Writer Beware – these two words should be embroidered on the swaddling and delivered with every babe who will later decide to be a writer.  Between stork beak (my mother told me a stork delivered me) and book I was educated, worked for fifty years, experienced the many devious ways of the world and learned to trust little and believe less.

Despite this I was extorted by both Xlibris and URlink.  Xlibris promised much and delivered little. And once URlink had their money they disappeared. Literally. They did NOTHING!  They stole my money and darned near stole my life.

I WISH I HAD KNOWN …..

……..about Writer Beware!  Would I have believed their warnings?  Or would I have concluded that those poor innocents were naïve whereas I’m far too smart to be so easily fooled.  The fact is that the belief I had in myself was easily recognised by the swindlers at URlink. They hooked onto it, tapped into it, fed it with fine phrases and sucked me right into their sneaky little game.

If you, or anyone you know, is about to be caught in this trap – please say the magic words to them – Writer Beware.

Simply type WriterBeware into your search engine  to find the ‘publisher’ names to avoid and why.

HERE’S HOW TO TELL IF A PUBLISHING OFFER IS REAL

If the voice at the end of the phone approached you – or responded instantly to your tentative tappings at a publisher’s name on your keyboard – it’s not real.  Real publishers are so busy reading manuscripts or publishing stuff they believe in that they have neither the time nor the need to tout.

Or, if the spiel sounds familiar (they all read from the same script) hang up and heave a sigh of relief.  

YOU JUST SAVED YOURSELF A HANDFUL OF MONEY.