Almost a year ago, I decided to conduct an experiment. I had a collection of research from a project called Smudged Lines that had never quite become what I originally intended. Rather than let all of that work disappear into a folder on my computer, I wondered what would happen if I repurposed some of it into something completely different. The result was 30 Days of Micro-Creativity, a hybrid self-help book and guided journal that I published through Amazon. I made it available as a print-on-demand book as well as through Kindle Unlimited.

I didn’t publish it expecting to launch a new writing career. I already had one. I published my first book more than a decade ago, and I currently have two books under contract with an established independent publisher. 30 Days of Micro-Creativity was an experiment. I wanted to see what I could do with research I already had and what the experience of independently publishing a book through Amazon would actually look like.

One unexpected part of that experiment has been what happened after publication. I began receiving emails from people who had supposedly discovered my book and were incredibly impressed by it. They loved my writing. They believed the message was important. They thought the book deserved a much larger audience. Some seemed almost personally invested in seeing me succeed as an author. Fortunately, they also happened to offer exactly the service that could make that happen.

Sometimes it was book marketing. Sometimes it was placement on a website showcasing books. Other times it was the possibility of interviews, promotional campaigns, speaking opportunities, or assistance developing future books. The specifics varied, but the message underneath them was remarkably consistent. They had discovered my work, recognized something special in it, and wanted to help me get the attention I deserved.

There is just one problem with that story: almost no one has read the book.

That isn’t insecurity talking. I have the data. Because I published 30 Days of Micro-Creativity through Amazon, I can see its sales activity and Kindle Unlimited page reads. Nothing has moved in at least six months. I know this isn’t a book quietly developing a following somewhere I can’t see. People aren’t buying it, and Kindle Unlimited subscribers aren’t suddenly reading it in large numbers. Yet somehow people continue to find their way into my inbox to tell me how impressed they are by my writing and how strongly they believe in the book’s message.

So I have started wondering how impressed someone can really be by a book they almost certainly haven’t read.

I think that question points to something larger happening in the publishing world, particularly around self-published authors. What bothers me about these solicitations isn’t simply that someone is trying to sell me something. Authors hire people all the time. Editors, cover designers, publicists, marketers, formatters, web designers, and other professionals provide legitimate services that authors may choose to purchase. There is nothing inherently wrong with paying someone for expertise, and self-published authors in particular may need to hire professionals to perform work that would otherwise be handled by a publisher.

What feels different is the way the service is being sold. The initial product isn’t really marketing. It is validation.

Someone isn’t simply emailing to say, “We provide book marketing services, and we would like your business.” Instead, the sales pitch begins by establishing that I have been noticed. My work has been discovered. Someone recognizes my talent. Someone understands how important my message is. Someone believes I should be reaching more people. Only after establishing that does the offer for a paid service appear.

For an author, particularly one who is new to publishing, that can be incredibly persuasive. Writing a book is a strange combination of confidence and vulnerability. You have to believe strongly enough in an idea to spend months or years creating it, and then you release it into a marketplace that may respond with complete silence. Even traditionally published authors discover pretty quickly that publication doesn’t guarantee an audience. For a self-published author without the support or name recognition of a publisher, that silence can be even louder.

Then an email arrives telling you that someone sees what you have created.

I can understand how easy it would be to believe it. My own publishing experience makes me skeptical, but what if this were my first book? What if I had spent years writing it? What if I had invested my savings into editing, formatting, and cover design? What if I had published it and watched the sales numbers barely move? What if I was beginning to wonder whether anyone would ever notice it? How much would it be worth to hear someone say that the book really is good and that the only thing standing between it and a larger audience is the right marketing?

That is where I think the conversation becomes more complicated than simply asking whether these companies are scams.

Can It Be Predatory If the Service Is Real?

Some of the websites I have investigated appear to provide actual services. There are real books displayed on them. Some even feature books from recognizable authors alongside the much larger number of self-published titles. A company might genuinely put your book on its website. It might actually create a promotional campaign, distribute a press release, produce an interview, or provide whatever other deliverable was included in the package.

If you pay for a service and receive that service, can we really call it a scam?

Maybe “scam” isn’t always the most useful word. A better question might be whether the service has meaningful value and whether the way it is being sold accurately represents that value. A website can genuinely display my book without having an audience of readers who are likely to buy it. An interview can genuinely exist without anyone listening to it. A press release can genuinely be distributed without generating meaningful publicity. A social media campaign can generate impressions without generating readers. In each case, the company may technically deliver exactly what it promised while accomplishing very little for the author who purchased it.

That distinction becomes especially important when the sales pitch implies something much larger than the actual deliverable. Authors aren’t purchasing a webpage because they desperately want another webpage on the internet containing a picture of their book. They are purchasing the possibility of discovery. They want readers. They want sales. They want reviews. They want speaking opportunities. They want the book they worked so hard to create to go somewhere.

No ethical marketer can guarantee those outcomes, of course. Marketing has never worked that way. A legitimate publicist can do excellent work without producing a bestseller. The difference is that a reputable professional should be able to explain what they are doing, who they are trying to reach, why they believe a particular strategy makes sense for your particular book, and how you will evaluate whether the investment was worthwhile. “Exposure” alone isn’t a meaningful outcome if no one can tell you who is actually being exposed to the book.

This isn’t simply my skepticism about a few strange emails. Writer Beware, a publishing-industry watchdog sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, specifically warns writers about marketing and promotional services that aggressively solicit authors. It notes that some services genuinely provide what they advertise but may still offer authors very little practical benefit. It also warns about promotional packages built around inexpensive, easily produced services such as press releases, book trailers, social media promotion, paid interviews, and book-fair displays. In other words, “They really did what they said they would do” isn’t necessarily the same thing as “This was a worthwhile investment.”

The Vanity Press Didn’t Disappear. Maybe It Evolved.

The more I have thought about this, the more it reminds me of the old vanity press model. For years, aspiring writers were warned about companies that made their money primarily from authors rather than readers. The traditional warning was fairly straightforward: legitimate publishers pay authors; authors don’t pay publishers. The reality has become more complicated with legitimate self-publishing services and hybrid publishing models, but the underlying question remains useful: Who is actually the customer?

Self-publishing platforms changed that landscape dramatically. Today, an author doesn’t need to pay thousands of dollars to a vanity press just to see a book in print. Amazon and other platforms have made it possible for someone to independently publish a professional-looking book with relatively little upfront expense. That democratization has created opportunities for writers whose work might never fit neatly into traditional publishing.

But eliminating one gatekeeper didn’t eliminate authors’ hopes. It may simply have created a new market around them.

If you can no longer charge an author thousands of dollars for the privilege of having a book printed, you can sell them everything that supposedly comes next. You can sell visibility, marketing, publicity, interviews, trailers, awards, reviews, showcases, coaching, consulting, speaking opportunities, and the possibility that the next investment might finally be the one that causes the book to take off.

In that sense, I wonder whether we are witnessing the evolution of the vanity press rather than its disappearance. The old model sold writers the dream of becoming published authors. The new model may be selling published authors the dream of becoming successful ones.

Why Self-Published Authors Make Such Attractive Targets

Self-published authors are particularly attractive customers for this kind of business because they are remarkably easy to identify. Their books are publicly listed. Their names are attached to them. Many have author websites, social media profiles, or public email addresses. The book description provides enough information for someone to create a personalized-sounding message without ever opening the book itself.

More importantly, these are people who have already demonstrated a willingness to invest in their work. Many have paid for editing, cover design, formatting, advertising, or other publishing expenses. They believe in what they have created, as they should. They also may not have access to an editor, agent, publisher, or experienced author network that can help them evaluate whether a solicitation is normal, useful, overpriced, or completely worthless.

That makes praise a remarkably effective marketing strategy. Tell an author you offer publicity services and you are making a sales call. Tell an author you discovered their book, were moved by its message, and believe it deserves a larger audience, and suddenly the conversation feels very different. Now you aren’t simply a salesperson. You are someone who recognizes what the author has been hoping other people would recognize all along.

What makes some of these companies even more convincing is that their websites don’t necessarily look suspicious. When I have followed the links, I have sometimes found legitimate books and recognizable names. That gives the entire operation an air of credibility. If established authors appear alongside the self-published books being promoted, it is easy to assume that everyone represented there received the same service, under the same circumstances, and benefited from it in the same way.

We don’t actually know that. The presence of a recognizable author doesn’t tell us whether that author paid for the service, whether a publisher arranged it, whether the placement was part of some unrelated promotional arrangement, or whether the author even considers it particularly valuable. Most importantly, it doesn’t tell a prospective customer whether purchasing that same service will result in additional readers or sales.

Before You Pay, Do Some Digging

That is why I think authors need to ask something more complicated than, “Is this company legitimate?” A company can be real. The people working there can be real. The website can be real. The service can be real. The deliverable can be real. You can establish all of those things and still conclude that giving the company your money isn’t a good idea.

One of the first places I would check is Writer Beware. The organization maintains information about questionable publishers, agents, editors, publicity services, and other businesses targeting writers, and it even offers a research service for writers with questions about companies or individuals in the publishing industry. Not finding a company there doesn’t prove that it is trustworthy, particularly if the business is new, but it is a useful place to begin your research.

I would also investigate how long the company and its website have existed. Domain-registration information and archived versions of websites can help you establish at least part of a company’s history. A website that appeared six months ago isn’t automatically suspicious. Every legitimate business was new once. But context matters. If a company claims years of publishing experience, hundreds of successful clients, or longstanding industry relationships while its online presence seems to have materialized earlier this year, I would want to know more. A recently registered domain combined with grand claims about a long-established reputation should prompt questions, not necessarily conclusions.

Then I would look beyond the testimonials the company selected for its own website. If authors are identified as clients, search for them independently. Look at their books, websites, and social media accounts. When appropriate, consider contacting a few of them directly. Ask whether they actually purchased the service, what they received, whether they saw measurable results, and, perhaps most revealingly, whether they would spend the money again. A polished testimonial tells you what a company wants prospective customers to hear. A private conversation with someone who has already written the check may tell you something very different.

Recognizable names deserve investigation too. If a promotional company displays books by well-known traditionally published authors, don’t automatically assume those authors hired or endorsed the company. Try to determine what the relationship actually was. A famous book cover on a website provides credibility by association, but it isn’t evidence that the author recommends the service being offered to you.

Look at the people behind the company as well. If someone describes themselves as a publishing expert, publicist, literary professional, or book-marketing specialist, find out what that means. Can you locate evidence of their professional history outside of the company’s own website? Have they worked for publishers, agencies, media organizations, booksellers, or established publicity firms? Do their professional claims exist anywhere other than biographies they wrote about themselves?

It is also worth searching the company’s name alongside terms such as “complaints,” “reviews,” or “scam,” while remembering that search results require judgment too. Search for discussions that weren’t published by the company itself. Look at its social media presence and actual engagement rather than follower counts alone. If something about the solicitation sounds oddly generic, search a distinctive sentence from the email. You may discover that the supposedly personal assessment of your book is actually part of a template being sent to large numbers of authors.

Most importantly, separate two questions that are very easy to combine: Is this a real company, and is this a worthwhile service? Those are not the same question. You can confirm that a company exists, has real employees, has worked with real authors, and delivers exactly what it promises and still decide that spending $1,000 to have your book displayed on its website is unlikely to accomplish anything meaningful for you.

That second question requires different evidence. If they are selling a podcast or interview appearance, look at the actual audience and engagement for previous episodes. If they are selling social media promotion, examine those accounts yourself. Thousands of followers mean very little if posts receive almost no interaction. If they are selling placement on a book-discovery website, ask how many readers visit it, where those readers come from, and how the company attracts them. If they promise publicity, ask for examples of media coverage they have secured for comparable authors. Don’t settle for how many people could theoretically see your book. Find out what has actually happened for authors who purchased the service.

And give yourself time. Urgency becomes particularly powerful when it is combined with praise. If someone has just told you that your book is wonderful, that they see tremendous potential in you, and that they happen to have a special opportunity available right now, it can feel as though saying no means allowing your chance to slip away. A legitimate professional service should survive a few days of research.

Perhaps the rule I am taking away from my experiment is this: the more a company wants you to believe it has already vetted you, the more thoroughly you should vet them.

What, Specifically, Did You Like?

There is one more test that I think may be the simplest of all. If someone contacts you because they supposedly loved your book, ask them what specifically they liked about it. What idea stood out? Was there a particular section that caught their attention? What about the book made them think it was a good fit for the service they are proposing?

The goal isn’t to quiz someone on your book or demand that they prove themselves. It is simply to distinguish genuine engagement with the work from praise that could have been generated from the title, description, author biography, or information readily available on the book’s Amazon page. If someone really read your book and was sufficiently impressed by it to contact you personally, asking what specifically impressed them should not be a difficult question.

My little self-publishing experiment has unintentionally given me an interesting way to evaluate these solicitations. I know how many people are reading 30 Days of Micro-Creativity. The answer, at least recently, is almost no one. That doesn’t bother me. The book served the purpose I originally intended for it. What fascinates me is that its lack of readership hasn’t stopped strangers from repeatedly contacting me to say how impressed they are by it.

That makes me wonder how many authors receive the same emails without having the same perspective. How many are publishing their first book and desperately hoping for someone to notice? How many interpret these messages as evidence that their breakthrough might finally be happening? How many spend hundreds or thousands of dollars because someone told them exactly what every writer longs to hear: I found your work, I think you’re talented, and I think more people need to see this?

And that leads to the question that troubles me much more than whether any individual company technically qualifies as a scam: How much money is being made from that hope?

I don’t think the answer is that authors should never spend money promoting their books. Professional services can be valuable, and independent authors are essentially running small publishing businesses. Editing, design, publicity, advertising, and marketing all cost money, and sometimes investing in those services makes perfect sense. The important distinction is whether an author is purchasing professional expertise with a clear purpose and a way to evaluate its value, or purchasing the promise that success is one more payment away.

Maybe that is what makes this feel so much like a new version of the vanity press. The vanity isn’t really vanity at all. Most writers aren’t dreaming about fame so much as hoping that something they spent months or years creating will matter to someone else. They want readers. They want their ideas to travel beyond their own computer screens. They want some evidence that all of that work meant something.

There will always be businesses willing to sell access to that dream. The old vanity press told writers that their book deserved to be published and, for a price, it could make that happen. The new version may be telling writers that their book deserves to be discovered and, for a price, it can make that happen.

Maybe the service is real. Maybe the website is real. Maybe the interview is real. Maybe the promotional campaign is real. That still doesn’t tell you whether any of it is worth paying for.

So when someone appears in your inbox telling you how much they loved your book, enjoy the compliment if you want to. Then do what you would do with anyone else who wants your money: ask questions, look for evidence, check their history, talk to people who have worked with them, and figure out exactly what you’re buying.

And before you reach for your credit card, ask one more question.

What, specifically, made you like my book?