(UPDATE: This has become a series. Visit the second part, “The World of Fake Authorship” here, and the third part, “I Have Been Contacted by Lisa Chamberlain and May Have Found the Re-Spin Seed” here!)
It all started with this Tweet on Twitter:
and this reply:
Immediately afterwards, The Wild Hunt did a little snippet of an article on it, but they didn’t really dig into it much, so I put it on my list. But when someone in our We Witches Three Facebook group asked for recommendation on a beginner’s audio book from Audible and I did a search to see what was there, that’s when the gravity of the situation struck me and I decided to really dive in.
Starting with the list that Thorn Mooney provided, I started compiling the data:
Lisa Chamberlain [UPDATED 2-11-2020]
I have been contacted via email by Lisa Chamberlain!
This is super exciting because this means that she’s a real person and that’s all we really want right now – a real, genuine author behind the books. She has let us know that she is a very private person and has had issues having interviews done, but here is one from 2017 that she generously shared with us!
She also shared that she has a new multi-book publishing contract with Sterling Publishing, which is really exciting as well! It looks like those are scheduled to be out starting this April!
In addition, she said that she has been fighting her own private battle with Amazon about all these other books, because she feels that they are specifically copying her books (the prevalence of the name “Lisa,” the similarity in titles, and even the similarity in text between her original “Wicca for Beginners” and several of the PLR-style books I bought certainly confirm that suspician).
I’ve also requested a more in-depth interview with her to hopefully discuss her and her practice, her experience and technique in self-publishing (she mentioned a publishing team!) and her experience in dealing with these copycats would be valuable information for the entire community.
I apologize to Lisa for her inclusion in this article, and am so thankful she was willing to share this information with us!
The original text from this article is maintained within the screenshot below (because I’m never going to say that I didn’t say what I said, but I can definitely say I was wrong about Lisa Chamberlain):
Lisa Buckland
Lisa Buckland is the second author on our list and she doens’t have a website, nor any social media presence, and like Lisa Chamberlain, she has done no interview nor made any appearances anywhere at all. She published all eight of her books in 2018, but her books only average about 45 pages in length – not much more than a long blog post.
Do those book titles look similar to the ones by Lisa Chamberlain? We’re going to keep seeing that.
Lisa Crowley
The third author on our list is Lisa Crowley – unfortunately, when I looked her up, there were only three audio books left on Amazon credited to her (which are all published by Lisa Crowley in 2019 and distributed through Amazon Services LLC), despite her author bio saying:
Lisa loves to read, but maybe she loves to write even more, so she started writing a collection of books in which she put all her skills developed over many years of study and practical experience.
~ Lisa Crowley (I assume)
But when I did my initial search for her, I had turned up links on Goodreads and other bookseller sites to her original digital print editions, but when you click on the links on Goodreads and the search results from Amazon for them, it just takes you to a screen that says:
Looking for something?
~ Amazon
We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site. :
Though, as you can see in the screenshot, there are other books by a “Lisa Crowley” about a sexually sadistic woman and her escapades, so maybe this particular author didn’t want to mix genres.
But that’s okay, because we have another Crowley in our midst!
Athena Crowley
Athena Crowley is yet another Amazon author, having published two books in 2019 and her third in 2020. Unlike the others, she actually includes a picture on her author bio!
Unfortunately, it happens to be this Free Stock Image by Allinoch over at my favorite royalty free stock image website, Pixabay:
So, still not a real person, unfortunately. She still doesn’t have a social media presence or any other existance outside of Amazon.
Other Authors
That continues on down the line, unfortunately. Lisa (S) Cunningham (sometimes she forgets her middle initial – I guess it happens to the best of us) has 12 books, 10 of which were published in 2019 (8 in November alone!). Amy Lisa Krystal has 4 books, all of which are published in November of 2019. Harmony Magick has 5 books, all of which are published in August of 2019. And SO MANY OTHERS:
- Samantha Lisa
- Amy Harmony
- Lisa Shadows
- Moon Chamberlain
- Esther Arin Spells
- Lisa Spells
- Crystal Stones
- Lisa Moon
- Gaia J Mellor
- Linda Candles
- Brenwan Jonsdotter
- Emily Stone
- Amber Crystal
- Hermione Tarot
- Isabel Scott
- Crystal Moon
- Dora McGregor
- Crystal Molina
- Lisa Spell
- Arin Corvinus
- Amelia Greenwood
- Lisa Magic
- Lisa Lovegood
- Scott Spells
- …and many, many more!
Is this all the same author!?
That’s a good question to ask, but, no, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. About a decade ago in the romance writer’s community, it happened that someone wrote some books, self published them on Amazon, and then sold them to other “authors” for a fee for them to self publish them as well. And I think this is what is happening here now in the witchy community as well. The people involved in this scheme rely on the fact that there are so many books, their readers are not likely to overlap. And with a few word changes here and there, easily done via “Find and Replace” in any word editor to change locations, years, and people’s names, and perhaps changing out a sentence here and there just to be sure, if someone does pick up two copies, they probably won’t notice, since the core information does not really change. The elements of Wicca are the same are the same are the same. So of course they’ll be the same from book to book.
The romance writer community tends to be on the bleeding edge of technology and innovation in the writing world, so they also tend ot be on the bleeding edge of scandal. And the witchy community tends to lag behind – so of course it is only coming around to us a decade later.
If that is hard to believe, check out these book titles:
“Wicca for Beginners: A Guide to Wiccan Beliefs, Rituals, Magic, and Witchcraft” – Lisa Chamberlain
“WICCA FOR BEGINNERS: The ultimate beginners guide to Wicca candle spells, herbal magic, crystal spells, moon magic, Witchcraft Rituals, and magic rituals” – Scott Spells
“Wicca for Beginners: The Complete Guide to Wiccan Magic, Beliefs, Rituals and How to Follow the Witchcraft Path for the Solitary Practitioner” – Lisa Spells
“WICCA For Beginners: Ultimate Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca Magic. Become a Practioner with Wiccan Rituals, Spells, and Beliefs” – Mary J Moon
“Wicca for Beginners: Wiccan Traditions and Beliefs, Witchcraft Philosophy, Practical Magic, Candle, Crystals and Herbal Rituals” – Dora McGregor
“Wicca for Beginners: A Complete Green Guide to Magic, Witchcraft, Rituals, and Wiccan Beliefs for Living a Magical Life” – Scott Gardner
“Wicca: Wicca for Beginners, Wicca Candles, Wicca Herbal Magic, Wicca Book of Spells. A Complete Guide for Magick Practitioners (Witches, Wiccans and Any Other Looking for a Modern Beginner’s Guide)” – Wendy Crystal
And sets are definitely a selling point here:
Fake Reviews
Some people have said that these folks have also been paying people to leave fake reviews on Amazon. I cannot say with certainty whether or not that is totally true from looking at the reviews myself. I DID notice that this book by Lisa Spells had two painfully similar reviews, though, so there may be some of that going on:
And this book by Moon Chamberlain about Wicca Altars is capitalizing off reviews intended for Lisa Chamberlain’s book on Moon Magic, which is an advantage I HADN’T considered in borrowing popular names:
In this article over on The Guardian, which talks about Plagiarism, “Book Stuffing,” and ghost writing, they also discuss this practice of “repackaging” books with new covers to sell over and over again, stating that Amazon REWARDS authors for putting out books every 60 days or less by increasing their placement in the book rankings. Want to read more about how easy it is to game Amazon’s system? Check out this article from The Hustle.
If buying up cheap ghostwritten content isn’t enough, some scammers are now believed to be buying previously published books and repackaging them to sell as new works, with no disclosure, much to the chagrin of authors like Walker [an author and professional ghostwriter], who has written an open letter to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, pleading for him to address the issue: “They … are flooding KU with recycled works that make the quality of the platform rather questionable, while many authors with new stories, fresh voices struggle to find any visibility at all,” she writes.
~ The Guardian
This buying previously published book and repackaging is exactly what I think is happening with all these damn-near identical books being sold on Amazon. I don’t think you’ll come to any harm in buying them as someone did originally write them professionally and they should be good, general, generic information. But there’s no real telling without reading each and every one of them.
And, yeah, I’m going to read one. I’m just not going to do that TODAY. So stay tuned for an update.
NOTE: if you got listed as a fake author here and you are NOT a fake author – or if you see glaring holes in my reasoning – REACH OUT TO ME and let’s talk!
The Series
This has become a series. Visit the second part, “The World of Fake Authorship” here, and the third part, “I Have Been Contacted by Lisa Chamberlain and May Have Found the Re-Spin Seed” here!
