Fellow authors, stop me if you’ve seen this one before:
Hello {{author-name}},
Congrats on all your books, including ‘{{BOOK-TITLE}}‘ — what an achievement! We’re here to help you shine the spotlight on this or any of your titles of your choice.
What we offer:
200 tweets over 20 days — reaching 10,000+ readers & 600+ engagements
40 Instagram posts + a year-long feature in our Highlights
Your book featured on our website for 12 months✨ For a limited time: 30% off all packages.
Ready to get started?
Simply choose your book and we’ll handle the rest — all packages and pricing are available on our website.We’d love to help amplify your work!
Best regards,
Team Bookknocks
Now, in case it isn’t obvious, “Team Bookknocks” is a scam. I doubt the person who contacted me from a throwaway Gmail address is real, either. Or maybe she (?) is, and she really needs to rethink her life choices. She could’ve at least tried to look legit by contacting me from the email listed on their website, info@bookknocks.com. Too much effort, I guess.
Anyway.
As of early July 2024, Team Bookknocks has around 8,000 followers on Twitter, which is a far cry from the 10,000 followers they’re boasting. Their latest posts have 0 (zero) engagements and under 10 views.
But maybe that’s just because Twitter’s dying. After all, all the quality people already jumped ship, right?
On Instagram, Bookknocks has a little over 7,000 followers. Their recent posts, meanwhile, have 1 like and 0 comments each.
Their website, which comes with horrendous Alegria art, has an estimated 0 organic traffic on ahrefs and a ranking of >1M on Alexa, so it might as well not exist for any promotional purposes. I’m not going to link it, just because they don’t deserve the traffic. I will note that their package offers a 12-month feature of a book of my choosing on their website, but there are no featured books in sight.
The website claims Bookknocks (Book knocks? At least settle on a spelling and capitalization, guys…) can get you a minimum of 1,000 impressions and 400 engagements on Twitter, as well as “exclusive hashtags for Instagram”, whatever that means.
So how much does Bookknocks charge for the privilege of shouting your book into a void?
This post is a PSA. Scammers like Bookknocks prey on authors who don’t know any better. They promise you the moon and, if you don’t do the research, you’ll throw $59 into the wind and get absolutely nothing for it. Sure, one of their customer reviews says the author made a sale from a direct link on Twitter. Even if that happened, if they sold a book at, say, $24, and paid a minimum of $39 for the privilege, that’s a $15 loss.
What’s sadder is that scammers like Bookknocks are a dime a dozen; I get at least 2-3 of those in my inbox every week. Sometimes it’s the same scam, other times it’s a different one. Authors, take care out there. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
