How to idenfiy scammers

Scammers are getting ever more sophisticated these days. Now they come up with excellent imitations of agencies and publishing companies to try to suck money out of authors and writers. I’ve witnessed two of these scams recently. One used at the names of an agency and one of its executives to try and get me to bite. The second used a similar ploy using a publishing company and the name of its acquisition editor, In both cases if you searched for the agency/publisher name and the person, you’d get responses that said both company and person are the real deal.

The tip off that you received a scam is the email address used. Typically, the address is from Gmail or AOL and companies don't use commercial emails accounts. They have their own internal email servers.

This is the email I received from an “agency” (I removed the person’s name): name.agency.book.film@gmail.com. the email said “name” was a member of the Pontas Agency. The legitimate business email for this guy is name@pontas.com. Notice the differences in addresses.

For the publishing company, I received an email from skyhorse.publishing@aol.com. The email said it was from the acquisition manager and gave her name. A search reveled the publishing company is real and so is the name of acquisition manager. But Skyhorse publishing does not have a public email address. If it did, it would look like name@skyhorse.com

It should be noted that the initial emails contain very realistic imitations of the cooperate logos.

< Older Post Newer Post >

Who are the Beginner's Guides for?

By Hank Quense • June 23, 2026

This post will explain who needs each book

Looking of a summer read?

By Hank Quense • June 8, 2026

Here are a few suggestions

Meet the new Beginner's Guide series for writers and authors

By Hank Quense • June 3, 2026

Over the years I’ve seen the same pattern with new writers: tons of enthusiasm, then frustration when the story stalls, the plot won’t cooperate, or the whole publishing and marketing side feels like a maze. So I finally pulled everything I teach and coach about into a set of short, focused “Beginner’s Guide” ebooks.[ Each guide tackles one piece of the journey: Beginners Guide to Planning a Story – taking a loose idea and turning it into a workable plan: characters, plot, setting, and overall storyline. Beginner's Guide to Creating Genuine Characters : how to ensure your characters don't bore the reader. Beginners Guide to Developing a Plot – building believable plots, from inciting incident through climax, plus character and emotional arcs. Beginners Guide to Publishing a Book (and Not Getting Screwed) – a straight‑talk tour of today’s publishing options, including how to avoid the predators. Beginners Guide to Basic Book Marketing – the essentials of book marketing for first‑time authors: landing pages, blurbs, keywords, and building a simple author platform. They’re deliberately short, practical, and meant to be used. Read it in an evening and apply your new knowledge the next day. I have several more Beginner's Guides under development: on scene design, business, mind-mapping and AI assistants. There is also a free Beginner's Guide Starter Kit: it contains material from each guide including the ones under development. You can download a copy here.