"Frank Jerome" (if that is his real name) has been soliciting and posting "job" opportunities on craigslist, kijiji, and various other sites that offer free classified ads offering editing or proofreading jobs at a rate of $15 per hour. Sounds fine. EXCEPT as part of the application he, and his company ("Smart Guide Publications"...non-existent) require you to edit 2-3 full chapters of his upcoming book FOR FREE. By sending different chapters to different people he hopes to get his entire book edited and proofed for free. In case your wondering, 2-3 chapters is nearly 50-60 pages.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM!
There is no real job. There is no money. You will not get hired. He will take your edit (application test) and leave. He has been doing this for months slowly trying to get various people to collectively edit his entire book.

Smart Guide Publications doesn't exist. Frank Jerome is a fake name. There is no job.

I have encountered at least 13 other blogs warning about the "smart guide publication" scam.

Here is a copy of one of his emails:

*************************************************
from:
reply-to: [email protected]

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for responding to our Craigs List posting for a proofreader. We presume that you are aware of our requirement as stated in the posting to take a proofreading test and that the position pays $15 an hour.

The test is attached in two files - a pdf file of two chapters of the completed book and a pdf file of the manuscripts for these chapters. The chapters for the completed book have been deliberately doctored to contain errors, omissions, a glaring typo and mistakes. Your test assignment is to locate these. To be considered for the position you must locate all of the mistakes - a perfect score is required - this is a pass/fail examination as we can not publish a book that is not absolutely perfect.

We have had an enormous response to our posting and will be hiring the first applicant who has a perfect score who completes the assignment within our time parameters. You should send in your results as soon as possible.

Please take the examination and report your results in an email to [email protected] as follows with PROOFREADER TEST RESULTS in the subject line: In the first line of the text of the email put your name, address, email address and telephone number. After that, list the mistakes you found in the completed book as follows: Page number followed by a description of the mistake: Example: Page 228 - missing paragraph starting with "Bachelorette party begins at ..." Time yourself when you do this assignment and report the amount of time it took you to complete the task. Thank you.


Frank Jerome.
Smart Guide Publications

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Frank also conveniently leaves out his office phone number and address.

If you fall for this scam, I'm sorry, you're an idiot.