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[Marketing] BookWhirl

nkkingston

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It's the fact they're naming books as well (even if they're mangling the pronunciation). I mean, maybe they're buying the lists, then googling every single name on them, but even for a spam company that seems a bit time-consuming. It's more likely they've got the book titles first, but I still think it's unlikely they're then searching the purhcased lists for matches that way around, too.
 

JulieB

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Correct. They mentioned a specific book when they called. I think I have an idea of how they got the info.

I'd been back in town just a couple of days from a convention in LA when they called. My name was on the site as was a link back to my own web site. The strange thing was, this was a convention to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "Quantum Leap." They called about THAT book. I'm guessing they found me through a whois look up. (I've since taken care of that!) If they'd have paid attention to my site they'd have known the book was out of print.

By the way, the convention was a blast. I and two other tie-in authors signed for two or three hours. We'd been scheduled for 45 minutes. Our books were all out of print. I have to say it was a real egoboo. But the book was a work for hire, so I'm not able to bring it back into print.

Anyway, I suspect that was how they found me.
 

Richk

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Yesterday I received a phone call from a woman that could barely speak English. She called on the behalf of Bookwhirl, an online book marketing company. The company some how got my name, title of my book, and phone number. After doing some scam research online, these people are scam artist. Beware……they are still out there.
 

triceretops

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Yep, got the call. This pisses me off. They must have really dug deep for my information. They have an American speaker now, but the phone service sounds very long distance.

tri

ETA: This was particularly aggravating since I was expecting an agent call at the time, and when my sister answered the call and handed the phone off to me she squealed with delight, thinking it was a book sale.
 
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jairey

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Still Calling

An older lady who I helped self-publish a book for her grandchildren got a call from these people today. She tried calling back, but luckily didn't get thru before calling me about it.
I'm glad she did -- I don't know that she would have wound up giving them any money, but she doesn't need the hassle. She too thought it was "bookworld.com" (deeply accented woman calling). There's a site where people can report harassing 800 numbers, and the phone number turned up there with similar reports and the "bookwhirl.com" connection.
 

Diana_Rajchel

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My partner got a phone call from these people this morning. It looks like they pulled his phone number off the whois data for our website domains, and were calling about a self-published book I released last year. There's a list of people detailing the calls here. They're not a scam per se - they tell you what they're offering. They're just not offering anything genuinely useful.
 

EngineerTiger

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Hmm, I must be on the radar somewhere as I just received a phone call from these folks. I have it set up to have voice mail sent over as email and it came out "BOOK WORLD" which appears to be a legitimate book store online (also throughout upper Mid-West). I just figured they got something via Smashwords or the CreateSpace information and were interested in doing something with a regional author. When I called and spoke to a heavy accent that pushed marketing, I got suspicious. Finally, I was able to pry the web address out of him with bookWHIRL, not bookWORLD.

Dashed right over here to see if there was any information. Thanks, as always, for providing a good double-check. The man I spoke with implied that they were working "with" CreateSpace so just be aware, folks.
 

Kirk T

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Bookwhirl is hounding me

Thank all of you for taking the time to comment on this and other posts. Bookwhirl is hounding me something terrible and I thought I'd better check it out. I wasn't really into it anyway but I thought I'd listen to them. There is a language barrier and their phone system always has an echo. Big red flag there. (Two of them). I guess I will just get a little on the rude side and tell them NO.

Thanks again, everyone.