Author v. Book Marketing Scammer: Who Will Win?

A Literal Literary Loser Faces the Final Fight

If you are new to this saga that has been going on for months now, please catch up via the following posts:

Is This the Greatest Book Promotion Offer of All Time (Part #1)?

My Conversation With the Greatest Book Marketing Service of All Time (Part #2)

Shocker! Greatest Book Marketing Service of All Time May Be… a SCAM???

Where, Oh, Where Have the Book Scammers Gone?

And for those who have been following from the start, here is the latest:

Of the two web-pages associated with this particular scam, https://bookreviewer.club/ is still up, but has disabled their contact links, while https://reviewerbookclub.com/ has hung up a “we’ll be back soon” sign and is “currently unavailable.”

I reached out to the publishers of “Martha Teichner” and “Susanna Clarke,” the two authors who so enthusiastically recommended these book marking services, to see if these are indeed the real authors’ accounts, or if they’ve been hijacked. I also Direct Messaged them both over Instagram telling them I’d done this. Despite IG showing that they’d been active within the past day, neither wrote back.

In addition, the IG account they first contacted me from, the one with tens of thousands of followers is now offline - along with my comments on their posts linking to evidence of their fraud.

Finally, I opened up a dispute with Venmo. After all, I had a screen-shot of them promising to refund my money if I did not receive the services they promised:

Venmo informed me that the person I’d been directed to send my money to, Brendan Hayter, had closed their account and disappeared.

Nonetheless, after reviewing the evidence, Venmo ruled in my favor and decreed that they would refund my money.

Since the mysterious Mr. Hayter has gone AWOL, I assume that the money is not coming out of his account, but directly from Venmo, as part of their cost of doing business.

So, while I am scheduled to get my money back, Hayter and Co. have also gotten away with their scam.

Though my husband tells me there are places where my $175 dollars can go much, much further than the meager amount it is in America, I still have a hard time imagining that the weeks they spent hard-selling me, not to mention the trouble of then deleting their IG account and websites (if that is indeed what happened in response to my refusing to let this drop), could have been financially worth it, if I was their sole target.

They have to be collecting more money - the “marketing” package they really wanted to sell me was priced in the $1000+ range - from a whole host of people.

Which is why I am begging anyone and anyone reading this post to please, please, please share it as far and wide as you can, so that aspiring authors can see the evidence of what kind of fraud is out there!

If it’s not this company, then it’s this company operating under another name. Or a similar outfit pulling the exact same scam. They are taking advantage of vulnerable people’s lifelong dreams. And it’s up to people like us to stop them!

Please join me in my crusade to expose every literary thief for what they truly are!