Why a Gushing Email About Your Book Should Make You Suspicious

I've had a similar scam happen to me as well. I had a marketer strip all of my reviews from my website onto his, use my name, to reach out to people on LinkedIn trying to solicit work. The mistake he made was that he actually reached out to me to try and get work! (He obviously wasn't the sharpest tool in the box.) I managed to get his website taken down by reporting him to his website host company.

A recent Times report described authors losing anywhere from a few hundred pounds to six figures to fraudsters who use AI to write convincing, flattering emails, build slick websites and even forge official-looking documents. One author paid for a promotional video he described in unprintable terms. Another was shown a fake legal letter threatening to seize her royalties if she didn’t hand over more money. Some of these people are sharp, tech-savvy professionals. This isn’t a story about gullible people. It’s a story about a very good con aimed at one of the most human things there is, wanting your work to be seen. I tried to put some ideas together in this article of things you should look for from my perspective as a book marketer. I think a safe rule of thumb is to treat all emails that land in your inbox that you haven't requested with a big dose of suspicion.

Book marketers shouldn’t cold-pitch you

Reputable book marketing companies don’t send out unsolicited messages telling authors they’ve been “selected” or “spotted.” We don’t need to. Good marketers get their work through referrals, reputation, their own content and people who come looking for them. If someone you’ve never heard of is chasing you down about your book, that tells you something about their business, and it’s rarely flattering. In my experience it means the pipeline is dry and they’re desperate for clients. That’s not a company you want holding your launch budget. An unexpected email can still be genuine now and then, of course. But the burden of proof sits entirely with the sender, and here is how I’d test it.

Look at the email address before you read a word of the message

This is the quickest check there is. A person from a real publishing house, agency or club writes from that organisation’s own domain. If the email claims to be from a major publisher but arrives from a Gmail account, stop there. The sneakier version copies a real person’s name into a free address, so something like joebloggs.themagazine at gmail.com instead of joebloggs at the magazine’s own domain. It looks right at a glance, which is the whole point.

Be wary of too much praise!

Genuine interest in your book usually comes with a bit of awkwardness, a typo or a vague comment. Scam emails tend to arrive polished, gushing and oddly exhaustive, sometimes about books that aren’t even published yet. Because AI can read your blurb and your Amazon page in seconds, detailed praise is no longer evidence that someone has read your work. It’s evidence that someone has your URL.

Never pay to be “selected”

If you’ve been picked for a book club showcase, a film option, a translation deal or an international rights fair, the money should be flowing towards you. The moment a fee turns up for a video, a registration, a copyright filing, a legal release or a “processing charge,” you’re looking at a scam. These fees tend to arrive one at a time, each with its own plausible reason, so you never feel you’re being asked for a lot in one go.

Notice when they want more

A very common pattern is a slow escalation. They love your first book, so could they see the next one? Then it needs to go through an agent, and the agent sees movie potential, and suddenly there’s an upfront cost. Each step feels small and each one makes you more invested. If the story keeps getting bigger while the evidence stays the same, it’s a con.

Check the person, not just the message

Search their name with the words “scam” or “fake” and see what comes up. Look at their social profiles. Fraudsters often have thin accounts with few followers or contacts who look suspiciously like stock images. A reverse image search on a profile photo takes seconds, and a Google reverse-image search can help you spot fakes. Find the company’s website yourself, find a phone number or contact form that isn’t in the email, and ask whether that person actually works there. Scammers are also pretending to be official marketers that work for marketing companies. If you can find them through a Google search, then simply write to their company and ask if that email was from them. If it is a reputable company, there is a very high degree of probability the email wasn't from them.

Remember who contacts whom

Agents make money from their clients’ books, so legitimate ones don’t charge you to read your work. Authors approach agents, not the other way round, and a surprise approach from one should raise your guard rather than lower it. Half the time, it's difficult getting an agent to reply to your emails. So, there is normally a greater chance of aliens landing in your back garden than agents cold emailing you.

Keep a proper reference list

The best single resource I know is Writer Beware, run by Victoria Strauss and backed by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Their site at https://writerbeware.blog is packed with real case studies, including a piece on impersonation scams at https://writerbeware.blog/2020/02/07/the-impersonation-game/. If you’ve been targeted, you can report it by emailing beware@sfwa.org. UK authors can also contact the Society of Authors at https://societyofauthors.org and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain at https://writersguild.org.uk, both of which have been tracking the rise in these approaches.

Ask someone, or ask an AI

One of the most useful things you can do is paste the suspicious email into an AI tool or show it to a friend before replying. Scams depend on you feeling special and private. A second opinion breaks that spell instantly. If you’re ever unsure whether something claiming to be from me is real, email me through https://thebookmarketer.pro and I’ll tell you straight.

And if it already happened to you

Please don’t feel embarrassed. People who lost money have said that staying silent made it worse, and speaking up helped others avoid the same thing. Stop paying, keep every message and receipt, and report it to your bank.

If you’re in the UK, report it to Action Fraud at https://www.actionfraud.police.uk.

If you’re in the US, report it to the FTC at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov and to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at https://www.ic3.gov.

Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca

You can also tell the other organizations I've referenced above as well.