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TikTok’s Near Ban And Crackdowns On Scams: The Self-Publishing With ALLi Podcast Featuring Dan Holloway

TikTok’s Near Ban and Crackdowns on Scams: The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast Featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Dan Holloway covers the latest developments around TikTok, including its near ban in the United States and the uncertainty it has created for BookTok creators. He also reports on the arrests of individuals behind PageTurner Press and the investigation into Publishing.com, marking significant moves against self-publishing scams.

Listen to Self-Publishing with ALLi: TikTok’s Near Ban and Crackdowns on Scams

On the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, @agnieszkasshoes covers TikTok’s near ban in the United States and major crackdowns on self-publishing scams, including PageTurner Press arrests. Share on X

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About the Host

Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.

Read the Transcripts

Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome back to the self-publishing news.

Appropriately enough for a writing podcast, it feels as though we have been watching a mix of storytelling and theatre over the last few days with creators everywhere looking to see what was actually going to happen with TikTok and the news, I guess it was both more dramatic and less dramatic than we had thought it might be, or many had thought it might be.

So, probably less space needed to it than there could have been. There is of course much space for comment. I don't really want to comment and get into the politics or op-ed aspect, but I will offer my thoughts on what it means for us as, as creators, as writers, as people who may or may not either already rely on the BookTok community, be thankful to it, or be thinking about using it over the next year.

So, of course on Friday of last week the Supreme Court upheld the law that would have outlawed TikTok, and they did so unanimously. So, that was the first interesting development after many had thought that, that they wouldn't, they did.

But then both the outgoing and the incoming administration showed no desire for TikTok to actually go offline. We were told by President Biden that it would not, or that he would not seek to enforce the law. Nonetheless, TikTok decided to go dark anyway, and then a few hours later, it was back, and at both stages making a play that this miraculous resurrection was a result of the intervention of the incoming president. You can make of all that as you wish.

The real takeaways that I have, news wise, first is that the incoming administration likes theatre. Obviously. Second, as we saw at the inauguration, the tech industry is going to play a large part, at least in the early days. TikTok seems to be part of that.

So, President Trump has said that he will seek to negotiate a solution. It seems as though that solution may be some kind of joint ownership between the US and China, but it doesn't look as though TikTok will be going offline anytime soon.

That said, it has become clear to creators that this is something that can be switched off as easily as it was switched on in the first place. So, that's the first point. So, there is an uncertainty now in the air that there might not have been beforehand, and a realization of the uncertainty of, of revenue streams and of where communities are. So, we don't yet know how that will impact the BookTok community, and more importantly, we don't necessarily know whether the migration we've seen to other apps, over the course of a couple of weeks, will lead to the growth of communities there, or whether rather has happened with some of the alternatives to Twitter/X, you see an initial sort of flurry of interest, some nascent communities begin to grow, but nothing really is emerging for quite some time. So, we have some tentative stability for now, much uncertainty about the future and the future impact it's going to have on us, on all kinds of things that BookTok has actually either taken credit or blame for, whether that's turning books into props for aesthetics or whether it's actually getting people back into bookshops and buying physical books.

That's the TikTok news.

There has been other news. It's actually been a really good week for booting scams. So, I need to be very careful, obviously, because there are investigations underway and there are arrests that have been made, there are not courts that have ruled in these cases. Though, I think we as writers know what we think about the outfits involved.

So, the first of these, Page Turner Press, so this is a purported self-publishing services company. I think we all know what that means. That seek to take what authorities are describing as a sort of a “pig butchering” approach. This is where an organization or an alleged scammer will, once they're given something, they will increasingly want to take more and more and more by upping either their demands or their promises.

In this case, it seems that allegedly multiple accounts had been created or multiple false accounts have been created to create reviews that suggested some kind of positive outcome, and that enabled them to, to pressure people first into getting books allegedly published with them, for huge amounts of money and very little actual results, all the way up once you've done that to promising things that we are all too familiar with, like, Oh, a film director is interested in your book. We can get you the rights or meaningless marketing campaigns.

So, some people I saw had even invested ten, not just tens of thousands of dollars, but hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and bring their writing dream to life, all to no avail.

But three arrests of the three leading people behind Page Turner Press have been made.

Possibly even higher profile than that, this is just an investigation now that's underway in the U.S. As I say, possibly even higher profile than page Turner press, is publishing.com. This is something that appears constantly in my Facebook feed, and I'm not sure if they're from the U.S. or from Scandinavia. So, if they're from the U S probably the Mickelson twins, if they're from Scandinavia, the Mabelson twins, promises to unlock a secret fund that nobody knows about, which of course is Kindle Unlimited, and what they will tell you to do if you just give them a few thousand dollars is tell you how to upload constant utter garbage, ruin everyone's Kindle Unlimited experience and probably get absolutely nothing in return.

So, they are under investigation for making funnily enough false promises and using high pressure tactics to try and get people to buy.

So, maybe my Facebook will be full of less depressing adverts, and I will be able to open it up and not think, oh good grief, who's getting scammed today.

So, it's a really good start to the year to see two of the higher profile, more notorious outfits, finally, possibly be on the way to getting some justice and maybe cleaning up the profile of what is an incredibly positive industry that has a lot of companies doing amazing things and a lot of individuals with dreams that it would be great to be part, as ALLi, of helping them to fulfil. That can happen more easily if these outfits are off the web.

So, I'll bring you more next week. I have a feeling there's going to be quite a lot to talk about around audiobooks next week. But for now, I will say, thank you for listening. Have a wonderful, happy January and 2025, and I will speak to you again soon. Thank you very much.

Author: Dan Holloway

Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, which has appeared at festivals and fringes from Manchester to Stoke Newington. In 2010 he was the winner of the 100th episode of the international spoken prose event Literary Death Match, and earlier this year he competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available for Kindle at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transparency-Sutures-Dan-Holloway-ebook/dp/B01A6YAA40

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