Evaluating services for writers: Scammer adjacent

Here’s an article by Kevin Duncan at Kindlepreneur, which takes apart a new “service” offered by a company called Books.by —

Books.by Review: What Authors Should Know

Here, Duncan does a stellar job digging into Books.by, thus demonstrating what an author should do before working with a new business or service Here’s one important item from this post (not the only important thing he hits, but telling).

4. Repetitive Reviews

On Books.by’s homepage, they showcase their 4.8 star rating from almost 400 reviews. That’s very impressive… But there are some oddly specific patterns we noticed in the reviews — identical phrases, repeated names, and similar claims. Could be coincidence, but it’s worth noting as you do your research. Here are a few that we found. Of the 366 reviews:

5 called it “the best platform ever!”4 claimed they “doubled” their income “overnight”17 say they were able to “3X” their revenue compared to KDPOver 60 highlighted the platform’s “transparency”3 came from someone named “Priya S” (“Priya” is a lovely name, but out of 366 reviews, what are the odds…)

You get the idea. There are more like these too. This doesn’t mean the reviews aren’t legit, of course. There really could be lots of people who value “transparency”, could have exactly 3X’d their income, and who have the first name “Priya” (and a last name starting with S).

This reminds me of a “book reviewer” who (many years ago) contacted me and suggested that she’d be happy to review my book for a fee. I don’t remember what book this was; this was so long ago it was probably a traditionally published title. Here’s what I do remember: if you clicked through to her book review site, she had A LOT of comments under most of her reviews. Twenty, fifty, more than that, a lot. BUT, if you clicked through to the comments, then here’s what you’d see:

All the comments were short.Half the comments were from the reviewer, as she answered each and every comment, so the list alternated one comment / the reviewer / second comment / the reviewer, and so forth.Repetitive phrasing from many of the comments.

I thought, This smart “reviewer” is faking ALL these comments. That’s what it looks like to me. So, of course, I deleted the email and forgot about the so-called offer, until now, when this note about possibly (probably) fake comments reminded me.

So this is yet another thing to keep an eye out for.

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