Fraud In Publishing (Jeff Moores)

Anyone who’s ever been a victim of fraud can probably still taste the feeling. It's like biting into rancid meat. The sort of taste all the Tic-Tacs and Altoids in the world won't cure. It makes you feel vulnerable, alone, insecure, perhaps even damaged in some small way. It makes you gun-shy, unwilling or unable to trust. It makes you cynical.

Why is fraud so rampant in the publishing industry?

Is it because writers want so badly to be accepted and successful? Is it because there’s so much to learn, and so few places and people to teach it?

I’m not sure. I wish I knew, and I wish there was a way to put an end to it all.

Fraud is like a cancer that keeps coming back. We can excise it, but it blooms again in another spot. We can treat it, but we can’t always stop it. We can try to prevent it, but we’ll never rid the world of it completely.

We’ve all heard the stories of people pretending to be legitimate literary agents, then charging bogus fees to unsuspecting writers, or recommending freelance editors who give kickbacks in the form of crisp US currency.

There are websites where authors can go to compile information on these people, to help prevent it from happening again, to educate, to make one another aware.

Our good friend David Kuzminski runs just such a site called Preditors & Editors where aspiring authors can research agents and editors they may be unsure of, especially in cases where there’s conflicting information, or little to no information available.

Two wonderful women, Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin, maintain a website called Writer Beware which is part of a larger organization, The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.

So we seem to have a decent handle on prevention, but as we all know, sometimes these cancers, these hucksters, these thieves, slip under the radar. Sometimes they can’t be prevented until they’ve already stolen someone’s hard-earned money.

Backspace was recently fooled by a man named Jeff Moores who claimed to be a literary agent, but had gone into business as a literary consultant. We did our homework. We checked Publishers Marketplace to ensure Mr. Moores had a legitimate track record selling books to reputable publishers. He did. We checked Preditors & Editors to ensure he wasn’t listed in the negative. He wasn’t. We asked around if anyone had worked with him, or knew of him, and knew for any reason why we shouldn’t accept him. No one did.

So, we let him into our virtual home. We allowed him to interact with our good friends, and because we did several people had their hard-earned money stolen right out from under their noses.

Mr. Moores pretended to be a freelance editor, and who wouldn’t want an editor with such solid ties to publishing? Who wouldn’t want an editor that used to be a literary agent?

That’s what we thought, too.

Mr. Moores took several writer’s hard-earned money in exchange for a promise to edit their work, but he never followed through. When deadlines were missed and those writers tried to contact him at first they were given the run-around: health problems, family problems, he’ll get to it ASAP. When more deadlines were missed, Mr. Moores stopped returning emails from the writers whose work he was supposed to be editing, and when those writers began to speak out about this fraud, this theft, Mr. Moores disappeared altogether.

So, what are these writers left to do? They can contact P&E. They can contact Writer Beware. They can contact the Better Business Bureau. They can go to public forums like Absolute Write and let everyone know not to fall for these scams. They can send Mr. Moores an email at jeffreymoores@gmail.com. Maybe they can even contact Google and explain to them that someone is using one of their email accounts for fraudulent purposes, to rip people off?

But, as of right now, what they can’t do is get their money back. They can’t get back their trust, and they can’t get back the confidence and security that were stolen from them by a liar and a cheat. There are few, if any, regulations in publishing. There are even fewer in the world of literary agenting, and even fewer still when it comes to freelance editors.

Don’t make the mistakes that we made. Don’t trust someone unless you know for sure that someone else you trust can vouch for that person, or company, or organization.

Don’t let these frauds and thieves steal your money, your confidence, and your joy.

Writing is a tough business. The economy is in shambles. In order to weather the storm we must pull together, work together, stick together and help each other out.

Please send this post to everyone you know who is an aspiring writer or published author. Link to and/or reproduce this post on your blogs. Send it out to your mailing lists. The more people who are made aware of Mr. Moores' thievery, the more people we can prevent from being ripped off and taken advantage of in the future.

If you have any information on Mr. Moores, please don’t hesitate to contact me at chrisg@bksp.org. We’d love to hear from you. We’d love to set this straight.

And, if you happen to have a few bucks lying around, why don’t you consider donating some of it to Preditors & Editors for the wonderful service they provide? It seems P&E is being sued for supplying writers with information on companies and individuals that are in the habit of stealing from writers, and they can certainly use your help (details below).

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Christopher Graham is a former independent bookstore owner and co-founder of Backspace and The Backspace Book Promotion Network. He has written for a variety of newspapers and his short fiction has appeared in BluePrintReview. He’s currently busy gearing up for ski season, living with his wonderful wife and two crazy dogs in rural Pennsylvania, and hard at work on a thriller.

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