Would you pay $12k to get a book deal?

More importantly: SHOULD you?

Hi, authors! I’ll return to my publicity/pitching-the-media series soon, but something’s come up and I wanted to address it. Over the last couple of weeks, I witnessed some social-media draaaama [Pride-month voice] over self-declared gurus charging fat sums for coaching and programs with big promises: I’ll get you an agent, I’ll make you an author who earns $100k+, etc.

I mostly stayed out of the fray except to sighingly observe on Threads that people who yell, “I’M RICH PAY ME TO LEARN MY SECRET” often make their money by gouging vulnerable people (this is true across industries, imho!) and to share to my Stories the following Reel from YA author Diana Urban (peep the caption and follow her for lots of publishing realness):

dianaurban

A post shared by @dianaurban

I’m not interested in putting anyone on blast (like….why), but I do have a very important message for prepublication authors: