On the Dangers of Author Scams with Victoria Strauss

Hosts Kathleen and Adanna sit down with Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware, to uncover the alarming and evolving world of author scams. For over 25 years, Victoria has been critical in exposing fraudulent schemes targeting writers, from fee-charging literary agents and deceptive vanity publishers to dubious marketing offers. In this episode of Talking Book Publishing, she reveals how AI and other tools have made these scams harder than ever to detect, sharing essential advice for authors to avoid falling victim.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding the business side of publishing as scammers continue to prey on authors seeking recognition and success. With practical tips for both new and seasoned writers, Kathleen, Adanna, and Victoria provide valuable insights into how authors can protect themselves and their work. Writers & Publishers Network is hosting an upcoming panel on November 21. Victoria will offer further guidance on recognizing and avoiding scams. We encourage our listeners to attend.

We’d like to hear from you. If you have topics or speakers you’d like us to interview, please email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today and join the conversation in the comments on our Instagram @writerspubsnet.

Transcript

00:00:24 SPEAKER_01
Hello, this is Kathleen Kaiser and welcome to Talking Book Publishing. Today we have someone as our guest that I have really admired for at least 15 years. Maybe, I'm not sure exactly when I first discovered what she was doing with Author Beware. But Victoria Strauss is a really incredible resource for all of the scams that are out there and what's being done. to try and separate writers from their money, which is basically all they are, and sometimes from their actual physical property, their books. So welcome, Victoria. Thank you. Glad to be here. So a lot of people may not know about Author Beware. And I would really appreciate if you'd give us sort of a background, how you got involved, how we got, you know, because it's such a dynamic website right now. So please, please give us the background. Well, people often ask me if I got involved because I've been

00:01:29 SPEAKER_03
ask me if I got involved because I've been scammed. I actually never was, so I'm one of the lucky ones. But when I first went online back before the turn of the century, which is, I know I'm dating myself, I began to

00:01:49 SPEAKER_03
join writers groups and I was seeing all these stories about on fee-charging literary agents and dishonest vanity publishers. And it was just kind of a dark underbelly of the publishing world that I had no idea existed. So I got interested, you know, in the scams and in the psychology of scamming. And as it happened, I had just joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. And they were looking for someone to create a page of scam warnings on their website. So I volunteered. And around the same time, I was introduced to Anne Crispin, who was at the time, I think she was VP at SFWA. and she was setting up a writing scams committee. So we decided to join forces, and that's how WriterAware was born. Initially, it was just a single page on the website, but now it's a website with multiple sections on literary agents, editors, publishers, self-publishing. We're also a blog where we sort of cover scams in real time, a Facebook page, and then I have a social media presence where I post writerware stuff. So that's where we are today, 25 years later, and I can't believe I'm saying that. I mean, I never imagined I would still be doing this at this point. Anne and I really thought we could put ourselves out of business by kind of putting out warnings and opening people's eyes to the prevalence of scams, but there are more scams than ever today, so we are still, we're still working.

00:04:06 SPEAKER_01
Well, you do excellent work and I refer, because with the Writers and Publishers Network, I refer people to your site who are getting things. In fact, we're doing a webinar that Victoria is going to be a member of along with three other people. One of them, Robert Kalowski, is an author who gets more scams. He has multiple books. And I've noticed that they started now, he's been sending them to me for two, three years. And some of them are getting really sophisticated. And then I realized, hold on, AI is writing this. You know, we were talking before we started recording, tell them about the difference of what you're seeing, the evolution of the scams.

00:04:55 SPEAKER_03
Well, when Writer Beware first started, the main scams were vanity publishers and fee charging literary agents. There's still a lot of vanity publishers, but The rise of self-publishing has sort of made it less lucrative to be a scam agent because so many writers now just don't even bother looking for a literary agent. But also, the growth of self-publishing has fueled an explosion of scams aimed at self-publishers. And that's really where we see the most scams these days. They tend to be solicitation scams where you get an out-of-the-blue email or phone call saying, hey, we just discovered your book. We want to endorse you to traditional publishers, or we want to sell you this fabulous marketing package, or we want to republish your book. Some more readers will find it. And it's really, the aim is to sell a service that may or may not be delivered, that's exorbitantly priced, and kind of lead the rider on, kind of exerting sales pressure to get them to spend more and more money. A lot of these scams are based overseas, and they are staffed by people who are fluent in English, but it's not a first language. So one of the markers for this type of scam used to be grammar and usage lapses, you know, just odd English or ungrammatical English. But now they're all using chat GPT. And they are able to produce flawlessly written emails and websites that look completely authentic. So it's more difficult than ever now to spot these scans, unless you've been targeted for a lot of them. And then you recognize because they all have a similar type approach and they're trying to sell similar types of things. So if you're a self-published author and you're getting bombarded by, you know, dozens of them every week, you get to recognize, you know, what they look like. How do you find all these scams? I

00:07:35 SPEAKER_00
I mean, you just like kind of went through what's on the website and I'm just curious. I mean, Like, obviously you can search for some of them, but is it stuff people bring to you or, you know, are you guys seeking them out? Like how, how do you discover all of what's happening?

00:07:55 SPEAKER_03
Really, mostly through reports from writers, people in the publishing industry. We have an email

00:08:03 SPEAKER_03
an email address. That's mostly how we hear about things. We get questions. We get questions about things. People are wondering if they're legit. We get complaints about companies or people who've had bad experiences. I'm also active on social media. I find things that way also because people, you know, people post about their experiences, but it really is, you know, people come to us. I just, I mean, last

00:08:42 SPEAKER_00
year, well, I mean, it still happens, but it seems to have calmed down. I mean, you know, on, for Facebook business pages, people were getting bombarded with your faith. Your page is going to get taken down in 24 hours. If you don't follow this link and eat, people would click on it and they'd ask for all this information. And then they were taking over. What in the, in the marketing world is called a warmed up account. They would steal your account because it's been open for a while and then they would sell it on the market. And I mean, that's specific to all business pages on Facebook, but. It's wild to me how many there are out there where they're just, you know, these bad actors that are like trying to take advantage. And I think authors are uniquely, maybe not unique, Kathleen and I are trying not to use unique, especially vulnerable

00:09:38 SPEAKER_00
to, you know, anything that is like, we want to publish your book or anything like that.

00:09:46 SPEAKER_03
Yes, yes, that is very true. And the scammers really know how to tap into that desire for validation and exposure and all the good things. Yeah, I got a bunch of those Facebook notifications, too, because I have, you know, Right Aware has a Facebook page and I have a personal page. Another thing that's happening on Facebook and other social media platforms is people or accounts that appear to be those of real writers reach out in a sort of friendly

00:10:24 SPEAKER_03
that appear to be those of real writers reach out in a sort of friendly way. They say, hey, I see you're a writer too. How about we have a conversation? And it seems like just a friendly approach, but the aim is to steer the recipient to some kind of shady marketing service or fake agent who will charge fees. And usually these accounts are actually impersonating the writers that they approach as. I'm getting a lot of reports of that. You really, really need to be so careful You know, it really sucks that you have to be so suspicious and just, you know, friendly interactions with other writers could be suspect, but you you have to be

00:11:25 SPEAKER_00
aware. Yeah, I was just having a conversation with one of our clients about this because all of a sudden she started getting, you know, tons of Facebook messages. And I I asked her, you know, where where did you go? that you went from no Facebook messages to all these people who are, you know, other writers and are curious about you. I've seen a bunch of, I'm a web designer. I just saw one that I'm a brand designer, you know, like they're, they're all these things and, and it's all of the sudden. And I mean, I don't even, I do social media and I don't even understand how you trigger that.

00:12:07 SPEAKER_03
I think that there are, it's the same as with any kind of solicitation of any kind. There are companies that assemble lists of leads and people buy them. And, you know, that's how I think a lot of people get on these lists, these scam, start getting a ton of scam approaches or by my service type approaches. It's just their names got on a list that someone bought and now they are being solicited. That's definitely the way it works for writing scams. The writing solicitation scams is these scam companies buy lead lists or one scammer leaves one company and goes to another company and takes all the customer information with them. And I hear from writers saying, is it me? What did I do? Do I look like a sucker? I mean, why am I getting all these approaches? And it's really just the way it works in any kind of area where You know, it's the same, the same way it works with the Nigerian Prince emails. Your name gets on a list somewhere and now you're getting a ton of those. So it's fortunate, but you know, you, you, it's unfortunate that people have

00:13:43 SPEAKER_03
you, it's unfortunate that people have to be so wary, but that's the world we live in now.

00:13:50 SPEAKER_01
I think also that they're using AI to search Amazon for new books or books that have, you know, been out in the last six months because they're now getting letters. This was the first one I saw a while ago. Now I've seen a few more where they actually say, you know, we like your story and they have the character's name and about the plot and everything. So I would go and I went and looked and that was a lot of all of that information that they wrote up. was in the book description. So they just sucked it in, spit it back out, it made it sound like they loved your book, they'd read it, they want to do this with you. You know, the $5,000, you know, trailer to get it in front of a movie producer. That would have been going on forever.

00:14:39 SPEAKER_03
Total waste of money. Movie producers are not interested in book trailers. Yeah, that's a very common scam offering. Turning your book into a screenplay, producing a pitch deck. I mean, it's all exploiting that Hollywood dream, which, you know, just really just doesn't happen for most people. I mean, that's the reality. But I guess everybody is hopeful, so... I think that's a

00:15:10 SPEAKER_01
that's a dream. If you've written your book and you've got months or years of your life in it, to think of it on the screen is, you know, that's a dream. That they know how to pinch and play at you and pull

00:15:10 SPEAKER_03
a dream.

00:15:26 SPEAKER_01
you, suck you in that way. Yeah, but you

00:15:29 SPEAKER_03
but you know, by the same token, If you're going to write a book and publish it however you publish it and then put yourself out there, you really owe it to yourself to take the time first to learn a little bit about the field that you're going to enter. And this is something that I see all the time. People just don't do that. You know, they are completely, you know, I get emails all the time. I'm a new writer. I just self-published my book with some, you know, dodgy self-publishing service. I'm completely at sea and don't know what

00:16:12 SPEAKER_03
at sea and don't know what I'm doing. You know, can you give me advice? And it seems to, you know, and if you're going to do anything, you need to research it first. and know a little bit about what you're doing. And I think that's one way that writers are vulnerable, is if they don't take the time to do that. And, you know, also, in order to avoid being scammed, you need to know that scams are out there. And that's not something that is necessarily common knowledge. And that that's one reason that Right of Aware exists, is to kind of put that knowledge out into the universe in hopes that people will find

00:17:03 SPEAKER_00
will find it. I'm just going to interrupt. Victoria, is your computer dinging, like when you get an email?

00:17:08 SPEAKER_01
is your

00:17:11 SPEAKER_01
get an email? No. Well, there's a dinging noise coming from somewhere. I can't hear it. I'm not hearing it

00:17:21 SPEAKER_03
here. OK.

00:17:22 SPEAKER_01
Okay, I wonder where it is, because I turned all mine off. I never have mine

00:17:27 SPEAKER_00
have mine on, so... Hmm. All right. Well, all right. Let's

00:17:31 SPEAKER_01
continue. You were talking about something, and then I've had a question, and then we went off. Sorry, I'm

00:17:40 SPEAKER_00
sorry. No, no, that's

00:17:40 SPEAKER_01
No, no, that's okay. Oh, about the business. Okay. Ready? Let's start again. I find one of the things that is most frustrating to me with the organization, but also as a marketer, is writers forget this is a business. And like what you were saying, they need to learn about the business. I mean, they do not teach anything about the business of publishing in college. You can get your MFA and have no idea how the business works. That's true. And I think that if you're going to get involved in this, especially if you're self-publishing, because that's a financial investment, you ought to look into the business a bit. Read things. It's one of the things we do with Writers and Publishers Network. For the membership, we have like on the 15th of each month, we call it the WPN Insider, with latest updates on what's going on in the business, changes made at Amazon, important things that you need to know. So you start to learn about the business. And it was like one of the first things I did when I decided to go from being a nonfiction writer to a novelist was try and figure out the business. Because every business is different. Every business has a different vocabulary. And in this one, with everybody, very few people collaborate. We're solo artists. We're alone in our own little room or office or whatever, writing away. And it's reaching out and finding a community that has resources to keep you alert. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for people on good ways to learn more about the business? I agree with everything

00:19:32 SPEAKER_03
that you just said. I think that is just so true. And it's true no matter how you publish. You know, it's true for traditionally published authors, for small press authors, for self-publishers. It's really important to do that learning. You know, I think it's kind of a conundrum because, There are good resources, the Alliance of Independent Authors, the various professional writers group like the Authors Guild and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Experts like Jane Friedman, who's one of the people that I think I recommend most often because her website has a huge amount of information, just about everything to do with writing and publishing. But if you're a new writer starting out, you know, the internet is great, but it's also full of trash. And the challenge is

00:20:43 SPEAKER_03
filtering, you know, trying to find these resources. So, you

00:20:50 SPEAKER_03
know, I used to say, go old school and get a how to publish book. And, you know, there are series like I think the Dummies Guides are still there. Writer's Digest used to publish good books. There are not as many resources of that kind as there used to be. But, you know, a book on writing and publishing is a good place at least to start, so it gives you a sense of what's out there and, you know, the type of business you're entering into. And then you just have to put yourself out there and you know, figure it out. I mean, I guess I'm saying I wish I had more concrete advice because I hear all the time from writers who are just bewildered by the volume of information that is out there and how difficult it is to filter it to find the good stuff. And I don't have any, you know, major advice on

00:22:10 SPEAKER_03
on how to do that, except just get out there and start looking. I think they're really great groups, though, too. I

00:22:18 SPEAKER_00
mean, like, you know, Writers and Publishers Network being able to go to the monthly panels and stuff like that, where, I mean, it's sort of like being in a room full of people. You know, I mean, we have we have resources like that. There's the romance writers and I'm sure there's oh, there's horror writers of America. You know, there are all kinds of groups like like what we do where you can foster community and at least be able to

00:22:51 SPEAKER_03
meet other people with. I agree. But if you're a brand new writer, you don't know where to start. The challenge is finding these resources. That's

00:23:02 SPEAKER_01
true. That's true. That is true.

00:23:05 SPEAKER_03
But you're absolutely right. There are wonderful resources. And that's one of the things that the Writer's Aware website, as distinct from the blog, tries to do, is to curate. In addition to providing advice, all of our different sections have big lists of resources where you can go to find information, trusted resources.

00:23:32 SPEAKER_01
Yes, we have that on the WPN site because it's, you know, we've we've vetted all of these. We know where, you know, we're trying to help, you know, is it is a it's a crazy jungle out there. It's like. I you know, I it's just I can't believe how many scammers there are and they're always coming up with something different and they're always bopping and weaving and changing their stories and and. you know, the vanity presses that have become hybrid pet

00:24:04 SPEAKER_03
pet brushes. Oh, that is a pet peeve of mine, is the way that that term is thrown around. And it's absolutely meaningless. All it means is that there's a fee. It doesn't. I think a lot of people still think that a hybrid means it's more reputable, but that's just not true.

00:24:29 SPEAKER_01
No, in fact, I had a client a couple of years ago who was thought he had a really good, this person had so ripped him off. So, and he never read the contract he signed and understood he was basically had given her all of his rights to everything forever. And on her website, she was a member of IPPA. And I said, well, hold on. They have a policy that their members have to sign if they're a hybrid. And we're affiliated with them. So I contacted them. And they said, oh, no. After we put out that they had to sign the agreement, she never did. I said, she still has your logo on her site. So people think she's legitimate, and they're not. You can screen grab a logo and throw it on your website, it doesn't mean you have anything

00:25:25 SPEAKER_03
to do with the organization. I think a number of scammers have the IPPA

00:25:30 SPEAKER_01
have the IPPA logo. Yeah, they do a good job of trying to police it. But there's so many of them pop up, and they're constantly changing their name. Once they get on your website, they just come up with a new domain name, and off they go.

00:25:48 SPEAKER_03
Right, right. And it's, yeah, it's like a boiler room somewhere in a building and they can be one name this morning and then this afternoon be a completely different name and just, you know, continue without a break. I know it's maddening. And it's overwhelming, really. I mean, I have this big list, the Writer Beware blog of

00:26:15 SPEAKER_03
Philippines-based publishing, marketing, fake literary agency scams. And it, you know, I hear about a new one a couple of times a week, or they go to, I mean, it's, it's overwhelming how many there are. It's really so upsetting to think that there's so many people out there who are open and willing to take advantage of other

00:26:35 SPEAKER_00
think that there's so many people out there who are open and willing to take advantage of other people, like,

00:26:46 SPEAKER_00
Just completely rip them off. Yeah, I

00:26:50 SPEAKER_03
just... Human nature, though. I mean, you know, it's like the technology changes, but the, you know, snake oil, the impulse is the same. And, yeah, it targets creatives

00:27:05 SPEAKER_03
creatives in... There are scams that target creatives in every discipline.

00:27:14 SPEAKER_03
They can be very similar. For instance, pay-to-play is a big scammy thing for musicians. And then there are headshot scams in the modeling business. I

00:27:31 SPEAKER_01
mean, it's everywhere. What people will do not to have a legitimate

00:27:38 SPEAKER_03
job. Yeah. Yes, yes, exactly. Some of these scam, these overseas scam companies are making unbelievable amounts of money, like millions of dollars. And trying to get law enforcement interested is very

00:27:57 SPEAKER_03
enforcement interested is very difficult. I mean, I know that some writers have tried. They've tried to sue. which is expensive and difficult if you're going to do it

00:28:13 SPEAKER_00
do it overseas. Yeah, especially a country like a company in the Philippines. I mean, what is even the jurisdiction there?

00:28:21 SPEAKER_03
Like, how do you even fight that? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's, it kind of, it makes it more difficult for US law enforcement to pursue. But the thing with these scams is that they use so many names. They're in every state. They each rip off a limited number of writers, so it's the kind of distributed nature. You know, as a whole, this particular type of scam is a multimillion dollar business, but it's so diffuse with all the different companies all targeting different people in every state. It's very difficult, I think, for law enforcement to really get a handle on it. You know, I think if you want to, you know, I always tell people, if you've been scammed, report to the authorities. I have a list of places that you can report. But your best bet may be local law enforcement. because, you know, pursuing people who are ripping people off in their own community. So, yeah, it's a challenge. It really is a challenge. These are scams that go completely... There's just no repercussions for the people who are doing these scams.

00:30:00 SPEAKER_01
Well, there was one a couple of years ago. A woman I know who's a very good book publicist, somebody had done a shadow of her website with like one letter different in the domain name and then started promoting it like they were her and getting $3,500 at a hit to market their book. and they racked up a whole bunch of money, and she found that they were in Orange County. She tried to pursue them, but then they just, like, disappeared. The website went down, and meanwhile, there were, like, I don't know how many people, I know there were a lot, who were mad at her for taking their money and not doing anything. Yeah, impersonation scams are super common right

00:30:47 SPEAKER_03
scams are super common right now. So that kind of thing, impersonating production companies, literary agents, publishers, I'd say that's probably the majority of scams that I'm hearing about now.

00:31:06 SPEAKER_01
about now. There was one a couple years ago, I forget his first name, I think it was John Mayer or Mayer or something. And they had sent out with his letterhead, everything, his logos, and he had to put on the top of his website, we do not solicit. If you've gotten solicitations, it has not been from us. I mean, blanketing.

00:31:30 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, there are many literary agencies now have warnings on their websites that pop up when you log in. All of the big five publishers have fraud pages to warn about these things. It's really something. Yeah, because they're using their

00:31:51 SPEAKER_01
using their names.

00:31:54 SPEAKER_03
Their names, their logos, they forge contracts, they forge letters of intent. And, you know, if you have some knowledge of the publishing business, you can spot that this stuff is not authentic. But, you know, if you're, they target new writers and self-published writers who don't necessarily, have that knowledge, they can't look at the same contract and say, well, this looks nothing like a traditional publishing contract. But some of the, you know, some of the scams are very sophisticated. especially the movie scams, because first you'll hear from someone who says, I'm a literary agent and I want to send your book to the silver screen. And then you'll get a call from somebody from Paramount or some other famous company name. We love your book. and we want to make it into a movie, but first you need to pay for some service. You need to buy screenplay, you need to produce a trailer, you need a pitch deck. And if you don't know where to go for those things, we have a trusted partner who will provide those services for you. So then the writer is shuffled into yet a third company name for these services that they don't need and that maybe will never be delivered. And, you

00:33:37 SPEAKER_03
know, the pressure to buy more and to do more is unrelenting. And then at some point, The writer will get suspicious and start asking questions, or the scammer will have gotten so much money that they figure the writer is tapped out. And then they just vanish. They kill the phone numbers, which are fake. They kill the email addresses. And then the writer is left with nobody to contact. I mean, I hear about this all the time.

00:34:15 SPEAKER_00
Well, I was going to ask you guys about your panel, but I think we know exactly what it's going to go like. Well, I think one thing, too, is that we're we're going to talk about all of the variety of scams that are out there in the publishing

00:34:26 SPEAKER_01
we're we're going to talk about all of the variety of scams that are out there in the publishing industry, because it's not just the writers, you know, excuse me, getting your book published, it's going out, going after the publicist now, or pretending they're this publisher, or like Amazon, or Netflix, or those two I see the most of, so. And we have some examples, so you can see, we're gonna be showing on the screen what these look like, so you can see how legitimate they look. Oh, that's

00:35:03 SPEAKER_03
good, that's a good idea.

00:35:06 SPEAKER_00
It's just so upsetting to me. And I think that it makes it so hard for those of us who are trying to, you know, make our living online. Like we're real people that are trying to, you know, have an online presence and, you know, get clients that way. And I mean, how do you trust, how do you trust anybody?

00:35:32 SPEAKER_03
Well, to that, I just discovered that I'm being impersonated by a scammer with a fake writer-aware email address who is charging money for, I think it's legal services. If you've been scammed and they're using my name, these emails are sent by me.

00:35:55 SPEAKER_02
my name, these emails

00:35:58 SPEAKER_03
by me. Yeah, it's, yeah, I'm not sure what to do about it other than expose

00:36:06 SPEAKER_01
it. A cease and desist letter, if you can find

00:36:10 SPEAKER_03
them. I don't know where they come from, you know, it's like an endless Russian doll of different companies and servers and God knows what. So I, yeah, I just found out about this, but yeah, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be seeing what I,

00:36:29 SPEAKER_01
Will you let me know about that? Because I want to put that in the next WPN

00:36:36 SPEAKER_03
WPN newsletter. Sure. I'm going to write a blog post about it. Okay. Yeah, I'll let you know. Please let me know because I want to

00:36:46 SPEAKER_01
I want to link to it so people know because those of us who have been around a while, we know who you are. You're very respected. So somebody's taken your name, you know, and we need to let people to be aware because we've been telling people you're a resource. So now they're trying to, you know, corrupt the resource.

00:37:09 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, to be honest, it surprises me that right-of-aware hasn't been the focus of more of this kind of stuff because I'm like, yeah, I'm one of the only people really tracking the overseas scams and the kind of detailed ideas. They really don't like me.

00:37:35 SPEAKER_01
Well, that's why we love you.

00:37:40 SPEAKER_01
But anyway, well, Victoria, this has been really great. And I just want to remind anyone who's listening, if you want to watch our panel discussion, it's on November 21st. And go to Writers and Publishers Network. You'll see a graphic for the Writers Author Beware, we're calling it. And click on it, and you can register. It's free if you're a member of Writers and Publishers Network. And it's $20 if you aren't. But if you sign up for it and you're unable to attend, we record all of them so that you can you will then receive the download. Of of the webinar, because this is information you need to know about and you need to be aware of what's going out there, this is part of learning the business. And touched on that earlier, I was just thinking like this might be one of the most important podcast episodes we've ever done.

00:38:32 SPEAKER_00
like this might be one of the most important podcast episodes we've ever done. I mean, so much information. Well, and just for the nature of like of that caution, you know, don't don't just get excited and don't just automatically assume that. I mean, in most cases, in most cases, nobody's going to solicit you for your work. Yeah. It's a

00:39:01 SPEAKER_00
very, very rare case that you're going to get solicited to make a movie or to have an agent or, you know, that

00:39:11 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you're definitely not going to hear that from the head of

00:39:16 SPEAKER_00
Paramount. And I'm an inducer or whatever. I mean, are that they found you on Amazon among the millions

00:39:20 SPEAKER_01
are that they found you on Amazon among the millions of books on Amazon. Right. Right. Right. What did Amazon do just last year? Three hundred and five million print books in

00:39:29 SPEAKER_00
Amazon do just last year? Three hundred and five million print books in America. Yeah. So, I mean, the idea that anybody is finding you I mean, it would be it's it's like a needle in a

00:39:43 SPEAKER_00
be it's it's like a needle in a haystack. Your work's not worth it. It just means that, like, the life that you're getting solicited.

00:39:55 SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I say all the time, number one sign of a scam these days is out of the blue solicitation. You know, you can't say it's never going to happen, but 99% of the time it's not going to be legit. I mean that, and that is how most scammers get their business these days is by cold calls. Yeah.

00:40:23 SPEAKER_01
Okay, so I agree with Adanna, this is one of our more important podcasts. We're going to be getting it up and I want to thank Victoria. I'll be moderating the panel for WPN on November 21st and if you want to learn even more on top of what this has, go to writersandpublishersnetwork.com and sign up, and you'll hear even more from Victoria on this subject. So thank you very much, Victoria, for being a part of it and being on the show today. Well, thank you for having

00:40:57 SPEAKER_03
you for having me. I really appreciate it. I always love the chance to get the word out. So thanks so much. Well, we

00:41:06 SPEAKER_00
we appreciate it. And I'll link all of Victoria's resources on on the website for this episode. So, you know, it will live there and anybody can follow her links and follow her on social media and, you know, easily be able to find her website from there. OK. Thank

00:41:27 SPEAKER_01
you. And we'll see you, everyone. Our next interview is going to be with a cover designer, and that's going to be coming up in two weeks. So thank you very much. And Goodbye from Talking Dubec Publishing. Thank

00:41:44 SPEAKER_01
you. Thank you. Bye. Thanks a lot.