Writers Beware!

This week I received an unsolicited e-mail from this company, Fliploud. So what? We all get this kind of stuff. I hate it with a disproportionate vengeance. Except, I had one of these a few months ago and didn’t even read it that time, it went straight in the rubbish bin (possibly with other stuff I should have read!) You might recognise it…

Hi Honorable Author Alexandra Peel,

I hope your book “Sticks & Stones” is doing well.

I am an associate of Fliploud.com -one of the biggest book promotion companies.

At Fliploud we reward book readers with Gift Cards when they read books listed in the Fliploud library hence it gives a lot of exposure to new books and authors.

Here are few key features of our Fliploud Book Promotion services-

1. We will list your book on our site for 30 days. The benefit is that you can get more sales from our site visitors. We get more than 75,000 visits per month.

2. Featuring your book in our weekly email newsletter to more than 65000 subscribers.

3. Promoting the book on social media to more than 1 Million combined followers.

4. Recommending your book to our 1000 social media contacts with a personal message.

If you are interested in listing your book on Fliploud, please visit Fliploud Book Listing for more details.

You can also promote your other book too, which book you want.

For any further questions, please feel free to write to us.

Thank You

Team Fliploud

Okay. That’s the letter. Yep, it’s promotional. Initially it appears to be promising great things – What! You’re gonna promote the shit out of my Book and I’ll make a tonne of dosh?! Woo!

You know when you go on a first date and he/she does something you might find odd, not cutesy, what a funny character odd, but ODD – alarm bells may ring – you should always take note. So let’s look a little closer at the e-mail I received…

*At this point I want to say, I have NO PROOF THAT THIS COMPANY IS REAL, FAKE, LEGIT OR OTHERWISE – I am not on a defamation mission, all I’m attempting to do is raise awareness in the writing community about those that are willing to make money off your efforts.* Other ‘companies’ are available*

So –

1) ‘Hi Honorable Author Alexandra Peel‘. And yes it is bold type in the original. No-one in the western world calls one another ‘Honorable’. This is specifically an eastern trait in the spoken and written word. As a Brit, I also recognise the spelling as not being UK English – honourable, is how we spell it. So this is either someone working in Asia, or an Asian working in America. This introduction immediately puts me on alert – it’s over the top, it comes across as creepy, sucky, and you don’t know me, so don’t say ‘Hi’! Where did they get my details? Who’s been trolling for business? What else of my stuff have you accessed!!

2) ‘I am an associate…’ we will return to this…

3) ‘One of the biggest book promotion companies‘. Well, I’ve never heard of them, but that doesn’t mean shit, I don’t know heaps of things… I asked around and no writer I spoke to had heard of them. Online, people have, but in a puzzled ‘who’? Kind of way. On their Support For Indie Authors discussion thread – Goodreads members have shared some feelings about the ‘company’. – https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19147288-fliploud

It’s a pretty bold claim to make. But hang fire a moment – it doesn’t say where in the world it is the biggest book promo company! It could be Outer Mongolia, the Faroe Islands, anywhere! So they may be the biggest wherever they are. We just don’t know because it doesn’t tell us much on their web-page!

4) ‘we reward book readers with Gift Cards when they read books listed in the Fliploud library‘. Whoop-de-doo. This is pure, self-promotion on the part of the company. Remember, you don’t get anything for nothing, this is a way to drive traffic to their own site and thus increase revenue.

5) ‘We will list your book on our site for 30 days‘. So what? They claim to have 75,000 visitors a month, but we have no way to substantiate that claim. Maybe they do, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t be sending e-mails to writer’s like me if it were true. Besides, twenty minutes work to stick a picture of your book up, then just leave it there on the site page is no big deal. And 30 days is not a long time.

6) ‘1000 social media contacts with a personal message.’ Go and check out the links. They aren’t personal at all. In fact, when I looked at them, I discovered – 1 Facebook profile did not open/exist anymore, 2 had the same Profile picture (which always smacks of fake to me), and there are no personal posts or photos that would suggest that real people exist behind these accounts. No personal stuff on Twitter and Facebook is often an indication of dodgy goings on.

7) ‘Thank You Team Fliploud‘ – see #2. The letter began with a single person and ended with a team! Who wrote to me? What’s your name? This is not how you structure a letter, especially a business one.

Fliploud does not come up on a UK company search. I did a number of searches on business company check sites, including international. There is no contact address on the site – it does not, as far as I can see, even say where in the world they are based. Two of the #handles have the same initials as those of whomever set of the website. It all begins to smell a little suspicious to me.

Fliploud says it promotes your content online. I’m not disputing that. It does (maybe), to a greater or lesser degree than you imagine. But you need to be aware that there are charges, of course there are, it’s how they make their money, you get nothing for free remember! So how much will it cost you?Their page tells us they they will promote your book on Facebook, Twitter, and their own website. It costs: $19 (£14) Basic/ $29 (£22) Standard/ $49 (£37) Premium. But it doesn’t explain which of these rates, Basic, Standard or Premium relates to the number of posts they will generate on your behalf.

And another thing – Fliploud also promotes Apps, Online Stores, Online Courses, Competitions and Crowd Funding events – it isn’t just about books – it isn’t a publishing company – it is about them making money off you. We are all aware that models are told never to pay for a portfolio of pics, well this is similar – you shouldn’t need to pay to promote your work. Ultimately it’s your choice though.

My Spidey senses tingle the more I read about this company. I may be totally wrong, but I strongly suspect that this is an individual, or small group of individuals, who are extremely tech savvy. They have time to have multiple accounts and time to keep promoting these on a weekly basis – bear in mind, that there are jobs that will pay you to sit at home and type stuff for them, on an hourly basis.

All I’m saying is ‘Buyer Beware’

P.S: If anyone can prove me wrong in my suspicions, then let me know.