Ed Williams said:
One thing "Ten Percent of Nothing" taught me was that you don't have to be super intelligent to run a successful scam - just be amoral as hell and luck into a good idea/concept.
Ed, I rarely disagree with you, fount of humor and wisdom that you are...but here I must differ. Dorothy's scam (and Jim Van Treese's scam, and Don Phelan's scam, and Martha Ivery's scam, and the Titsworths' scam) weren't successful, because they got greedy, crashed and burned, and got caught. Sure, they were all flying high for a while, but they weren't able to sustain it. A successful scam is one that lasts.
Case in point: Cynthia Sterling of the Lee Shore Agency/Sterling House Publishers/C. Shore Publishers. She has been running a soup to nuts literary scam for longer than any of the others (marketing fees, editing fees, fees for a zillion adjunct services, kickbacks from Edit Ink, kickbacks from various vanity publishers, shoving clients into her own vanity publisher) and it's still going strong--and I get fewer complaints about her than about any of the major scammers, and even many of the not-exactly-scammers, I'm tracking.
What are the hallmarks of a successful scam?
- A professional front. Cynthia has nice stationary and professional-looking literature. She doesn't make typos or basic grammatical errors. She knows the lingo, and can use it with authority. She talks nice on the phone. Word is she and her staff make vicious fun of clients in private, but to their faces clients are treated with an appearance of respect.
- Give clients something for their money. A fundamental mistake that a lot of scammers make is to take the money and disappear, or browbeat clients when they ask for information, or tell ridiculous lies to excuse nonperformance, or provide a service (such as editing) that even a total newbie can recognize as fake. So Cynthia actually does red-pencil the manuscripts she takes on for editing. She really does make submissions, thus generating form rejection letters, so clients have something physical to hold: "Look! My literary agent's working for me!" When, after months of rejections, it finally comes time to make the pitch for vanity publishing, she doesn't try to pretend they won't have to pay, and really does print up their books (not in the numbers she promises, of course--just the 200 or so she puts in the author's hands. She's gambling--correctly--that she won't get caught, since the author will be hard put to sell even that many).
- Don't get greedy. Don't push the scam parameters to the breaking point. Don't milk your clients to the last parasitic gasp. String people along. Fleece them slowly and gently. Let them go while they still have something left.
- Don't get crazy. A successful sociopath knows how to blend in, and has enough self-control to maintain a convincing pretense of sanity (the Deerings and Martha Ivery especially had major problems with this).
- Don't forget that your clients are your lifeline. Sure, you may loathe them. You may totally despise them. But they're your business. They need to be cultivated even as you screw them. A really basic error a lot of scammers make is that they can't keep their glee or their arrogance or their contempt properly hidden.
The above is why Cynthia is still in business, and probably going to be in business for some time to come. If anyone wants to take pointers for a successful scam, take them from her.
- Victoria