by the SFWA Publications Crew and Victoria Strauss
Editor’s note: This article is part of the SFWA Presents: Get to Know… series, which includes informational pieces about SFWA programs, committees, and initiatives, and also interviews with the SFWA volunteers who work to support their fellow writers in the industry.
Don’t miss Part 1 of our interview with Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, where we traced the origins of this vital voice in author advocacy, explored the most common scams targeting writers today, and learned how the Writer Beware team investigates and exposes bad actors in the publishing world.
Victoria Strauss received the 2009 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award for her work with Writer Beware and was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award in 2012. The Writer Beware team also includes Michael Capobianco and Richard White.
Are there any systemic vulnerabilities within the publishing industry that make it prone to scams? If so, what can be done to address these?
I think the absence of regulation and licensing in publishing creates some vulnerability. There are no licensing or training requirements for literary agents, for example; anyone who feels like it can call themselves an agent, whether or not they have relevant skills or training. That’s what made it possible for so many scammers to purport to be agents in the pre-digital era. And there are still many inexperienced or marginal agents who probably wouldn’t be in business if they’d had to qualify for a license. I’m not advocating for a licensing scheme for agents, necessarily. But the lack of any enforceable outside standards does enable abuse.
More broadly…publishing is no different from any other creative industry. The central problem in relation to fraud is that where desire is high and access is limited and success is difficult to achieve, scammers cluster at the gates.
There do seem to be more scams targeted at writers than at other creatives, but I think that’s largely a function of the fact that there are so many writers. The rise of self-publishing has played a large role in that—not just because it has ushered in huge numbers of books, but because self-publishers need a wide variety of services, and as noted above, that has proved to be a very lucrative area for dishonest and predatory actors.
Have you faced any backlash from exposing scams in the literary world? If so, how did you handle it?
Writer Beware has been sued three times for defamation by scammers we exposed. They were frivolous suits intended to intimidate, with the scammers probably assuming we wouldn’t be able to fight back—but we did and prevailed in each case (including one where we won our court costs). The truth is a defense against allegations of libel or slander—but the real burden of a lawsuit is that you have to respond, no matter how malicious or stupid it is, and that can be both frightening and emotionally exhausting. SFWA, thankfully, has always had our back, something we’re very grateful for.
There was also once an entire website devoted to discrediting Writer Beware and other anti-scam activists, created (we believe) by one of the scammers who sued us.
I’ve been targeted personally, as the person most publicly associated with WB. I’ve been doxxed, trolled, harassed on social media, gotten nasty emails, had my books vandalized with one-star reviews and ratings and my blog posts with insulting comments, gotten a couple of (non-credible) death threats. Scammers lie about me to writers who mention WB: I’m a disgruntled ex-employee; I have my own publishing company and am trying to discredit competitors; I’m in the pay of this or that company to say mean things about this or that other company. I’ve been impersonated—in one case to troll me, in another to actually try to defraud a writer in my name.
I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years. I won’t say it doesn’t bother me to be targeted, depending on what’s being aimed at me, but in most cases it’s stupid rather than credible, and experience has given me a pretty good sense of the difference.
I probably am jinxing myself by saying this, but honestly I’m surprised there hasn’t been more—I’ve never been subjected to the Gamergate treatment, for example. I think partly that’s because I am very, very guarded online and share very little personal information about my life and the people in it. I also avoid political discourse (especially these days) and don’t argue on social media. I also tend to stay away from writing highly opinionated pieces in order to stir up controversy; that’s really not what Writer Beware is for.
I think all of this makes me at least somewhat less tempting to troll. But what I do at Writer Beware certainly pisses some people off, and knowing how hideously so many women are treated online, I can’t help wondering sometimes why it hasn’t been worse.
How do you manage the emotional aspect of assisting writers who have already fallen victim to predatory practices? Is there a personal toll on you as author and creator, especially long-term?
I’ve learned to compartmentalize. You do have to armor yourself to some degree against the sad and terrible stories. Not just the facts of the scams themselves, but the fallout: the life impact of losing large amounts of money, the disillusionment when what seemed to be a caring and competent publisher turns out to be nothing of the sort, the writers who give up writing or abandon the quest for publication because of the trauma of being scammed.
One of the hardest things for me is accepting that sometimes I simply can’t help. I’m not just talking about situations where the money is lost and the scammer has vanished and there’s effectively nothing to be done, but about the times when I can tell that my advice isn’t getting through and the writer will probably forge ahead with a bad or fraudulent deal, in spite of the gut feelings that led them to contact me. In those cases, I’ve learned that there’s not much point in arguing (and in fact it’s often really not welcome), and it’s better just to stand down. People will do what they want. But it can be hard to step back and let them.
On the brighter side, very often there is something I can do to help, whether that’s offering advice, referring to resources, even just providing a sympathetic ear or letting writers know they’re not alone in whatever it is they’ve experienced. I focus on that. I often hear from writers who were able to say “no” to a questionable publisher or a scam service provider or dodgy agent thanks to a WB blog post or one of my social media posts. Those are the best emails! And why I keep doing what I do. Not to make it about me, but it’s important to me to put some good out into the world, and I really do feel that I accomplish that with Writer Beware.
Are there any obstacles to getting your message out to people? Are the scams always evolving or just preying on different people as time goes by?
Scams prey on the people who have the most need—but who those people are changes over time (trad-pub aspirants in WB’s early days, self-publishers now). The nature of scams changes with time and technology, but the throughline is the same.
Social media is the source of many ills (not least in being heavily populated by scammers), but it has benefited WB by greatly increasing our reach, not just through our own online presence but also through word of mouth. Still, those who don’t know about us don’t know about us, and that’s always the challenge. It’s a balance between trying as hard as possible to reach as many people as possible and accepting that there will always be more people to reach.
Has your advocacy work with Writer Beware ever led to policy or regulatory changes within the publishing industry?
Not that I know of. We do feel that we’ve helped raise awareness within the industry. But publishing and agenting don’t really have a regulatory framework in that sense.
Scams are a shadow industry that mimics the real publishing industry but has no true point of contact other than the writers. Though there’s always been some level of scam awareness among publishing people (the late Janet Reid, for instance, was very active in discussing scams), for most of WB’s existence, the legit pub industry didn’t take much notice of scams because scams only peripherally affected them.
That’s changed with the increase in impersonation scams over the past few years. Publishing people have been forced to pay attention, thanks to reputational issues and a deluge of questions from authors who’ve been approached by impersonation scammers. This is reflected in the warnings you see now on so many agencies’ and all Big Five publishers’ websites, and also in the Authors Guild’s focus on scam warnings.
What common questions and concerns are people writing to you about? How do you balance raising awareness about scams while ensuring writers remain optimistic about the publishing industry?
As many complaints as WB receives, we get far more questions.
The most frequent are from writers who’ve encountered something they think might be a scam but aren’t completely sure and want to check. This could be an email or phone solicitation for an overpriced re-publishing offer, or a deceptive pitch for expensive junk marketing (marketing that’s cheap to provide, sold at a big markup, and of little value for book promotion), or someone impersonating a real literary agent or publisher or production company promising to transition the writer to the big time. Or it could be a flashy ad for a publishing service provider on Facebook or Instagram, where a large number of scammers advertise.
I also get questions about contract clauses, publishers’ and agents’ reputations, contest guidelines, and what is and isn’t standard business practice. I also hear about just plain odd things—like the bookstore that was deluged with inquiries after a bizarre AI-created Stephen King tribute website purported to sell tickets to a completely fictional King appearance there.
Writers often ask me to recommend a reputable publisher or agent. That’s not something I do; agents and publishers specialize, and the best agent or publisher for one writer might be the worst agent or publisher for another. It’s really best for writers themselves to make the choice. Instead, WB tries to provide knowledge and tools so writers can do that safely.
On optimism…I often hear from writers who’ve been so badly ripped off by fraudsters, or abused by a problem publisher or unskilled agent, that they feel like they can’t trust anyone. Of course this isn’t true. Yes, there’s a lot of fraud and incompetence out there—but there are also many, many good and reputable people and companies, and it is entirely possible to connect with them. The purpose of scam awareness isn’t to freak writers out about how many dangers there are but to empower them to know the dangers so they can recognize and avoid them.
This is something I always try to remember to point out when I’m doing interviews and have been talking scams for an hour. Scams aren’t all there are! There are good people out there, and you can find them.
Considering the evolving landscape of publishing, do you foresee any new challenges or opportunities for Writer Beware in the next few years?
Probably not a very original answer, but I think generative AI will increasingly be a challenge. There are the copyright battles, of course, and the often troubling adoption of gen AI by publishers and publishing ventures, and the questions about how best to integrate AI clauses into publishing contracts.
But where I’m mostly encountering gen AI right now is in its backroom use by fraudsters to improve their presentation and workflow—for example, in the use of chatbots to create perfectly formal and grammatical emails and websites (poorly written English used to be a major marker for these scams, which are staffed by people who are fluent English speakers but not English writers…but no more), or in the use of gen AI to make it cheaper and quicker to create book covers, format text, generate marketing materials, and so on (not that the scammers charge any less).
I’m also pretty certain it’s being used by fraudsters and opportunists who contact writers with offers of some sort of service (fake literary agents, shady marketers, pay-to-play reviewers). Increasingly, these solicitations include accurate details or summaries of the writers’ books (along with suspiciously fulsome praise) that have the definite whiff of prompts fed into a chatbot.
Other than that, I really just see Writer Beware keeping on keeping on. I’m not good at prognostication; if you’d asked me this question in 2014, I’d never have predicted the tsunami of publishing and marketing scams from overseas that are now the biggest class of scams and the most dangerous for writers who self-publish. I’m sure there will be surprises in store!
Could you share a memorable story—either of successfully helping a writer or of encountering an especially audacious scam—that stands out from your work?
I have lots of weird scam tales (I keep promising myself I’ll write a blog post with a list of them), but in terms of audacious, there are few to beat PageTurner Press and Media.
PageTurner was (note the past tense here) one of the biggest and most brazen of the Philippine publishing scams. WB received hundreds of reports and complaints: super-aggressive phone and email solicitation, poor quality services and failure to deliver, constant upselling pressure, prolific impersonation of literary agents, publishers, and production companies with bogus offers requiring large payments, forged documents including acceptance letters and contracts with the names and logos of well-known publishers and movie studios. PageTurner also ran at least two fake film companies charging enormous fees for fictional film deals. We heard from writers who lost huge amounts of money to these frauds, including one who lost more than $600,000.
Publishing scams tend to fly under the radar of law enforcement. They’re a niche white-collar crime that doesn’t threaten the general public, and the average financial loss tends to be small by law-enforcement standards. Also, overseas scams that operate in the US and UK do business under different names in their home countries, making them hard to trace (PageTurner’s Philippine parent was called Innocentrix), and rely on their foreign location to shield them from consequences.
But PageTurner was so greedy that it broke through all those barriers. Writers reported it to the FBI, and the FBI took notice. In December 2024, PageTurner’s CEO and VP—both residents of the Philippines who were visiting family in the US—were arrested, along with a US-based accomplice. They’re currently in custody awaiting trial (in 2025). All told, the FBI estimates that the scam took in at least $44 million and defrauded more than 800 writers, many of them elderly.
For a fuller account, see my blog post, which provides lots more details.
Thank you, Victoria Strauss and the Writer Beware team, for being a trusted ally and protector of writers. You make the industry safer and stronger for all of us, and we’re grateful for your invaluable work.
For more information, please visit Writer Beware. For questions, comments, and concerns, please contact Writer Beware at beware@sfwa.org. Especially if you have documentation that can help with an investigation. Thank you!
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Victoria Strauss, co-founder of Writer Beware®, is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the Way of Arata epic fantasy duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City), and a pair of historical novels for teens, Passion Blue and Color Song. She has written hundreds of book reviews for publications such as SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere.
She received the 2009 SFWA® Service Award for her work with Writer Beware, and in 2012 was honored with an Independent Book Blogger Award for the Writer Beware blog. She’s webmistress of the Writer Beware website, which she also created, and maintains the Writer Beware database, blog, and Facebook page.