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From Bargaineering.com, an article on how to recognize fraudulent "mystery shopping" operations.
How is this relevant to the business of writing? Because its list of warning signs has striking similarities to well-known signs that you're dealing with useless or fraudulent agents, publishers, display sites, and other hazards of the writing business. Seeing how they compare can be a good way to get additional perspective.
Scams are bewildering in their number and variety until you get the knack of looking at them structurally. Once learn to recognize their underlying forms, though, you find that they're actually few in number, and that what initially looked like an ocean of complexity and diversity is just a lot of variations in surface decor.
"Mystery shoppers" are people who pose as regular shoppers in order to assess the staff performance and other features of retail stores. It's more a diagnostic procedure than a profession. Freelance employment opportunities will be sporadic at best, and will most likely be filled by people who have experience in retail marketing and already have contacts inside the industry.
The idea that someone can make a career as a freelance mystery shopper was invented by scammers who offer to help victims (hereafter "marks") connect with this supposedly lucrative line of business. The real transaction is either the money the marks pay for this access, or the personal/financial information they give the scammers as part of their application process.
This is typical of how most scams work. The marks are focused on lucrative future transactions, and thus are willing to pay what they see as a relatively minor amount of money to get to that point. The deal evaporates after the marks have paid, but before they collect their payout. The reason the deal evaporates is that those lucrative opportunities never existed in the first place. The only money that changes hands is what the marks pay the scammers.
Yog's Law -- "Money should always flow toward the author" -- will protect you from most of these schemes. You don't pay advance fees to agents, guarantee the purchase of a few hundred copies of your book, reimburse phone or travel or submission expenses, or anything else, no matter how they pitch it. You can pay Kinko's to copy your manuscript, and the Post Office to mail it, but that's all.
It's remarkable how many of the specific warning signs for fraudulent "mystery shopper" schemes have equivalent tip-offs in publishing:
Equivalent: Representation fees paid to agents, reading fees paid to agents or publishers, fees paid to agents for submitting your work, fees paid to display sites, or application, handling, xeroxing, or mailing fees of any kind.
You've offered them your writing, or the job of representing same. Assessing your offer is part of the normal conduct of their business. It's not a favor they're doing you.
Equivalent: Feeding you a line about how your manuscript has to be "professionally edited" before it can be submitted, then handing you off to a (supposedly independent) confederate who'll charge you thousands of dollars for an edit of unknown quality, then pass you back to the first bunch.
Equivalent: Representing the publishing industry as a closed system to which only a few have access. In reality, publishers and agents make their submission guidelines available online, or via snailmail for the price of a self-addressed stamped envelope. LMP, Literary Marketplace, is a standard reference work that's usually available at even quite modest libraries. There's no penalty for writing to ask questions, though you may wait a while for an answer.
Also: Overemphasizing the difficulty or impossibility of selling a book without an agent, or selling any book at all to conventional commercial publishing houses. Every bestselling author started as an unpublished newbie. You don't have to settle for a third-rate agent, or a bare-bones publishing operation that charges you for everything and has no bricks-and-mortar distribution. All you need is a really good book, an equally good query letter, and a cover letter that isn't actively toxic.
Also: Promising to sell you the secrets of how to profitably self-publish yourself, make any book a bestseller, do a face-to-face pitch for your book, become an agent or editor, or make money reading books. Few self-published books ever turn a profit. None of the authors of guides to making your book a bestseller have ever had a bestselling book or helped make a book a bestseller, and some have never so much as dipped a toe in commercial publishing. Pitching books is a skill for agents, not writers, and first novels are the single category of books least likely to be sold via pitch. Real agents and editors learn their profession by working for real agencies or publishing houses. Getting paid substantial fees for reading books is like working as a mystery shopper: employment opportunities are few, and they go to people who already have experience.
Also: Display sites. They're useless. If you want publishers to look at your manuscript, mail it to them along with a nice short cover letter. Even if they reject it out of hand, they'll at least have glanced at it when they opened the package, which is more attention than it's going to get on a display site.
Legit agents and publishers never have to send out blind queries to get slush. A simple public announcement that one is accepting submissions will bring in all the slush an operation can handle. I know someone who many years ago announced -- once, without a lot of fanfare -- that his cat was an agent and was taking submissions. Last I heard, the cat was still receiving manuscripts.
More approximate equivalent: Telling you that your book will make money. Claiming that any book, if properly promoted, can become a bestseller.
Equivalent in spirit: Telling you that they'll give your book a chance when they haven't read it. No one can say that about a book before they've assessed it.
It's not quite the same, but the closest match to this one would be, "Why let some greedy publisher take all the profits, and pay you a tiny percentage as a royalty? Self-publish, and keep all the profits for yourself!" Somehow, people who say that never get around to mentioning how rare it is for the sales of self-published books to approach even the low end of conventional publishing's sales figures, or that the net profit on a first or second book seldom equals its advance, which the author nevertheless gets to keep; and that if it does earn out, the author gets paid royalties on all sales past that point.
Equivalent: Failing to mention how much work it takes to successfully self-publish a book, or the expenses involved. There are reasons why experienced authors don't do it.
Failing to mention that aside from the labor and expense involved, it's extremely difficult to sell a book in any quantity if the publisher doesn't have a brick-and-mortar distribution deal in place, especially if the book isn't aimed at a specialized audience that's hungry for just that sort of thing.
Also: In some cases, failing to mention that their agency or publishing house won't even try to market your book.
This one, at least, we're spared. It should go without saying that anyone who wants you to process large transfers of money, including refunds or overpayments, must be assumed to have criminal intent.
Anyway. Most legit agents belong to the Association of Authors' Representatives. Some real ones don't, though it's not the way to bet. But the 24-karat test of authenticity for agents, as with publishers, etc., is whether they make their living by selling books. I'm not talking about publishers that sell a few hundred copies of their top title, or agents that once sold a travel book to a small press. That wouldn't keep a cat in cat food. If that's the best they can do, their income is derived from some other source, which always turns out to be their authors.
Before doing business with anyone, check up on them at Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. See whether there's a thread about them at Absolute Write. There's also the basic test for publishers: Go into a big bookstore and see whether you can find their books on the shelves.
Remember, it's harder to get out of a bad deal than it is to get into one. Research is always your friend.
How is this relevant to the business of writing? Because its list of warning signs has striking similarities to well-known signs that you're dealing with useless or fraudulent agents, publishers, display sites, and other hazards of the writing business. Seeing how they compare can be a good way to get additional perspective.
Scams are bewildering in their number and variety until you get the knack of looking at them structurally. Once learn to recognize their underlying forms, though, you find that they're actually few in number, and that what initially looked like an ocean of complexity and diversity is just a lot of variations in surface decor.
"Mystery shoppers" are people who pose as regular shoppers in order to assess the staff performance and other features of retail stores. It's more a diagnostic procedure than a profession. Freelance employment opportunities will be sporadic at best, and will most likely be filled by people who have experience in retail marketing and already have contacts inside the industry.
The idea that someone can make a career as a freelance mystery shopper was invented by scammers who offer to help victims (hereafter "marks") connect with this supposedly lucrative line of business. The real transaction is either the money the marks pay for this access, or the personal/financial information they give the scammers as part of their application process.
This is typical of how most scams work. The marks are focused on lucrative future transactions, and thus are willing to pay what they see as a relatively minor amount of money to get to that point. The deal evaporates after the marks have paid, but before they collect their payout. The reason the deal evaporates is that those lucrative opportunities never existed in the first place. The only money that changes hands is what the marks pay the scammers.
Yog's Law -- "Money should always flow toward the author" -- will protect you from most of these schemes. You don't pay advance fees to agents, guarantee the purchase of a few hundred copies of your book, reimburse phone or travel or submission expenses, or anything else, no matter how they pitch it. You can pay Kinko's to copy your manuscript, and the Post Office to mail it, but that's all.
It's remarkable how many of the specific warning signs for fraudulent "mystery shopper" schemes have equivalent tip-offs in publishing:
Equivalent: Representation fees paid to agents, reading fees paid to agents or publishers, fees paid to agents for submitting your work, fees paid to display sites, or application, handling, xeroxing, or mailing fees of any kind.
You've offered them your writing, or the job of representing same. Assessing your offer is part of the normal conduct of their business. It's not a favor they're doing you.
Equivalent: Feeding you a line about how your manuscript has to be "professionally edited" before it can be submitted, then handing you off to a (supposedly independent) confederate who'll charge you thousands of dollars for an edit of unknown quality, then pass you back to the first bunch.
Equivalent: Representing the publishing industry as a closed system to which only a few have access. In reality, publishers and agents make their submission guidelines available online, or via snailmail for the price of a self-addressed stamped envelope. LMP, Literary Marketplace, is a standard reference work that's usually available at even quite modest libraries. There's no penalty for writing to ask questions, though you may wait a while for an answer.
Also: Overemphasizing the difficulty or impossibility of selling a book without an agent, or selling any book at all to conventional commercial publishing houses. Every bestselling author started as an unpublished newbie. You don't have to settle for a third-rate agent, or a bare-bones publishing operation that charges you for everything and has no bricks-and-mortar distribution. All you need is a really good book, an equally good query letter, and a cover letter that isn't actively toxic.
Also: Promising to sell you the secrets of how to profitably self-publish yourself, make any book a bestseller, do a face-to-face pitch for your book, become an agent or editor, or make money reading books. Few self-published books ever turn a profit. None of the authors of guides to making your book a bestseller have ever had a bestselling book or helped make a book a bestseller, and some have never so much as dipped a toe in commercial publishing. Pitching books is a skill for agents, not writers, and first novels are the single category of books least likely to be sold via pitch. Real agents and editors learn their profession by working for real agencies or publishing houses. Getting paid substantial fees for reading books is like working as a mystery shopper: employment opportunities are few, and they go to people who already have experience.
Also: Display sites. They're useless. If you want publishers to look at your manuscript, mail it to them along with a nice short cover letter. Even if they reject it out of hand, they'll at least have glanced at it when they opened the package, which is more attention than it's going to get on a display site.
Being asked for banking information, site passwords, or your social security number should make you automatically stop, think, and say no. I can only imagine marks giving out that information because they think of what they're doing as applying for a job.
Equivalent: Agents or publishers who contact you because you've registered copyright on your book, or otherwise identified yourself online as an unpublished writer. If you haven't submitted to them, you shouldn't hear from them, unless there's some specific reason or mechanism whereby they've heard about your work and gotten interested in it.
Legit agents and publishers never have to send out blind queries to get slush. A simple public announcement that one is accepting submissions will bring in all the slush an operation can handle. I know someone who many years ago announced -- once, without a lot of fanfare -- that his cat was an agent and was taking submissions. Last I heard, the cat was still receiving manuscripts.
Precise equivalent: Guaranteeing publication. No one can do that sight unseen, not even major writing contests with legitimate backers.
More approximate equivalent: Telling you that your book will make money. Claiming that any book, if properly promoted, can become a bestseller.
Equivalent in spirit: Telling you that they'll give your book a chance when they haven't read it. No one can say that about a book before they've assessed it.
It's not quite the same, but the closest match to this one would be, "Why let some greedy publisher take all the profits, and pay you a tiny percentage as a royalty? Self-publish, and keep all the profits for yourself!" Somehow, people who say that never get around to mentioning how rare it is for the sales of self-published books to approach even the low end of conventional publishing's sales figures, or that the net profit on a first or second book seldom equals its advance, which the author nevertheless gets to keep; and that if it does earn out, the author gets paid royalties on all sales past that point.
Equivalent: Failing to mention how much work it takes to successfully self-publish a book, or the expenses involved. There are reasons why experienced authors don't do it.
Failing to mention that aside from the labor and expense involved, it's extremely difficult to sell a book in any quantity if the publisher doesn't have a brick-and-mortar distribution deal in place, especially if the book isn't aimed at a specialized audience that's hungry for just that sort of thing.
Also: In some cases, failing to mention that their agency or publishing house won't even try to market your book.
Few publishing scams are internationally based, but they do have two other circumstances that protect them. One is the frequent inability of domestic law enforcement agencies to understand publishing scams and how they work. The other is that it can be difficult to prove that the agent, publisher, or other malfeasant party wasn't simply incompetent.
This one, at least, we're spared. It should go without saying that anyone who wants you to process large transfers of money, including refunds or overpayments, must be assumed to have criminal intent.
I've never heard of the MSPA, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they're the source of this list of signs.
Anyway. Most legit agents belong to the Association of Authors' Representatives. Some real ones don't, though it's not the way to bet. But the 24-karat test of authenticity for agents, as with publishers, etc., is whether they make their living by selling books. I'm not talking about publishers that sell a few hundred copies of their top title, or agents that once sold a travel book to a small press. That wouldn't keep a cat in cat food. If that's the best they can do, their income is derived from some other source, which always turns out to be their authors.
Before doing business with anyone, check up on them at Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. See whether there's a thread about them at Absolute Write. There's also the basic test for publishers: Go into a big bookstore and see whether you can find their books on the shelves.
Remember, it's harder to get out of a bad deal than it is to get into one. Research is always your friend.
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