From Writer Beware:
I write a lot about impersonation scams on this blog–for good reason: they are extremely common, and becoming more so all the time. Literary agents, publishers, production companies, film directors: all are targets.
The purpose: money, of course. By posing as real, reputable companies and individuals, the scammers aim to make it more likely writers will be bamboozled into paying for needless, substandard, and/or fraudulent “services”.
This one, though, takes the cake: an entire website impersonating Macmillan Publishers.
The domain name, booksmacmillan.com, is just 15 days old as of this writing (the registration is, of course, anonymized).
. . . .
The website, which appears to have been hastily put together with just the barest nod to verisimilitude, features poor-quality book cover images on its opening page and a blurry Macmillan logo. There’s a major clue to fakery at the very top:
No major publishing house is going to refer to itself as “traditional” or to its authors as “traditionally published”: it’s a given, since that’s the only kind of publishing they do, and there’s no need to make the distinction. (This is a scam marker in scammers’ solicitation emails as well; even the ones that are otherwise quite credible often make this mistake.)
Visitors are invited to “discover the world of books at Macmillan” with reviews and interviews–but wait, isn’t Macmillan supposed to be a publisher? (And shouldn’t its name have a capital letter?)
. . . .
So who’s the scammer behind the curtain? It’s Stellar Literary Press & Media, about which I’ve gotten multiple complaints (I also wrote about it in 2020, when it first appeared). I found out thanks to this comment on Writer Beware’s Facebook alert about Stellar, from a writer who was asked to pay $2,500 as part of the scam:
Link to the rest at Writer Beware
PG realized that he hadn’t visited the Writer Beware website for some time.
The proprietor, Victoria Stauss, is an author who has been running Writer Beware with the help of other experienced authors for a long time. One of the useful features of Writer Beware is its Archives, which go back to 2009 and contain a snake’s nest of fraudulent publishing schemes.
Writer Beware is a volunteer effort and, to the best of PG’s knowledge, pays no salaries. However, according to the site, The Science Fiction Writers Association funds at least some of the operating expenses to keep the lights on. Ms. Strauss is also responsible for the Legal Resource and Other Remedies Section of the SWAF website.
I strongly recommend forwarding every publishing scam or phishing scam you encounter (with a cover email) to “beware@sfwa.org”, the email address that Victoria Strauss uses for the purpose.
I don’t know how she does it — the volume must be significant — but she replies and often tells you a bit about an older scam you’ve run across, or thanks you (shaking her head) for a new one you bring to her attention.
Feel free to wax eloquent about the low quality of the scam offerings while you’re at it. 🙂
In cases like these (impersonation of a real publisher), it is not a bad idea to send the same thing to the publisher. They frequently have lawyers that could use a few more billing hours.
Good points by both K and W.