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[Marketing] ReadersMagnet

heykatydid

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My father emailed me today to say that they had gotten a call from a woman claiming to work at a website called "Reader's Magnet", who wanted to rep my self-published book in Germany. (Here's the website: http://www.readersmagnet.com/) This is dodgy on so many levels, but the first being, how on earth did they get that phone number? (I don't live in the U.S. right now, so they called my parents' home number.) She apparently gave both her name and phone extension, and my father then passed it along to me.

I ran a search, but can't find anything else on the forum. I'm also not interested, as the book is from 2008, I've moved on to other things, and I don't feel like signing up for something where I have to pay fees, but I'm really curious/concerned where they got that phone number - I haven't lived in the U.S. for five years, let alone at my parents' residence, and how would someone find that information?

The website gives me little information on their actual service fees, and it appears you have to actually submit your information to get that. I'm hoping she doesn't call them again, or else I feel I should do something to stop their calls. Has anyone else heard about this "publicity" company or gotten a cold call from them? Or does anyone have thoughts about the legitimacy of the marketing company? In any case, I thought I'd let others know that this came up.
 

PVish

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I just received a phone call from a ReadersMagnet representative. It was a bit difficult to understand him because English was obviously not his native language, but he informed me that one of my books had been selected for their marketing package. In fact, the rep told me I was one of ReadersMagnet's "short-listed authors"! That's when I knew this was a scam.

When I told him that this particular book had originally been vanity published in 2007 and is no longer available except from second-hand sellers that wasn't a problem because ReadersMagnet has a publishing arm as well as a marketing arm and they would republish my book for free. They would design a new cover to target the books readership, they had copy-editors, etc. etc. By now, I was sure this was a scam, so I decided to waste his time.

How had his company heard of me? I wondered. Answer: Literary talent scouts who do the legwork in finding books and reporting them to ReadersMagnet. (Note: The book they were interested in has an Amazon rank of over 11 million!) I asked about the book fairs he was touting a a perk: One was POA (Is that this one?), another was American Library Association, another was ALA (Isn't that the American Library Association?), and I couldn't catch the other three, but one was in Minnesota. I asked how many ReadersMagnet books were in brick and mortar bookstores, but he couldn't answer. Red flags continued to flap. A visit to their website's blog provided a list of book fairs.

I finally asked him where his company was located: 80 Broad Street in NY. And then I asked him for the webiste URL. From the About Us page:
ReadersMagnet is a team of self-publishing and digital marketing experts with more than 10 years of combined experience. But we are more than just a company – we are readers too, and we love books just as much as you do. Not only do we read but we also help authors put their words in print.
AW, they're more than just a company! And they sound so helpful.

ReadersMagnet exists to assist aspiring and veteran authors in fulfilling their dreams. We guide them through the self-publishing process through expert recommendations, publishing and marketing package options, editorial services, and other resources. We ensure our exceptional and author-friendly services parallel with your budgetary considerations and creative vision.

There's that full-filling dreams crap! Another big red flag.
I doubt that this company would be useful to anybody. But I'll bet it would be expensive.
 

PVish

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Another rep fromReadersMagnet called me today. I didn't let on that I'd already been contacted by a different rep (who, unlike today's guy, could actually pronounce the book's title correctly) and let him run through his spiel before I started asking questions he could't answer. And I wasn't impressed that my book would be displayed at Asian book fairs.

Anybody being contacted by this company—don't fall for their crap!
 
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Jeanette

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I, too, was called today. Guess their bumper crop of author phone numbers just came in... They DO get you with that New York number, though. Don't fall for it, y'all.
 

The Grump

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Anyone heard of Readers Magnet?

Had a novel experience this morning, a tellemarketing call about my 'books on Amazon that should be ranking much higher than they are.' Paraphrase.

Someone had actually done some research on my Amazon page...though their conclusions were wrong, especially when they were discussing my books which were actually short stories put up to build a platform when my first book contract was still alive.

Website: http://www.readersmagnet.com/ Basically, they offer marketing and publishing services at a fairly stiff price.

I'm wondering has anyone heard of them? Used them? Are they different from the herd of other such companies, like being effective? Their publishing prices aren't far out of line, but their marketing seems high. They also don't seem to take into account that most indie would-be authors would already have some sort of social media presence or do they only go after really fresh blood?
 

mrsmig

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Holy crow - "stiff price" doesn't even come close. Their publishing prices are WAY out of line - between $899 for their "Iron" package and $12,499 for their "Platinum" package. And their marketing prices are equally outrageous.

This is a vanity press, plain and simple. Your average trade publisher will provide these things and they pay YOU, instead of the other way around.

Yog's Law should be emblazoned on every wanna-be author's hands, so they see it when they start to buy one of these vanity scams: MONEY FLOWS TO THE WRITER.
 
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The Grump

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And, Mr. Smig, I'd bet they are about as effective as the avrrage Fivver gig.

Thanks for moving my quesion, guys. Was concerned when I didn't find them under publishing services.

MKT
 

frimble3

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In general, be wary of cold-call telemarketers. I've never heard of any good coming from dealing with strangers who call you out of the blue, wanting money. (Including people purporting to be long-lost relatives.:evil)
 

HeatherCW

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These guys are still going and I just got a call from them for my most recent self-published book. No idea how they got my phone number but they're blocked now so it won't do them much good going forward. I hope nobody ends up paying $12,000 plus to self-publish a book!
 

MarlynnOfMany

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Readers' Magnet (& the LA Times Festival of Books)

I got a telemarketer-style voicemail inviting me to be "one of our top entries" in the LA Times Festival of Books. Googling tells me that it's a big festival, but the business that the lady was calling from sounds scammish: Readers' Magnet.

I live nowhere near LA and wouldn't be interested in making the trip unless it was clearly a Big Deal Cool Thing, and I'm certain that it's not.

Does anyone else have firsthand knowledge about this?

EDIT: Thank you to the mod who moved my post to this thread, which I couldn't find! I'm glad to see confirmation of the conclusions I came to. Scammity scam scam. Back to writing!
 
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I've banned multiple ReadersMagnet associated accounts because the initial user was a spammer.

See this Tweet from Victoria Strauss:


Scam alert: watch out for fake Twitter profile
@jennife04446060 . It's stolen the name of a well-known literary agent to "promote" books published by scammer Readers Magnet. RM is part of a major scam phenomenon: https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2019/08/from-philippines-not-with-love-plague.html… #WriterBeware #WritingCommunity #amwriting


The link Ms. Strauss refers to on Write Beware is very much worth reading.