By Marc W. Polite
Good afternoon, everyone. As you may have seen, I was rather busy this weekend. I had an author appearance on Friday, and Saturday. I only posted about the event Saturday, because of time constraints. In the meantime, something occurred that I feel compelled to share with my audience.
Indie authors like myself often fight a series of uphill battles. We as a group are taken less seriously than traditionally published writers, and our works are sometimes regarded as lower quality. Not only do we have to compete within the traditional publishing field, we find ourselves being supplanted by those who utilize artificial intelligence to draft entire works.
This would be enough. But guess what? There’s more! Compound all of this with the fact that, as an indie author trying to promote yourself, it opens you up to unsavory people who are trying to make money off of you by charging for promotional items. Heading into the weekend, a fellow indie author reached out to me about a person who contacted them about free advertising banners. An individual going by the name of “Oliver Ashford” had reached out to them, claiming to have provided me with an author banner for one of my books. They reached out to verify, and I had to inform them that I have not worked with this person at all.
To top it off, they shared with me an image of the email sent to them, and the book banner that they allegedly made for me. I thanked the author for bringing it to my attention. However, this still does not sit well with me.
It is an uncomfortable thought that someone attempted to use my name to scam another author. It is downright confusing. My name is “out there” enough for someone to pluck it off the web to grift someone, but not enough to appear in mainstream bookstores. Absolutely bananas.
The point of me sharing this is to alert other indie authors that things like this are happening. As indie writers, we have to guard our reputations with a certain amount of ferocity. So many unscrupulous people will try to pick your wallet clean if you’re not careful, even if it doesn’t have all that much in it. They don’t care.