Writer Scams with Excellent Imprimaturs are Still Scams

 I got this weird spam email out of the blue that appeared to be from the University of Incarnate Word. It was advertising their continuing education courses in creative writing. These online classes could help me build skill in things such as “Basics of Grammar” and “Beginning Fiction Writing” and “How to Get Published”? Okay, so I may not be the target audience, per se. more to the point, what the heck are these courses doing and where are they actually from? I noticed the instructor of many of these fiction courses was this guy: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001K8IBR0?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=2&langFilter=default&fbclid=IwAR1tT8qFKH5gXUivi_sIQEiQZJxSAEXmmPzPr8aGc1ZULIe4P5QWBxYWy-M#formatSelectorHeader who appears to be only qualified to teach fiction by the number of self-published books about writing he has published to support his self/published fiction books. Presumably, he will spend six weeks walking a class through some number of his self-published writing textbooks. It’s a sweet gig if you can get it. A major regional university with strong ties in the religious community will undoubtedly attract a stable of older folks looking for a new hobby, and he can sell them the class and the writing books he wrote. But, it seemed odd that a major university would be running their courses this way when their own English Department would have eminently more qualified poets and short story authors and Master’s candidates eligible for such a thing. The city is full of poetry and fiction. There are while nonprofits of writing teachers and classes through the Gemini Ink program where presumably the instructors are vetted more than whatever group runs the continuing Ed spam program…

A little more digging revealed that the continuing Ed spam is being managed by Ed2Go, an online platform where they can sell access to their courses to major universities, who can then turn around and sell the system to their community. It’s even scammer than previously thought. Now the university imprimatur is being applied to a shady tech outfit that is just an outsource for a service the university has given up on offering. No wonder they’re sending out suspicious spam emails. They’re a suspicious scam outfit selling services they aren’t equipped to deliver at a level appropriate to the imprimatur they are ganking. 

Professors and administrators, apparently, have allowed their reputation to be sold off, and all they’re going to get for it is a bunch of clueless newbies filling out forms with no ability to successfully apply the material they are learning, paying money for a product that isn’t worth the paper the certificates are printed on. Certainly any success out of something like this will be accidental, at best. 

And the frustrating thing, to me, will always be how this crowds out the great poets and writers who actually could provide a good service to students with their knowledge, and use the income. The scammers have come to lowball and shove elbows all over the legitimate outfits like Gemini Ink, UTSA’s creative writing program, and the San Antonio Writer’s Guild.