Over the last few months, I received several variations of the following message in my author inbox:
Hi {{author-name}},
Want to boost your book’s visibility and reach more readers? At Book Promo Zone, we offer simple, effective promotions to get your book noticed.
Here’s what we offer:
📬 Newsletter Promotion – Reach 10,000+ engaged subscribers. Sent every Tuesday (high open rate) and Friday (strong sales days).
📘 Facebook Group Posts – Two daily posts in top reader groups with 50k+ members. Build interest where readers already gather.
📌 Pinterest Sharing – Tap into Pinterest’s search-driven platform to get your book in front of new audiences.
Ready to begin?
Visit our website to choose your package and fill in the details—or just reply to this email and we’ll help you get started.Best regards,
Team Book Promo Zone
Before I dive into why Book Promo Zone is a scam, let’s have a look at the red flags in this email, which are plenty:
- Sent from a generic @gmail address rather than an @bookpromozone.com one. I doubt the person who emailed me actually exists. A legitimate business always emails from an own-domain address, even if it’s just noreply@domain.com.
- Big numbers with nothing to back them up: 10k+ newsletter subscribers, Facebook groups with 50k+ members (note that they neither name nor link to the actual groups).
- Lofty claims meant to prime you to think positively about their services simply by association: “high open [newsletter] rate”, “strong sales”, “new audiences”.
Although the email says “visit our website” to learn more, there’s no website link provided, but I went ahead and looked them up anyway.
Right out the gate, their website screams “scam”:
Book Promo Zone worked with none of these authors, but they’re appropriating their success to again create a subconscious association between some of the most popular books to ever be published and their own scammy product. I’d love to know what Dan Brown, Colleen Hoover or the Tolkien estate would have to say about this.
Next, under “Why Choose Us”, comes this magnificent word soup:
Saying AI wrote this would be an insult to AI. Also, again, we see unsubstantiated claims of “access to 120k readers” (10k more than they offer in their newsletter) and “highest engagement rate”.
“But failb0at,” I hear someone screeching in the background, “they show a screenshot of their newsletter engagement!”
Oh, you mean this one?
I’m sorry to burst your failed-basic-Internet-safety bubble, but anyone can fake a chart. Besides, the numbers don’t make any sense. Adding together the total units for what I assume is meant to be a typical week, we get roughly:
- 382 Highest Engagement Rate
- 616 Highest Conversion
But what does that mean? (Spoiler: It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just there to look pretty.)
Oh, and they pretty much burn themselves in the same content block, where they claim that the highest open rate is on Fridays and is 18.90%. Which, naturally, means that they can’t have a highest open rate of 75% on Tuesday as well.
Also, their claim to track conversions is demonstrable bullshit simply because of how conversion tracking works, but I can’t be bothered to get into it (Google’s free).
Let’s have a look at the totally-not-fake reviews from alleged authors who allegedly made use of Book Promo Zone’s book promotion services:
“Book Promo Zone Book Promotions helped me reach thousands of new readers. My book sales have increased significantly!” says “Michael Green”, alleged author. Let’s see if we can find this Michael Green.
There are sixteen Michael Greens listed as authors on Goodreads (ouch).
The most famous is probably Michael Green, comics author, who looks nothing like our Michael. Neither do any of the others (I checked). I’m also noted that our Michael’s review conspicuously fails to mention the book he found “thousands of new readers” for, as do all other fake reviews.
A quick reverse image search for Michael’s photo reveals that he’s not only an author, but also an API expert and a medical services provider:
At this point, it’s safe to say that this Michael Green doesn’t exist, nor do the other authors who allegedly got a sales boost from Book Promo Zone. It’s painfully clear that the Book Promo Zone scammers used a DEI stock photo pack and slapped some generic, white-sounding names and quotes on them, hoping to sucker some real authors into paying them cash. I feel sorry for the guys and gal whose faces these scammers used. I’d hate it if my face was used to scam well-meaning but naïve authors out of their cash.
Speaking of which, Book Promo Zone charges a hefty weekly fee for, basically, nothing:
I’d marvel at the sheer audacity, but scammers wouldn’t go through the time and effort to set up these scams if they didn’t work.
Stay safe out there, friends.
