I admit to being annoyed by how many scam emails I get related to writing/indie publishing.

It’s pretty constant, and they tend to cluster around when I have a new release. Some bot is presumably scanning all new releases, and then churns out a bunch of scammy emails when it detects a new book.

I despise these people because they prey upon the vulnerable for money. Like, imagine a 75 year old who just self-published the novel he or she has been working on for the last thirty years and finally decided to finish in retirement. Then they get a ChatGPT-generated email from “John Grisham” praising their book in detail and asking for some money for marketing services. A lot of people would have absolutely no mental defense against that kind of thing, like someone from modern Earth encountering a wizard who can cast illusion spells for the first time.

But unfortunately scamming is endemic everywhere these days. One of the local drugstores where I live has numerous signs warning about gift cards since so many local seniors were getting scammed into buying gift cards. Then there were a recent chain of text messages telling me I owed money for driving on toll roads in the state of Illinois, which was amusing because 1.) I haven’t been to Illinois since 2022, 2.) I was a passenger in someone else’s car at the time, and 3.) the last time I was on a toll road in Illinois in a vehicle I owned was 2017.

The Internet makes scamming so easy that Constant Vigilance is required these days. With that in mind, here are six different kinds of scammy emails writers/indie publishers can expect to get.

1.) ChatGPT

Generative AI is a scammer’s paradise. Lately a new trend is that a scammer will feed a pirate copy of a book into ChatGPT, and then use it to generate personalized pitch letters. They’ll often be littered with emojis, and the tone will vary from warm and encouraging to “edgy.”

Here’s a quote from a recent one I got for BLADE OF FLAMES:

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“Talembur wakes in a forgotten catacomb, sword in hand, memory shredded, enemies sniffing blood in the dark. That’s a hook so sharp it could flense an orc. Blade of Flames reads like classic, grim-and-gorgeous sword-and-sorcery with a hunger for blood, mystery, and very satisfying blade choreography.”

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This is an effective illusion for a scam because it appears like the scammer read the book and liked it, and is making personalized compliments about it.

However, the rest of the email is a hard pitch for various marketing “services” that don’t actually exist.

I admit I halfway fell for this one the first time. I got a very detailed email, and though I would respond with a polite refusal since it appeared that a lot of work had gone into it. I then got like five more emails in rapid succession, all of them pushing for the purchase of marketing services, and I realized the whole thing was a ChatGPT powered bot.

So watch out for very personalized emails, especially ones that appear very quickly after you publish a book.

2.) Fake Book Clubs

This one is sometimes tied in with the ChatGPT scams.

You’ll get an email from someone claiming they run a large book club or a reader group. They think your book would be a good fit for their reader group, and have a few questions about it.

However, if you respond to the email, you’ll start getting pressure for payment. Turns out the reader group or the book club doesn’t actually exist, and this is yet another scam. So watch out for emails that talk about the “5,000 member reader group” or something along those lines.

By good luck, one of these emails arrived while I was writing this post, so I thought I would quote it here!

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I’m Jason, and I organize Book Club NYC, a community of more than 3,300 readers across New York who gather to read, reflect, and connect through books that challenge perception and spark deep conversation.

When I discovered Ghost in the Siege, I was immediately struck by its layered power, a story that confronts truth and deception, morality and survival, within a world both haunting and familiar. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t just entertain; it lingers, asking questions about justice, humanity, and what it means to stand alone in the face of decay. That blend of atmosphere and insight makes it exactly the kind of story our members love to explore together.

We’d love to feature Ghost in the Siege as part of our upcoming event on Wednesday, October 15, 2025, at 12:00 PM EDT. Here’s what that experience will look like:

Quiet Reading & Reflection: members immersing themselves in your world, letting its tension and themes unfold in silence.

Open Discussion: exploring the moral and psychological dimensions of corruption, redemption, and resistance.

Community Highlights: readers sharing impressions and reflections across our NYC club and partner spaces.

Spotlight Feature: introducing Ghost in the Corruption to more than 3,300 active readers who seek stories that challenge, provoke, and endure.

Optional Author Conversation: a chance for you to join us (virtually or in person) to share the inspiration, craft, and message behind your work.

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Of course, this book club doesn’t actually exist, and if any of these Goodreads or Facebook groups or whatever even exist, they’ll be full of bots. And if you respond, the “book club” organizer will start talking about fees for having your book be read before the group. As ever, if you pay, the scammer will promptly disappear, or continue to ask for more money.

3.) John Grisham Wants To Promote My Book!

This type of email is just a straight up catfishing/identity theft attempt.

You’ll get an email allegedly from a famous author. For myself, I’ve gotten emails from “John Grisham” and “Colleen Hoover” among others, and they will offer to help you promote your books.

Obviously this is fake. The actual John Grisham and Colleen Hoover (among other famous authors) have better things to do with their time than emailing random indie authors for marketing collaborations. If you respond to these emails, you’ll get a request for payment, and if you pay, the scammer will promptly disappear and stop responding or ask for more money.

4.) Meta Ads has a new dashboard!

This is one I’ve gotten a lot this year.

Allegedly from Meta, the email claims that Facebook is rolling out either a new ads dashboard or a new mobile app for managing ads, and you’ve been invited to participate in the beta test. Just click on the link and start installation!

I admit I ignored these at first because there’s no way I’m ever installing any Meta apps on my phone because they’re so intrusive and halfway to being spyware. Also, the current version of the Facebook ads dashboard is annoying enough to use as it is, I don’t want to play with any half-baked beta features.

So I ignored these emails, but then I realized I was getting a surprising lot of them. So I checked the sender, and realized they weren’t coming from an actual Meta address but from a variety of different Gmail addresses, which meant they were in fact phishing attempts.

Facebook ad phishing, alas, is a substantial problem. The basic scam is that a hacker finds a way to gain control of your ads account, and then uses it to advertise various scam projects, frequently various cryptocurrency things. Since Facebook’s customer support is so notoriously bad, it’s very difficult to get the situation resolved.

So if you are using Facebook ads, be wary of any emails you get from “Meta”, since they could be phishing attempts.

5.) Bad Tax News / Payment Failure

This one tends to be common around tax time or the end of the year. You’ll get an email from one of the publishing platforms, claiming that your tax information is out of date or that one of your payments failed. The email will include a link you can click to resolve the situation, which is of course fake so the scammers can capture your account or personal information.

I’ve gotten a couple of these lately, and some of them were quite good. I got one from “Spotify” claiming that my tax information was out of date, which was baffling because it hasn’t changed in the entire time I’ve had audiobooks with Spotify. I was suspicious, so I logged into my Spotify dashboard and checked that every was in fact okay. Then I realized the scam – the email had come to a different email account than the one I actually use for my Spotify dashboard. It was an exceptionally well-done phishing email, but thankfully my ingrained caution against clicking email links served me well.

So if you do get one of these, don’t click on any links. Instead go directly to the dashboard of the platform in question and see for yourself. If there actually is a tax or payment problem, there will be a notification of some kind on the dashboard.

6.) Publishing Services

There are a variety of fake publishing services out there, offering a range of alleged benefits like more Facebook followers, more readers, more email subscribers, etc. Or someone will offer to get your book into Publishers’ Weekly or something like that in exchange for a payment. Some of these blend over with the scammy sort of vanity publishers. Granted, I think that all vanity publishing (“You pay us and we publish your book”) is a scam, but some of them are worse than others.

At best, if you engage with these kinds of services, you’ll get some new followers from bots and so forth, which is useless. At worst, nothing will happen at all – the scammers will take your money and disappear. At the absolute worst, they will pester you forever for more money.

Generally, if you get an unsolicited email from a book marketer, it is probably a scam. If you’re unsure, asking about them in a Facebook group like 20BooksTo50K or Wide For The Win will help identify whether or not they’re legit, but they’re probably not legit.

Conclusion

So, I’m afraid one has to exercise constant vigilance in the Internet world these days, especially if you’re a self-publisher. Be extremely wary of any unsolicited emails. Never click on a link in an email – if the message claims there’s a problem with one of your publishing platforms, don’t click on the link, go to the platform in a different browser tab and see for yourself. And before spending money on anything, check that it’s legitimate and not a scam. It’s easy to fake legitimacy these days, so it’s worthwhile to do a little investigating before spending money on anything.

-JM