Hank Quense writes humorous and satiric sci-fi and fantasy stories and has published 19 books and 50 short stories and dozens of articles. He often lectures on fiction writing and publishing and has a fabulous step-by-step guide called How to Self-publish and Market a Book. In this guest post, he offers expert advice on avoiding costly scams when self-publishing and marketing your work as an indie author:

Being an author these days means you will run into a variety of folks during your activities in making your book known to more readers. Included in these folks are a group known as scam artists. If you are struggling to self-publish a book or if you are trying to market a book, you should know that the internet swarms with these scams artists who search for people like you.  They aren’t interested in your book, they are out to vacuum money from your wallet.  Sooner or later, you’ll get contacted by one of them with an amazing “offer” that promises to get your book published without you working up a sweat.  Or the “offer” will guarantee a ton of book sales or dozens of 5-star reviews and all you have to do is pay a “specially discounted price.”

The tempting thing about these “offers” is that they come with slick websites and the offer really hits a sore spot.  It can solve a nagging problem or seriously reduce your workload.  The “offer”, if valid, can really make a difference in your life as an author or it will sharpen your marketing campaigns.   I know all this stuff because I’ve been scammed once or twice by marketing ploys.

One of my campaigns is to make it more difficult for the scammers to
trick people into coughing up their money.  To that end, I made a
series of videos to alert people to the danger of these scam artists.
An overview on scams is here :https://youtu.be/uGs3Pa_TQRw
A video on publishing scams is here: https://youtu.be/3boajBb9dJc
A book marketing scams video is here: https://youtu.be/UPIH1BdYBHU

If you’re looking for more content on publishing or book marketing or even fiction writing, visit my Writers and Authors Resource Center at http://hankquense.org/wp/writers-and-authors-resource-center/

I’ve taken several of Hank’s workshops and used his excellent marketing guides. So if you are already self-published author or aspiring to be one, you’ll definitely want to check out his resources – they’re comprehensive, reliable, accurate and totally honest!

Bravo, Hank – write and inspire on!