The author, publishing, writing world may have reached Peak Scam. Pitching you that their “service” is essential … and it is not. Authors must be on alert.

I am a HUGE fan and supporter of the must-read blog that is produced by Writer Beware and Victoria Strauss. One that bubble up again was originally published in November of last year that at first glance, an author would think—I need this service. NO YOU DON’T … it’s a scam.

With permission to share with you, I’m reprinting it in its entirety. One of the shockers for me was that one of my own images—you will see blow, the sheepie pointing to a sales growth chart—was ripped off from either an old blog or my book, How to Avoid Book Publishing Blunders.

The author, publishing, writing world may have reached Peak Scam. Pitching you that their “service” is essential … and it is not. Authors must be on alert. It’s like a revolving carousel—paying the people who’d beat you up and lure you back with another can’t miss pitch and forking over your credit card.

Subscribe to the Writer Beware blog here and make it a must read. Book Guard:  https://writerbeware.blog/

And read on … Writer Beware will become your best friend … 

Writer Beware

That’s Anything But Book Guard: “Anti-Scam Protection” That’s Anything But
By Victoria StraussThe writing world may have reached Peak Scam: the point at which the extreme prevalence of writing scams can be leveraged to create a protection racket to exploit the victims of those scams.

Kind of like paying the people who’d beat you up and burn down your business to defend you against the people who’d beat you up and burn down your business. Nice little sum of money you lost there, let us help you lose some more! (Also see my post from last week, which features a protection racket run by a scammer impersonating Writer Beware.) 

Meet Book Guard. Its motto: Peace of Mind is not expensive, it’s Priceless! Its purported mission: to protect vulnerable authors against “deceitful schemes that promise success.” Here’s the email it is blasting out, reported to me by several authors who received it in the last week. Sent via the SendPulse marketing platform, it features an alarming ALL CAPS subject line–AUTHOR GOT SCAMMED, YOU ARE NEXT!–and text and graphics that are…well, see for yourself.

Warnings about Author Solutions, fake publishers and literary agents, junk marketers, email and phone solicitation, imposters…why, it’s almost like they’re channeling Writer Beware!

Book Guard is registered as an LLC in Wyoming (whose lenient business laws and low filing fees make it a popular choice for dodgy out-of-state and foreign enterprises), with a filing date of April 26, 2024. Its address–1309 Coffeen Avenue, Sheridan WY–is not a physical location, but a virtual address used by hundreds of other LLCs; it is not quite as notorious a home for fraudsters as another Wyoming business address, but it has housed its share of scams.

Per its website, Book Guard’s Comprehensive Protection for Authors includes a Research Team (which conducts “thorough investigations” of questionable companies), Fraud Analysis (“We track unauthorized sales and uncover deceptive practices”), Writing Insurance (financial protection for authors! Book Guard will recover your money!), and Global Monitoring (tracking down unauthorized sales).

Sounds impressive! But there’s no in-depth detail on how any of this works, nor does Book Guard offer examples of successful cases (which you’d expect a reputable business to do), despite claiming to have helped “thousands” of writers. The website does feature two testimonial videos, in which (verifiably real) authors describe their and their friends’ experiences with scammers–but though both authors enthusiastically plug Book Guard, neither actually says that they’ve used its services. (They also can’t, as claimed, have been Book Guard Members since 2022 and 2023, respectively–given that Book Guard didn’t exist before last April.)

The sloppily-formatted Meet Our Team section of the website offers more proof that Book Guard is relying on potential customers not to do any double-checking. Here’s Head of Research Tyrese Camp…also known on free image site Unsplash as Men’s Black and White Suit. At least nineteen other websites use his image.

Other staffers include Senior Fraud Analyst Shelly Cuevas, whose friendly-looking stock photo has been deployed even more often than Tyrese’s, and “visionary” founder and CEO Stephen Hayes, who claims “extensive experience in both the publishing and cybsersecurity industries” but conveniently offers no verifiable specifics. Stephen’s photo doesn’t appear to be stock, nor does it scream “created by AI”–but given the dubious authenticity of the other two staffers, is there any reason to assume Stephen is any more credible?

The end game, as always, is money. The email solicitation invites authors to “Get Started for Free”, and clicking the provided button does lead to a free signup page (I signed up under one of my alternate online identities and as yet have received no response). But the “Become a Member Today!” button on the website takes you here: a Book Guard “subscription package” promising various goodies for the rather odd amount of $28.88 per month. If you proceed to payment, the fine print indicates that this is a repeating charge.

Cheesy emails, dubious business address, fake staff members, lack of any track record: what does it all add up to? I admit I’m on the fence. On the one hand, Book Guard could certainly be an outright scam–run, perhaps, by the very scammers it purports to pursue. No one knows better how numerous scams are, and how desperate authors are to avoid them, than the people running the Philippine boiler rooms; surely it will have occurred to someone to mine that for profit. (I believe they call this vertical integration.)

On the other hand, Book Guard is notably amateurish and sloppy (its website, for example, was created with SeedProd, a drag-and-drop WordPress website builder, and even by that standard is really poorly made). To me it seems just as plausible that it’s a venture launched by a scam victim whose own bad experience gave them a business idea, and who isn’t above a little fakery to make themselves seem credible. This is from the home page; might Stephen Hayes be real after all? 

It wouldn’t even be so hard to deliver the assessments and warnings promised on the Book Guard membership page: all you’d have to do is check Writer Beware now and then and “borrow” our material.

Regardless, there’s not a lot of functional difference between paying for an incompetent service and paying for a fraudulent one: you still wind up out of pocket with nothing to show for it. Scam or homegrown business, Book Guard is predatory. And it’s not hard to see the appeal of what it’s selling.

Writer beware! 

~~~

And there you have it … a phony book scam service that is a giant book scam. It’s a mucky world out there for we authors. You MUST check things out. The Writer Beware window should be on your “go to” place to check who’s on the bad list—there are hundreds of companies—who will rip you off in a nanosecond. If you are concerned about any, or have a retched experience, let them know.

Just saying,

Dr. Judith Briles is a book publishing expert and coach. Often, she must roll up her writing sleeves and become a Book Doctor, juicing up storylines and author words. She empowers authors and works directly with authors who want to be seriously successful and has been writing about and conducting workshops on publishing since the ’80s. Judith is the author of 48 books and 60 book awards including Author YOU: Creating and Building Your Author and Book Platforms, Snappy Sassy Salty: Success for Authors and Writers, and How to Create a Million Dollar Speech. Her personal memoir When God Says NO-Revealing the YES When Adversity and Loss Are Present is a #1 bestseller on Amazon and her historical fiction debut The Secret Journey and The Secret Hamlet. The Secret Rise, book 3 and her first cookbook, Cooking with Judith will be published in 2025. Collectively, her books have earned over 50 book awards. Judith speaks throughout the year at publishing conferences. 

©2025 Judith Briles – The Book Shepherd All Rights Reserved.