Caroline Calloway, the infamous Instagrammer and self-titled scammer, will finally publish her debut novel, four years after it was first announced.
Aptly titled Scammer, Calloway revealed that she was working on her memoir in 2019. It was due to be shipped in the summer of 2020, but never transpired.
Scammer is her second attempt at a memoir, following a failed book deal in 2016 that landed her in $100,000 of debt.
Now, her debut book is reportedly due to be self-published on June 16, and is currently available for pre-order for a whopping $65 (£51).
So who is Caroline Calloway and why is she controversial?
What is Caroline Calloway famous for?
Caroline Calloway, born Caroline Gotschall, rose to social media fame by documenting her experience studying the history of art at Cambridge University between 2013 and 2016, after dropping out of New York University.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, she revealed that she got accepted into Cambridge on her third try, with a fraudulent application.
“I lied on my application,” she revealed. “I forged my transcript when I got in.”
Initially buying 40,000 followers for less than £5 in 2013, her posts eventually found a real audience of fans enthralled by her glamorous life of “Harry Potter-like castles, Jane Austen-like balls” at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.
A series of controversies in recent years has seen Calloway gain more than 645,000 Instagram followers, and her name continuously hit headlines—for better or for worse.
But all press is good press, as far as the influencer is concerned.
“I love fame,” Calloway told the Guardian in 2020, “I love being written about.”
“I don’t really mind if people think I’m a bad writer,” she said, “if they don’t understand my weird Instagram performance art or they find my long captions annoying. That’s part of the package of being in the public eye, and honestly I find it exhilarating.”
Why is Caroline Calloway controversial?
Calloway came under fire in early 2019 for organising creativity workshops for $165, before cancelling several locations and moving them to New York City, as reported by Pajiba.
Having earned a reputation for being a scammer, Calloway then launched another creativity workshop event, titled The Scam, in August 2019 (a Vice reporter, Anna Iovine, attended the workshop undercover after Calloway explicitly said that members of the press were not invited).
In September 2019, Calloway’s former friend and NYU classmate Natalie Beach wrote a viral expose for The Cut, in which she claimed that she was responsible for writing the Instagram captions that Calloway won her following for.
Beach also claimed that Calloway invited her to collaborate as an author on a book proposal, And We Were Like, which was eventually bought by Flatiron in 2016 for $375,000 (with Natalie expecting a percentage of the deal).
Calloway was allegedly paid a $100,000 advance, which she had to pay back after backing out of the book deal in 2017.
Despite the damning light Calloway was portrayed in Beach’s essay, she capitalised on the vitality of the article by promising to publish a response to Beach, in the form of a memoir titled Scammer.
She published an essay titled I am Caroline Calloway, published in three parts behind a paywall on her website in early 2020, with the proceeds going towards Direct Relief.
Later that year, Calloway launched an OnlyFans account in which she shared explicit images of herself dressed as literary characters, what she called “emotionally poignant, softcore cerebral porn”.
She announced her account with a nude photo on Twitter, by way of an apology for posting her essay behind a paywall.
The move sparked a backlash among sex workers who accused Calloway of capitalising on her platform at a time when many full-time sex workers were struggling due to the pandemic.
In 2022, Calloway’s former landlord allegedly sued her for not paying $40,000 in rent, as reported by the Daily Beast.
She moved from New York in spring 2022 and now lives in Sarasota, Florida.
When is Caroline Calloway’s book out?
Calloway claimed on her Instagram that the book would be released on June 16. The “luxury first edition” is currently available to pre-order for $65.
In a note on her website, she wrote: “I hope you cherish this precious first edition as much as I have LOVED pouring my motherf****** soul into every scrap of fancy paper and satin ribbon and stupid ink in it.”
“My greatest wish is that a generation or two of chaotic-good women from now, your ancestors will giggle and delight in the fact that you (you!) bought this internet heirloom.
“Or maybe they’ll sell it at auction for a pretty penny! Who knows!”
