This post is the third in our ongoing series about computer scams. Ugh, scammers. They are a persistent problem with no real solution (permanently discourage one and hide the...
Continue reading
Category: Scam
Scam PSA: The “This Account was Recently Infected”
Author's note: A couple weeks back I published a post about a scam letter I received by snail mail. I also made this type of scam the topic of...
Continue reading Scam PSA: “Main Street Web Pros” Tried to Con Me Into Paying Them For Nonexistent Hosting Services
Over the nine years that I have run this blog I have seen many scams. There are the sites that pretend to have pirated ebook but really just want...
Continue readingJudging by Its ISBN Registrations, Author Solutions Continues to Decline
Bowker likes to claim that their ISBN book serial numbers (the ones that come with a free side of credit card fraud) can be used to count the number...
Continue reading
Beware the Vanity Press in Sheep’s Clothing
Vanity presses like Author Solutions will do everything they can to hide the fact they are running a scam. Smaller operations will change their name so they can try...
Continue reading
Updated: Simon & Schuster’s Vanity Press Launches Writing Contest to Exploit More Authors
Update: This post was originally published in November 2017, and was updated in March 2018 to reflect S&S's ongoing exploitation of authors. Of all the major publishers, Simon &...
Continue reading
8 Ways For Authors to Waste Their Money
Publishing a book can get quite expensive. A good cover designer can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, and the editorial costs alone can set you back even more....
Continue reading
Books-a-Million Outsourced Its Self-Pub Unit to an Iffy Services Company
When Books-a-Million launched its self-pub division, BAM Publishing, in 2015, it outsourced the actual work to FastPencil, a respectable publishing services company. FatPencil was still the tech partner when BAM...
Continue reading
Scammers Cheated Their Way on to the Kindle Best-Seller List Yesterday, But to What End?
The strangest case of scamming in the Kindle Store crossed my desk on Sunday, and I am still scratching my head. On Sunday several authors started commenting on Kboards...
Continue reading
B&N Cuts Ties with Vanity Press Author Solutions
Yesterday's story about the Nook Press platform has turned up a newsworthy detail about the platform which had so far gone unreported (I would also have missed it, had David...
Continue reading
Buy a Book From Packt Publishing, and They’ll Bill You for an Unwanted Subscription
Packt Publishing was at one time one of the better technical publishers. They sell their ebooks DRM-free at reasonable prices and used to come highly recommended. But after their...
Continue reading
Innocent Authors Are Getting Burned in Amazon’s Fight Against KU Bot Farms
Remember earlier this year when authors were being punished for putting a table of contents at the end of their ebooks? As David Gaughran inferred and Amazon confirmed, those authors...
Continue reading
The Star Trek Writing Contest Was a Feeder Pool for Vanity Press Author Solutions
When Simon & Schuster revived the Star Trek: Strange New World Writing Contest last October, I was dismayed to learn that S&S was letting its vanity press business partner, Author...
Continue reading
Amazon Comments on TOC Crackdown, Inadvertently Confirms Kindle Unlimited Page Count Scam
News broke on Friday that Amazon was cracking down on authors and publishers who had put their TOCs at the end of the Kindle ebook, rather than at the...
Continue reading
The Bookseller Whitewashed Author Solutions With Puff Piece Interview
The Bookseller has always been weak when it came to covering the Author Solutions and the more reprehensible parts of the publishing industry. It largely ignored the several lawsuits...
Continue reading