Ah, Inkitt, a site that came out last year and promises publishing opportunities for new authors. It even has chosen a promising young author to publish from her contest entry!
...Except one, little thing. Inkitt's been around for years. In fact, Inkitt's shady practices expand to a very large degree. It's time to put all the facts together.
I learned about Inkitt when it lured me and other fanfiction writers to a contest that actually rewarded with money. As you probably know or don't, it is illegal to get paid for Fanfiction works. It is a labor of love, one that is supported well enough, but still not our property to sell. Regardless, Inkitt did it. In fact, Inkitt had many fanfiction contests over the past five years.
The furthest back that someone mentioned being lured to Inkitt was in 2010, which means it has existed for quite some time now. There have been many original work contests too... But where are those winners? We know there must have been some, as they promised publishing. Every contest, except the Fanfiction ones, promised publishing the winning works. But then again, where are they? All I could find was the recent winner and the shocking reveal that Inkitt, who has been around since 2010 at least, only appeared last year.
It gets worse. Many users have reported receiving loads of spam once publishing their first story. Not all writers have gotten this, or I believe that's the case, but many have complained of their inboxes filling with tones of E-mails asking for more entries, to invite more friends, and more Inkitt spam.
The site is also incredibly barren. There's little on it and even the cover picture on the front page is taken from Oz the Great and Powerful. I find it especially lazy to use a movie picture to advertise what is such a legit site. I'm being sarcastic with the 'legit' part.
It gets a lot worse too. Oh yes, for the site says that winners of contests are chosen by votes. Indeed, authors can vote, but not only do some stories get hundreds of votes with only a few reviews, but some of the reviews are clearly fake. Most of them are roaring praise and yet seem to have the full title stapled at the beginning or halfway through. There is also some reviews that you can see on numerous stories, worded exactly the same.
Also, now they claim that an A.I. chooses which stories will win. So that means that apparently now voting doesn't matter even though you can still vote. I'm guessing that perhaps this was some sort of defensive excuse, or one to make them sound more advanced than they really are. Regardless, it really is confusing, and usually when something doesn't make sense that means something shady is going on.
Inkitt still spams Fanfiction writers. Recently it has started using another Twitter account too, along with its own 'Inkitt' one. The second Twitter account is called BookrestBookram. It leads to the same site but is a different name, which also doesn't make any sense. That means they are sending out all of these form letter invitations on both accounts, inviting to contests. For a site that claims it gets a lot of good authors and is willing to publish them, it still pushes harshly to lure others in under false pretenses.
Also, I have an account on it that I have tried to delete repeatedly, but they will not allow me to delete my account. This has caused me to grow very concerned about my E-mail and wonder if it isn't safe. The account was created before I realized how awful everything was and I am ashamed to admit that I was, for a while at least, duped.
Before I thought that this was a way to steal work from promising writers, and it may still be, but part of me wonders if it is also part of a money laundering sort of thing. Very strange to use publishing to do so, but the shady practices and lies would make more sense if they were using the fake site to cover income.
Or they could be changing names on books and selling them outside the country. It runs in Berlin, so if anyone's book was published there then nobody here would know and unsuspecting readers wouldn't either. Either way, this site that has existed for so long is claiming itself as a new site and now starting to send more messages to unsuspecting targets than ever.
Look, it's not worth it. The site claims to cut out the middle man for publishing, but then uses shady aspects in 'publishing' your work. Also, if it is publishing the work, then why does it let the book still be readable for free after they decided that it would be released? That's not sound business practice; everyone has access to the story and don't have to pay a dime, so why on Earth would next year 'fans' shell out cash to get it? Oh, because it won't be there next year, and Inkitt will be a budding site claiming it is only a couple of months old.
Be afraid. Run. Don't even try it. If you have a novel worth publishing then do it anywhere else; self-publish, publish through Amazon Ebooks, publish through a publishing company, anywhere is better than a strange site that claims to use Artificial Intelligence to choose its winners.
