Q – 

Angela, I badly need advice. Can you help. See the order for my books attached.

I hired Authors Hike / AuthorsHike.com to promote my books. I’ve published five books. They claim to have 1,105 orders for my book but I haven’t received any money for those.

Authors Hike wants ME to pay $4,420 for them to print the books, and send them to their list. They then say they will ship the books, collect later, and pay me.

Does not sound legitimate?

What do you think?

A – 

It’s a huge and common scam!!!

The BUYER pays for books; not the author!

What Author’s Hike is doing is similar to this scam:

NEW SCAM! “Pay us $26K and we’ll stock 3,500 copies of your book in 150 stores!”

DO NOT SEND THEM ANY MONEY! You’ll never get it back!!

And, for whatever money you have sent them, immediately contact your credit card company, and request they process a chargeback. If they tell you to try to work it out with the company, tell them you got scammed by a foreign entity, and DEMAND they immediately issue the chargeback.

Incidentally, on TrustPilot (there are several bad reviews), an author wrote in saying he’s trying to get $29,000.00 (!!!) back from them. Remember to NEVER trust 5-star reviews on TrustPilot! Anybody can post those, including scammers who are trying to defraud people. Whenever multiple reviews are posting within a few days or each other (or on the exact same day), THEY’RE FAKE!

Virtual offices are available at their “New York City” address. Looks like the same for their “Utah” address. And, their website has many of the hallmark signs of the overseas publishing scam cartel we’ve been exposing. Oh, and they have a book cover from Stephen King on their homepage. They have NEVER worked with him! FRAUD!!!

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