Once upon a time, snake oil salesmen sold miracle elixirs by appealing to peoples’ hopes that the infirmities of living could be cured. Relief was, of course, induced by drug or alcohol. So people kept buying the elixirs, in the hope of extending the temporary relief. Some even became addicted to their magic elixir.
Today, scammers are selling writers the magical elixer of book sales. It’s easy to spot the scam: anyone who demands payment up front knows they cannot produce enough results to do the work on commission.
Before you pay anyone to sell your book, do yourself a favor by looking up the concept of “R.O.I.” and checking websites dedicated to exposing writer scams.
Like…
WRITER BEWARE®
http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/
Rights of Writers
The Agent from Hell and the Top Six Scams Targeting Writers
http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2011/04/agent-from-hell-and-top-six-scams.html
What You Need to Know about Writing Scams – Marcia Yudkin
https://www.yudkin.com/scams.htm
There are more. Many. More. A Google Search of the phrase, “Writer Scams” returns multiple pages.
But it doesn’t take long to recognize the signs. Snake oil salesmen and modern scammers sell the same product. They sell hope.
Severely beaten as a child by a WWII hero and combat-induced-PTSD stepfather, the author, as a teen, faced the old man down with a shotgun and earned his blessing to join the military at the time Americans were learning about a country called Vietnam. The “lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch” opted out of combat and hard labor by becoming an Air Force medic, stamping out suffering and misery on Freedom’s Frontier at Clark Airbase in S.E. Asia and earning some kind of medal pinned on him personally by then Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown, for “Saving lives, etc.”
There followed a summer in Europe ending in the first of happy marriages. Then graduation with University Honors, kids worth dying for and a career in business. Life is good.
Author, The Phoenix Diary, Penguin, 2015.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-diary-g-d-deckard/1122175645
Founding Member, Writers Co-op.
https://WritersCo-op.com
Co-Editor, The Rabbit Hole anthologies.
https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Hole-Weird-Stories/dp/1691225355/ref=sr_1_1
Founder, SciFi Lampoon Magazine.
http://scifilampoon.com/
Contributing Editor, A Celebration of Storytelling
https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Storytelling-GD-Deckard/dp/1951716167
Current WIP: Code Blue and Little Deaths, stories from Clark during the Vietnam War.
Recipient of the Psi Young award for Creative Biography.