Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Marketing Loft [Public] => Topic started by: Gerri Attrick on October 21, 2020, 01:35:39 AM
-
Unsolicited email from Book Vampire.
That's the email addy of some place calling themselves Bookshutter. (In fact, I've just noticed that they have an extra 't' in there. Hmm)
The subject was the second in my historical mystery series. I haven't clicked on any links, but here's the text:
We heartily welcome you to our book promotion platform.
Click here- https://bookshutter.com/advertise.php
We get 20K to 30K Visitors per month, Also will feature your in our Monday weekly newsletter of 16,000 subscribers and will send out 105 Promotional tweets to our 350000 Twitter followers in the weekly promotion. you can choose a date according to your wish.
So, to embark on your journey of success Don't miss out on this opportunity!!
ThankYou
Team Bookshuttter
Anyone heard of them (or better yet, used them), or am I right to be suspicious?
-
... am I right to be suspicious?
Phishing suspicion: Yes, yes, and always, yes.
Hover over the link and make sure the destination URL matches the expected/named destination.
Cheers,
R.C.
-
Hmm... The name doesn't show up on Writer Beware
but...
1. The only @bookshutter on Twitter has 881 followers and upon further investigation, it's the right one, which means they're lying about the amount of followers.
2. All of the social media icons at the bottom of their web pages redirect to their contact form, not social media, which is bad form.
3. I randomly looked up some of their featured authors and they're not ranking particularly high on Amazon dot com.
4. They registered their domain name on 12 June 2020, which means they reek of newness.
5. I've tried digging up website traffic stats and ain't getting much useful info, but their hosting provider is in India, for whatever it's worth, while the Twitter account @bookshutter says they're in Texas. Nothing wrong with using a provider on the other side of the world, but it adds a little extra reek to the odor
6. No Facebook presence.
So... I'd say they're not quite honest enough to be worth trying
-
A slew of these things have popped up in the last year spamming me. The pitch is often identical, with different names, and they're clearly automated since they keep asking to promote random books in the series.
My educated guess is that they are scams slapped together to take your relatively small spend ($20-$30) and do very little for you (if anything), but they make thousands for the owners of the sites by casting a wide net. Extremely substandard in other words, even if not phishing.
-
Thanks, everyone.
I shall leave them well alone.