discovering,” “featuring,” or “recommending” them—it’s almost always a scam.

Let’s review, just to drive the point home:

• Good: Money paid to the creator
• Bad: Money paid to the scammer

If someone truly believes your work has a chance of succeeding, then they should be willing to take a little financial risk themselves in exchange for a percentage of the profits that they will then help you make. This is how traditional publishing works, by the way.

Always be wary of up-front charges.

Back to My Story

If you’ve been following along, you can probably guess that I fell for the “interested publisher” scam as a kid. My parents ended up paying something like $50 to have my poem added to an anthology. For an extra $100, we could have received our very own copy of the printed work, but they didn’t want to splurge that much.

I can’t blame them. They probably knew it was fishy and were just letting me ride out my excitement in ignorance. And although I never got to physically see the fruits of my labor, I didn’t really care—I was just happy to think I was worthy of being published.

Did anyone ever come across a poem 20 years ago called “Solemn Tiger”? If so, it might have been written by 10-year-old me.

getting consistent spam from fineartnews (in the form of "we find your work outstanding").

Basically they offer artists to write and publish an article about you and your art for 300€.

A lot of artists who struggles to live on whatever they do would consider something like this for PR. And a lot of people out there will explore your emotions and your hopes.

Also a lot of art and music publications mix curated articles with paid stuff.

and the stock exchange world is a fluffy hippy utopia compared to the art world.

But honestly, this one is beyond dumb, why would anybody - desperate or not -pay to have an article on a publication that is only vanity press? Who even reads that? the people who paid for the articles to see how they were written?

And getting daily mails now.

There are very few things in the internet which are not running after your money.

#vanitypress #enshitification #internetofthings #artistlife #artworld

getting consistent spam from fineartnews (in the form of "we find your work outstanding").

Basically they offer artists to write and publish an article about you and your art for 300€.

A lot of artists who struggles to live on whatever they do would consider something like this for PR. And a lot of people out there will explore your emotions and your hopes.

Also a lot of art and music publications mix curated articles with paid stuff.

and the stock exchange world is a fluffy hippy utopia compared to the art world.

But honestly, this one is beyond dumb, why would anybody - desperate or not -pay to have an article on a publication that is only vanity press? Who even reads that? the people who paid for the articles to see how they were written?

And getting daily mails now.

There are very few things in the internet which are not running after your money.

#vanitypress #enshitification #internetofthings #artistlife #artworld

CAW Term of the Week - Vanity Press
#CAW #CartersvilleAreaWriters #CAWTotW #CAWTermOfTheWeek #TermoftheWeek #TotW #WritingCommunity #VanityPress

CAW Term of the Week - Vanity Press
#CAW #CartersvilleAreaWriters #CAWTotW #CAWTermOfTheWeek #TermoftheWeek #TotW #WritingCommunity #VanityPress

Please don't fall for #publishing #scams. If you're an aspiring #author, or know one, read this.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/17/authors-writers-caught-in-global-ai-publishing-scam?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

#PublishingScams #publishingindustry #scam #scammers #VanityPress #SelfPublishing

Please don't fall for #publishing #scams. If you're an aspiring #author, or know one, read this.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/17/authors-writers-caught-in-global-ai-publishing-scam?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

#PublishingScams #publishingindustry #scam #scammers #VanityPress #SelfPublishing

Note: don't pay fucks like this. If traditional publishing isn't working, DIY. Vanity presses like these are leeches.
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/murky-past-of-publisher-brad-shaw-and-the-authors-suing-him-for-missing-royalties-20240821-p5k45y.html

#books #bookstodon #vanitypress

Lettera a un aspirante, sedicente o effettivo poeta…

Si scrive per comunicare, per esprimersi, per lasciare un ricordo, per lasciare una traccia nell'animo e/o nella mente. Non è necessario pubblicare un libro (molto spesso a pagamento). Basta scrivere un post, una mail, una lettera, uno SMS. Basta inviare un a

https://www.magozine.it/lettera-a-un-aspirante-sedicente-o-effettivo-poeta/

#ArteeCultura #Aspirantipoeti #letteratura #poesia #Poeti #Pubblicazioneapagamento #Vanitypress

What is the difference between #VanityPress and #SelfPublishing?
Here are some answers:
https://youtu.be/VJdNUvxDNaI