I paid £120 upfront in October for 6-weeks’ Intensive Marketing for my Hollywood novel SOAP-STUD & BLUE-MOVIE GIRL and my Mafia Romance LILLIAN AND THE ITALIANS.

Roslyn Pray (probably not her real name)  claimed to be an “Amazon Marketing & Book Growth Specialist” and incorporated genuine testimonial links from the website, of a “hybrid” Canadian publisher, who checked out OK online and gave me a false sense of confidence.

“Roslyn Pray” kept up a nicely worded correspondence and endlessly promised a tailored marketing campaign, but the only thing she delivered was a review of her own on Reddit which got the plot wrong – she hadn’t “reddit”. I gave her two video-clip trailers from my publishers which were never used. Several sincere-sounding apologies for the delay, but NO ACTUAL PROMOTION. Zero change in my Amazon Rating and zero e-book sales. It was only yesterday when I posted a warning review about the Canadian publishers on TrustPilot that i knew she was a scammer. Her email address includes a false connection to hybrid publishers. My bad: the publishers are genuine but she is not.

This woman is a crafty operator; she even created a fake contract. UK£120 down the drain. I could use some four-letter words for this scamstress.

Over the past few weeks I have been contacted by others peddling the same help with Marketing and Manipulation of Keywords. Are they all scammers? Are they all HER? I guess there’s no way to tell the fake from the bona-fide  unless someone you know and trust can point you towards a service that has worked for them.

Writing defines me. It’s what I do. At 83, in declining health, I am 60 pages into a new novel, a tw0-family saga. with a strong LGBT element – my trademark! My books sell poorly, because I have limited IT skills. I wish I could find someone – an Influencer? – who would genuinely help with Promotion and Marketing without charging vast upfront sums. If Ms Pray had been the real McCoy I would have paid her a generous commission out of my my boosted sales.

The self-publishing road is fraught with conmen – and con-women. too, it seems. Authors, beware!