When I was still pursuing traditional publishing, I did a lot of research on scams targeting would-be authors. I researched any ‘publishers’ that sounded too good to be true. I knew to look out for unsolicited emails masquerading as traditional publishers or agents. Unluckily, when I decided to go the Indie-publishing route, I wasn’t as diligent with my homework. I found myself in a space I didn’t research on how to navigate and thought the quality of my writing, word of mouth, and social media posts would see my purchases increase.
My first contact with an Instagram bookstagram scammer was after someone posted on bookthreads about giving a space to Indie-published authors to promote their book. So I posted about my book. Soon after I received an offer of a paid collaboration for promotion. Having never heard of this, I asked questions. Do they read the book? How many sales come from a typical promotion? How much is the service? Is the review AI? I received satisfactory answers to all my questions and the promotion wasn’t expensive, so I started to research on the wide web. Paid reviews were against Amazon’s authors’ TOS, but the bookstagram reassured me I was paying for the promotional posts, not a review.
And so I got scammed. I’m sure many more have succumbed to these scams and it wasn’t until I researched a particular Instagram account that I came upon articles discussing the practice. I think this isn’t talked about a lot more because people don’t like to admit they paid for a useless service and realize after the fact that they thought they were getting a free meal and should have known better. At first, I wasn’t too bothered about my own naivety. I learned my lesson, but after getting continually bombarded by these accounts, it started to get on my nerves.
Friday night and Saturday morning were when I decided to push back. The first account that messaged me started off with a ridiculous message right away. One account touted their recent campaign had netted an author (whose Instagram handle they included) a 40% increase in sales that led to an additional three thousand sales. They didn’t tell me how much their services charged. I checked the Instagram account, a UK author with three titles listed in their bio and a link to their amazon account. It wasn’t until later that I realized although the Amazon author shared a name with the Instagram account, the Amazon author was from Georgia, USA and none of the books shared a title.
What I did notice is that the author had three reviews, 1 five star and 2 three star. The five star review was obviously AI written while the three star reviews seemed authentic. 1.5% of Amazon purchasers leave a review, using that math, less than 300 units were sold. When confronted with this information, the scam Instagram account claimed the client paid for sales not reviews and if I want reviews, then they’ll get me reviews. I told that person they should be ashamed of themselves and received a reply back that I “cannot say such things.” I then spent some time researching the account, looking for tell tale signs that it was a scam. I will share my insights at the end of this article.
The following morning, I received a message from another account with 160k followers offering posts, interview, etc. for only $60. I didn’t waste any time and immediately told them I knew this was a scam, I am wise to it now, and that they and their colleagues can stop messaging me because they won’t get anymore of my money. They started to send me proof of how they can get 100 guaranteed reviews and videos of how many reviews they post. I asked for sales reports from satisfied authors. They sent me a review of my book, which was not the right move.
This obviously AI generated review got a couple of points wrong, because it’s AI. But the fact that they just spat out a review of my book means that they had a pirated copy. A pirated copy that was probably obtained by the first scammer I fell for, which means they are communicating with each other and targeting me purposefully. Now that I think back upon it, the first account to contact me had around 11k followers. When I didn’t take the bait from other 11k follower accounts, they upped the number of followers into the 100k plus range. The text exchange ended with them threatening me and telling me “otherwise it’ll create problem for you.”
Why do people enlist these services? Don’t we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch? 100 verified purchase reviews for $60? Why wouldn’t you take that offer, you’ll make more on the royalties than the cost of the service? I think as an author, we’ve spent so much time, money, and energy getting a product to the marketplace that it doesn’t seem like a free meal because so much work went into it beforehand. There are legitimate blogger and Instagram accounts that can boost your book’s profile. So, how to tell the scam bookstagrammers from the real one?
Warning signs of a scam account:
- They contact you with an offer of promotion without having read your book.
- Promised sales. No one can promise sales, especially without reading the book and knowing the quality of the writing.
- When looking at their profile, there is no personality tied to the account. Real bookstagrammers shoot videos with themselves talking about the books they reviewed. Scam accounts don’t do this because anyone can run the account and they don’t have to worry about switching out the person giving the reviews.
- Any review they offer is obviously written by AI. How can you tell? Look for language like exhilarating, captivating, etc. There will also not be any negative aspects brought up about the books they review.
- The books they review will have multiple 5-star reviews that are all written by AI and real reviews might be much lower. I saw one book with 20+ five star AI reviews and one real one-star review saying the book meandered and rambled. Not every book is for every person but to have the only review that isn’t AI generated be one star is a huge red flag.
- Inaccuracies in profiles they have as recommendations.
- Posts with the Publisher’s Weekly stamp. Anyone can pay for a Publisher’s Weekly review. You don’t need them to do it for you.
- Recent posts may have reviews and information, but if you continue scrolling, you find posts with just a picture of a book and no description.
- If you click on an author they are promoting and head to their Amazon page, you may see that author doesn’t have many reviews despite the service claiming they received a boost in sales.
- When you look at those who comment on their posts, they are other accounts with the same look, other scam accounts, and no other commenters.
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