I received the following email from one of our BookLocker authors this week:

Angela,

I’ve gotten an offer from Barnes & Noble to print many copies of the subject book, with an upfront money offer. Would you kindly confirm that there is _no conflict_ with any agreement I had, or may still have, with you in my agreeing with another publisher to print my book? Thanks.

MY RESPONSE:

There is no conflict but I urge you to proceed with extreme caution. If they are charging you money…that doesn’t make any sense at all. Barnes and Noble buys books. They don’t print books for authors for free.

There are lots of scammers masquerading as big-name companies now. Some pretend to have relationships with large retailers and traditional publishers but they do not.

AUTHOR’S RESPONSE:

The outfit I’m directly dealing with is PageTurner Press, so they are actually the printers for B&N. So far, the only correspondence has been by phone, and just one email this afternoon at my request to give me their contact information.

It appears this time that there would be no out of pocket money charged to me – this same fellow has been phoning me off and on for the past year and I’ve always made it clear that I’m not interested in anything that results in out-of-pocket costs. This new deal initially looks legitimate, but thank you for cautioning me. I’ll get all the cost matters clearly defined in writing before carrying on.

I’ve had calls and emails from many other “scam-sounding” promotions over the years, but I’ve always turned them down because there was a front-end cost and/or time obligation included.

Thanks again for your customary prompt and helpful reply. I’ll be glad to provide you with future written correspondence if you are still interested,

MY RESPONSE:

They’re going to try to get you to let them “republish” or “reprint” your book, which you do not need to do (your book is already on the market, and already for sale at Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and many other sites.

I strongly suspect they are using the “Barnes and Noble” name to lure in authors.

Check this out:

Alert: Scammer Page Turner Press and Media is Impersonating Major Motion Picture Studios

And:

There are MULTIPLE complaints on PissedConsumer.com!

Read all the complaints. They’re pretty astounding. Those authors are furious!

MORE:

BBB.org – 1.62 out of 5 stars with 37 complaints, and 34 reviews

Notice the similar patterns in the allegations. Also, notice how similar the company’s responses are to different situations. Everyone knows you can keep your good bbb.org rating if you simply respond to complaints on their website.

Notice how some authors state they thought they were working with Macmillan. Well, check this out:

Which Companies are Committing Crimes by Impersonating Legitimate Publishers?

In that article, there is a screenshot of a page from Macmillan Publishing that says –

Please be aware that Macmillan does not work with or have any relationship with the following:

Author’s Tranquility Press
Brilliant Books Literary
Literary Press Agency
PageTurner Press & Media
Spark Literary
Stellar Publishing
Tyler Literary
Tyler Literature
Word Talk Press
Writers Press LLC
Writers Press Publishing House

Notice the fourth name on the list. I definitely do NOT recommend doing business with PageTurner Press. There are FAR too many red flags and complaints about them online.

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HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING A BOOK?

Angela is not only the publisher of WritersWeekly.com. She is President & CEO of BookLocker.com,
a self-publishing services company that has been in business since 1998. Ask her anything.

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