Publicity Tip #15

Beware Publicity Trolls ~

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There are a number of get-rich-quick scams floating around out there and it doesn’t stop with the African Prince who needs your help.

New authors are falling prey to Publicity Trolls who promise the world: for a ‘reasonable sum of money,’ and very little work on the author’s part, your book will be the splash of the social media universe for 7 days – there is usually a guarantee of 500,000 views or hits, too.

Sounds too good to be true – it is.

Don’t get sucked in.  Most of these sites utilize spamming and only do email blasts to those addresses they’ve compiled of other authors who have fallen for their gimmick.  If you take 5 minutes to look up their URL with the key word “fraud,” you’ll be surprised at what you find.

Recently on LinkedIn I came across a blog posting mentioning the promotional site indiewritersupport.com promising the world to new writers.  I dug deeper and learned about this site’s history with Paradon Books and the promotional expert Korebe Abayomi.  This sent up a red-flag for me immediately – I had been burned by Korebe/Korede before when he used “Amazon Book Club” as his borrowed platform for collecting your hard-earned $100 with the promise of sending out author info to all the book clubs associated with Amazon.com/ca.  He even promised a report with links after the 7 day blitz… that never happened.

Do your research into any publicity possibility you discover, but be especially suspect of the really good deals.

Categories: Publicity

Tags: bad publicity, beware, book publicity, Indie Writer Support, Korebe Abayomi, Paradon Books, publicity, publicity tip, scams, spammers, trolls