If you are an author, the first impulse after finishing and publishing a book is often to give it a boost through marketing. Since most books are discovered organically by readers, help from a marketing company can seem more than welcome. Of course, that help usually comes at a price.
Once you start searching for ‘book marketing companies’ on Instagram or Facebook, the offers begin almost immediately. You will receive messages from people who confidently assure you that the very first thing you should do is pay thousands of dollars for promotion. This is how Instagram, Facebook, and other modern algorithms work: the more you search, the more similar content is pushed in front of your eyes.
This is extremely risky. In most cases, you will almost certainly lose your money.
To test how this mechanism works, we decided to run a small experiment. We paid about $180 for 15 “guaranteed” Amazon reviews. The company was more than happy to help. The website, bookpublisherexpert.com, looked legitimate. It listed a physical address (New York, NY 10022, USA), and the Instagram account used to contact us was also referenced on the website. Everything appeared consistent. The email info@bookpublisherexpert.com was also written on Instagram consistently. Since the website linked their instagram account correctly, it was quite clear that the company itself contacted us.
We provided our email, and the “contract” was generated almost instantly. However, the first version did not specify that the reviews would be posted by readers on Amazon. Oh, why do we need such reviews? We pointed this out, and the contract was immediately regenerated with that clause added that reviews must appear on “Amazon”. At that point, we decided to proceed with the payment. The expectation is that the company has 15 professional readers, who read books and post comments on Amazon.
One strange detail stood out: the company collecting the payment was based in Australia and appeared to have no obvious connection to the supposed marketing company. Still, we wanted to see what would happen next, so we provided a link to the book.
Two weeks later, we received an email from someone named “Emma” (almost certainly a fake name). She claimed that 15 readers had read the book and provided their reviews. What we received was a list of very short, one-line reviews filled with emojis. They strongly resemble AI-generated text.
We responded by pointing out the obvious issue: according to the contract, the reviews were supposed to be posted on Amazon. That is when things changed.
They began asking for Amazon account credentials - first by email, then by phone, and even via text messages. We refused and asked to return 180$ . After that, they simply disappeared.
One could say, ‘Oh, but that was an impostor’. No, it was not an impostor. According to all the information on Instagram and in the emails, the people who requested the money were linked to bookpublisherexpert.com, since all accounts on Instagram matched precisely the website.
This behavior seems to be typical of many so-called book marketing companies operating through social media. Their goal is not marketing — it is access, money, or both.
If you have experienced something similar, feel free to contact us. We would be happy to share your story and help warn other authors.
James Porter (Find me at jport [AT] jwork.org )