My  day job consists of telling people, “No, the FBI is not going to call you up and demand money be wired to China” and “I don’t care what they told you, no one is down the street with a car for you, waiting on you give them your credit card number for ‘taxes’. You didn’t win a car. It’s a scam, I promise.”

What does this have to do with writing? Actually, a lot. Scamming happens in the writer’s world just as much as anywhere else. And if you’re a writer, especially an indie writer, you can’t afford to lose your cash to scammers.

So, here’s a Top list of scams to watch for:

Vanity “Contests”

This type of scam is almost as old as writing itself. The most common are the “poetry contests” that you enter with a nominal fee ($2-$10), but then the author gets a letter…