Over at mbToolbox, Claire Zulkey passes along a warning about a predatory book company offering their promotional services to self-publishers by way of a new book club “tapping into the multi-billion dollar consumer market.” In their pitch letter, Airleaf appears to say they’ve teamed up with Bowker, one of the publishing industry’s most respected data sources, for a “Bowker Book Club” that claims to provide several marketing assets.
Susan Kirkland, an author on the receiving end of this hustle, points out many of the problems she had with the pitch letter, but here’s the big red flag flapping in front of my eyes: There’s nothing on the Bowker website to indicate that it’s in a partnership with Airleaf, and the Bowker Book Club homepage on the Airleaf site doesn’t say Bowker’s involved with the club in any way. Airleaf does reprint BookWire reviews on its site, but that’s it—no press release announcing a collaboration, nothing. And when you go back and take another look at that pitch letter, you’ll see why. To quote: “Founded in 1872, Bowker is the biggest, most prestigious name in publishing. Bowker is also the host of bookwire.com and booksinprint.com, two of the five websites that will feature your book’s review.”
See? Airleaf never actually says they’re working with Bowker, just that they have a book club that has the same name which happens to repurpose content from Bowker’s websites. It’s a pretty clever con… too bad the watchdogs at Absolute Write are already on to Airleaf’s tricks. See, Airleaf used to be known as Bookman, until Bookman became too notorious for doing, well, exactly the sort of thing Airleaf is doing, minus the flamboyant namedropping. Another scam observer, author Victoria Strauss, has also noticed Airleaf and its rather paranoid counterattack against criticism.