Jul 4, 2026 · 1 hr 52 min · 14 segments
All things America! Thomas and Jonathan celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States by discussing publishing trends and how America was shaped by independent publishers.
Thomas UmstattdHost
Jonathan ShuergerHostA sophisticated ring of scammers is impersonating IngramSpark through lookalike websites, emails, social media accounts, phone calls, and text messages that will pressure authors into paying fees or handing over banking details or according to the company's official publishing fraud alert.
These impersonators are using stolen logos and dozens of copycat domains to falsely promise editing, proofreading, design, and distribution services that IngramSpark does not offer and explicitly states it never charges authors to upload titles for global availability.
So a good rule of thumb for any of these emails, because they look like they're selling you legitimate services from a legitimate company.
is to always go back to that company's website and reach out to that company through contact means that are on the company's website.
So don't go to For Reals or Really IngramSpark.com or IngramSpark.net or whatever.
What makes this fraud so sophisticated is that they're using... assets and trademarked images from ingram sparks website to create a website that looks like it's ingram sparks website to sell the kinds of services that it's not a surprise that ingram spark would offer they don't offer these these fraudsters are offering them instead and just be careful and i will say on authormedia.social we have a whole board Just called Scams.
It's a lot of fun to read, but it's also good to read because some of the scams are more sophisticated than others.
We're sniffing out the scams very quickly there at authormedia.social. And you don't need an account at authormedia.social to read the scam board and see all the things we're finding.
I publish all my books through IngramSparkForRealsies.com. Amazon terminates innocent authors' KDP accounts.
This episode with guest Leslie Hensel details how roughly one-third of these terminations stem from Amazon errors or unintentional mistakes and shares a proven appeal strategy that focuses every message on how this issue affects buyers.
Authors who publish exclusively through Amazon now have stronger motivation to spread their sales across multiple platforms and adopt rigorous prevention steps before their accounts face the same sudden threat.
The story behind this episode actually goes back to that contest we did a bunch of weeks ago where I got all of those Your Book emails because thousands of people got added to my onboarding sequence.
And one of the common themes that came up in the Tell Me About Your Book and Your Publishing were authors sharing terrible accounts or terrible stories of their accounts getting suspended.
And so part of that episode, the first half is actually what to do to keep your account from getting suspended, how to avoid trouble in the first place.
A sophisticated ring of scammers is impersonating IngramSpark through lookalike websites, emails, social media accounts, phone calls, and text messages that will pressure authors into paying fees or handing over banking details or according to the company's official publishing fraud alert.
These impersonators are using stolen logos and dozens of copycat domains to falsely promise editing, proofreading, design, and distribution services that IngramSpark does not offer and explicitly states it never charges authors to upload titles for global availability.
So a good rule of thumb for any of these emails, because they look like they're selling you legitimate services from a legitimate company.
is to always go back to that company's website and reach out to that company through contact means that are on the company's website.
So don't go to For Reals or Really IngramSpark.com or IngramSpark.net or whatever.
What makes this fraud so sophisticated is that they're using... assets and trademarked images from ingram sparks website to create a website that looks like it's ingram sparks website to sell the kinds of services that it's not a surprise that ingram spark would offer they don't offer these these fraudsters are offering them instead and just be careful and i will say on authormedia.social we have a whole board Just called Scams.
It's a lot of fun to read, but it's also good to read because some of the scams are more sophisticated than others.
We're sniffing out the scams very quickly there at authormedia.social. And you don't need an account at authormedia.social to read the scam board and see all the things we're finding.
I publish all my books through IngramSparkForRealsies.com. Amazon terminates innocent authors' KDP accounts.
This episode with guest Leslie Hensel details how roughly one-third of these terminations stem from Amazon errors or unintentional mistakes and shares a proven appeal strategy that focuses every message on how this issue affects buyers.
Authors who publish exclusively through Amazon now have stronger motivation to spread their sales across multiple platforms and adopt rigorous prevention steps before their accounts face the same sudden threat.
The story behind this episode actually goes back to that contest we did a bunch of weeks ago where I got all of those Your Book emails because thousands of people got added to my onboarding sequence.
And one of the common themes that came up in the Tell Me About Your Book and Your Publishing were authors sharing terrible accounts or terrible stories of their accounts getting suspended.
And so part of that episode, the first half is actually what to do to keep your account from getting suspended, how to avoid trouble in the first place.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
