Another author contacted me after getting spammed by a so-called “book marketing company.” They wanted to charge her $1,199 (!!!) to have her book displayed at an overseas book fair.

Unless you are a celebrity with a presentation and book signing lined up at that particular event, with hundreds of people vying to hear you talk, paying to have your book displayed at a book fair or festival is a complete waste of money for authors.

Book fairs typically only make money for the fair organizers. Think about it. Your book will be on a table surrounded by countless other books. You probably won’t sell even one copy. That is NOT a good investment! Some scam companies convince authors to pay that company to print copies of their books for the fair. Of course, those copies never materialize. It’s just another part of the scam.

On Google, I looked up the “book marketing company” that had spammed the author who contacted me. It said they are “predatory” and “a book marketing scam” that targets self-published authors (via spam) with “heavily inflated promises” (it mentions major festivals), and that they charge “exorbitant fees” for services that result in “zero measurable sales or marketing impact.”

I’m not naming them because I don’t want our readers to focus on only one company name that is ripping authors off in this fashion. There are TONS now! Avoid ANY company that is selling these ridiculous services.

To make matters worse, countless foreign scammers are pretending to be book marketing agencies, and are charging authors thousands for their books to appear at a book fair, and then, the book, of course, never ends up there. The scammers later send the victims very poorly Photoshopped pictures of their book on a table surrounded by other books. Literally ONE COPY of the author’s book. Except…their book was never really displayed on that table.

An author sent me one of those Photoshopped pictures the other day. It was an English-language book, but all of the other books around it were written in Chinese. Even the signs on the walls were in Chinese.

Our advice is, and has always been, to NEVER participate in book fairs or festivals. EVER.

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