With over five years of experience in marketing and communications, I’ve had the pleasure of working across a wide array of industries, including the wonderful world of book publishing. During my experience in the publishing industry, I’ve discovered numerous ghostwriting and book publishing scams, often originating from overseas, and preying on unsuspecting authors appears to be an incredibly lucrative hustle!

Back in January, an author I’ve worked with almost got scammed by one Kindle Direct Publishings / kindledirectpublishings.com. He forwarded me the query email they sent to him, and asked for my feedback. From their initial correspondence, I could immediately tell it was a scam but I told him I would research the company more to confirm my suspicions. This interaction has led me into a full-blown investigation into multiple scammers, but it all started with Kindle Direct Publishings.

I wanted to learn more about their services so I used a fake email and name (“David”) so that my personal accounts wouldn’t get flooded with spam messages. I have two additional personas (“Maria” and “Michael”), who I sometimes alternate with when scambaiting. Kindle Direct Publishings had the live chat feature and I spoke to an “Adam W.” and an “Austin H.,” who shared more about the “services they provide” and books they’ve worked on. Their overall goal was getting “David” to schedule a phone consultation and, inevitably, pay upfront for their services BEFORE even reviewing his manuscript.

Around March, Austin sent a follow-up email to “David” and, without authorization, signed him up to receive a BUNCH of emails from a lead generation campaign that different publishing scammers use to send out unsolicited query emails to aspiring authors as bait. Now, “David” usually receives generic email newsletter blasts from these companies a couple times a week (they usually end up in the spam folder) or a singular, personalized query email from more “professional companies” that makes it into the inbox. Eventually, Kindle Direct Publishings’ website was shut down, presumably by Amazon, since they blatantly infringed on Amazon’s trademarks.

The first query email “David” received was in June from a “Jennifer J.,” who represents a ghostwriting service that “operates” in Texas and Canada. On their website, they have a live chat (but no one answers, it just directs you to an email form) and, overall, the entire website just SCREAMS scam. When “David” attempted to reply to Jennifer’s email, he received an automatic reply, asking him to click on a sketchy link to “verify his email” so I did not proceed further.

Then, in October, “David” received another query email from an “Ashley M.,” who represents another company that claims to publish and market books. They supposedly operate in New York City and they use a New York phone number, which also links to an “IT company” based in Australia. I had “David,” “Maria,” and “Michael” reach out to Ashley with three different books, and they all spoke to her throughout October. That company claimed to have recently published a memoir but there’s NO promotion of the book on their website or social media platforms. There’s only an author website and a LinkedIn page, both of which are probably fake.

Eventually, “Michael” confronted Ashley about all of these blatant signs of them being scammers and the excuses she shared to “Michael” were so awful and nonsensical that it was hilarious to read! Eventually, “Michael” told Ashley that the deal was off and all three of my personas ended contact.

The main takeaway from my investigation is this: research and discernment are KEY when searching for a company for publishing, ghostwriting, or marketing services! If you are looking to publish or promote your book, make sure to properly vet the company beforehand and review the CHECKLIST Angela Hoy created, which shares 11 signs that a “publisher” may actually be an overseas scam.  I hope that my findings may help someone who wants to utilize these services, but doesn’t know where to start.

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• I Was Scammed for $18K by Ashbery Publishing / AshberyPublishing.com / ashbery-publishing.com

Allyson Pinnock is a marketing professional who helps clients and brands share their stories. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and writing, nerd culture, USF athletics and anything purple.

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