Were you invited to join the Discovery Awards via email? It may not have been genuine.

Recently, some authors have received emails claiming to be from IndieReader and other well-known review services, which invite them to join the IndieReader Discovery Awards:

One of the emails in question

These emails direct authors to a form on a site that looks nearly identical to IndieReader. When the author completes the form, it directs them to look for an invoice in their email to pay the Awards fee. The author then pays the invoice, and doesn’t hear anything further.

THIS IS A SCAM. IndieReader will never send you an invoice for your purchase. You will always check out on the IndieReader site.

You can tell if the page you are on is genuinely from IndieReader if the URL has a lowercase ‘i’ as the first character, rather than an uppercase ”I”. This character is actually a lowercase “L”, which is indistinguishable in the address bar.

A scam URL with an uppercase I/lowercase L in the address.

IndieReader has taken legal action against these scammers, including involving the FBI and requesting the decommissioning of this scam URL. If you think you may have been targeted by this scam, please contact [email protected].