The Conversation

Author Solutions, aka iUniverse, aka Publishing Parasites.

Ring! Ring!

"Hello?"

"I want to speak to Miss Colleen Doran!"

"May I ask who's calling?"

"I want to speak to Colleen Doran."

"Why are you calling?"

"I want to speak to Colleen Doran about her book. Is this Colleen Doran?"

"Who is this?"

"I'm with Writers Book Publishing House and I'd like to talk to you about your book.

"Which one?"

"I would like to talk to Colleen Doran about her book."

"Which book?"

"I would like to talk about your book Amazing Fantastic Incredible Stan Lee."

"OK."

"I'm with Writers Book Publishing House and I would like to talk to you about your  book which has been screened for marketing and publicity services to bring it to the attention of people worldwide and movie and television and GLOBAL and INTERNATIONAL and MONEY and - "

LOOOOOG SPIEL which I attempt to stop by yelling repeatedly:

"STOP TALKING PLEASE! STOP TALKING PLEASE. I KNOW YOU ARE FULL OF CRAP."

Finally, she pauses.

"I don't need marketing and promotion for my book because it was already on the New York Times bestseller list and has been published internationally in at least 20 countries.

And if you'd done even a modicum of research, you'd know I am not the writer, I'm the artist. The writer is a very famous man named Stan Lee. You may have heard of him. He's been dead for almost 3 years."

CLICK.

This is a very common scam that targets self publishers and newbie creators. 

The woman with whom I spoke had an accent, which may be because this scam is being run out of the Phillipines.

I've never used Author Solutions, but I did write a blisteringly vicious article about the company that I know they didn't appreciate. Author Solutions has outsourced customer info according to the attached article and the result is self publishers who have done business with them are getting targeted. EDIT: Apparently, several major publishers have gone the pay to publish route and bad actors in house have been passing around author info.

In the meantime, I strongly advise you to read these articles at Writer Beware. Thanks to Mahala for the reminder.

No legit publisher or agent or publicity department cold calls like this.

I paused to listen when I heard the name Writers Book Publishing House because the name is similar to my agent's publishing house name. Many of the names on the scammer list are close to the names of legit clients.