Book Club Scam Targeting Authors

Let me first say that I love book clubs, and most book clubs are doing fabulous work to get books in front of readers. However, as seems to be the case everywhere these days, there seem to be a few bad operators that are taking advantage of this great work to get money from unsuspecting writers.

I encountered a situation like this recently when Robert from the London Wine and Dine Book Club contacted me about possibly using Tree Fall with Birdsong for their club. I have to say I was suspicious from the outset because unless it is a poetry book club, these clubs usually don’t go for poetry. I also didn’t see why a book club in London would be interested. Still, he gave a flattering, if somewhat general, reading of the book, and I decided to at least explore a little further. And I have had some good experiences with an international group who wrote me out of the blue.

My first step was to see if the book club really existed. A search led me to a couple of listings on an events page for upcoming meetings, and I didn’t see any mention of them as a scam or of bad experiences in my searching. Willing to check it out a little further, yet still with my hackles up, I replied to the email and said I might be interested. One thing I didn’t do was to give Robert any more information than he already had, judging by what he’d written to me. I did indicate that I was doing some remote events already and was comfortable with that format.

Robert wrote back very quickly, thanking me for my interest and saying that the next step would be to “creating a clear strategy for how best to introduce your collection to our readers.” This was one of the red flags I was looking for. He suggested talking abou this, so when I replied, in addition to suggesting a few times when I would be available by Zoom or other video conferencing platforms, I wrote about my research on the availability of my book in London (two stores list it, though both would have to special order). I also suggested that he was looking at purchasing copies for the club, I could put him in touch with my publisher, and I mentioned that as this is a small press publication, there was no marketing budget for the book.

I haven’t heard back from Robert since, so I suspect that either my reluctance to spend on marketing or the fact that my book isn’t readily available overseas probably cooled his interest. I suspect it was the latter, though I was a little surprised he didn’t try to sell me on whatever marketing scheme he had in mind. That’s what I’d been concerned about from the beginning, so I wasn’t too surprised that this didn’t turn out to be anything very promising. It certainly wasn’t anything I would invest in, though as I said, I would be happy to provide information for marketing.

Coincidentally, a few days later I read an Author’s Guild discussion about this very issue. Apparently, fake or at least unscrupulous book club organizers have started reaching out to authors to offer marketing services to their book clubs. I assume these come with hefty fees and the promise of sales to the club. Maybe some are legit, but many writers on the discussion suspected they were being taken for a ride. I don’t know that anyone had actually given money for this, but they were at least tired of receiving this kind of solicitation.

Fortunately, for those of us who also make offers to authors to participate in events, the advice for screening out the scam artists from the legitimate offers is fairly simple. The more specific the offer is, the better. Someone who tells you what date an event will take place, what you’ll be paid (if there’s an honorarium), and details about history of their event is much more believable. If you get an offer without these details, tread carefully.

Recently, I received another kind of solicitation. This was from someone who claimed to want to represent me, not as an agent but as someone who could help me navigate submissions and get speaking engagements and such. They seemed iffy to me, and it’s not something I want to do a lot more of than I already do, so I ignored it. If I had read about the book club scam before I got that email, I probably would have ignored it, too. As it was, I wrote a couple of emails and didn’t give out any information or commit to any marketing plan. The most I lost was a little time. I hadn’t even gotten my hopes up that it would pan out to be anything, so I wasn’t even disappointed when it didn’t. I just chalked it up as another learning experience.

I don’t know for a fact that Robert or the London Wine and Dine Book Club aren’t legit, of course, though I do believe, since he stopped writing as soon as I mentioned not having a marketing budget, I dodged a bullet.