Anyone else get spam emails, asking you to sign up to book clubs or agencies? > Likes and Comments
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Yeah, I keep getting the "book marketers" wanting to promote my books to "10,000 reviewers" or some book club in the UK. They send them to my 3 emails and I just keep deleting them. So tired of this nonsense! I don't even respond anymore!
Constantly. I ignore/delete/block most of them, but I occasionally engage in taunts and ridicule if I’m bored. Like when they think I need help promoting my book My Heart is a Chainsaw (by Stephen Graham Jones). Or when my contribution to an anthology is groundbreaking work (it’s one haiku). Or when the book they heap praise on is for a different author with the same name (sometimes spelled wildly different). It’s crazy how belligerent I can get, and their bot farms still follow up as if they have a chance. It’s insane.
Ha! I get those too — apparently I’m 'this' close to becoming the next international bestseller… just as soon as I hand over my life savings 😂.
Hi everyone,I do get those almost everyday. The technique is the same, so they are easy to detect. The flattery, the lure, then the catch. Beware of those, they are very clever and sometimes convincing. I just delete the email without bothering to investigate. There are better ways to do it yourself.
Thanks for sharing such an important topic.
I closed my website because of it. I almost got scammed twice because Ai makes it so easy for them to sound knowledgeable. After that I just keep reporting them as spam and block them. Every time I publish a new book it's like a swarm of mosquitoes smelling fresh blood. Tedious, irritating and just plain infuriating.
Every day. Most that are from Gmail can be deleted. Those that aren't from a Gmail address, research them thoroughly before responding
Yes! Definitely get messages and spams…
And most of them are scams and a total waste of money!
It happens to me all the time. Practically thrice in a day since 2023. I have never given into them, I am quite tech-savvy, AI savvy & have got a lawyer's brain because I've been raised by a professional criminal lawyer & a hard core banker, so I have been living in that 'court room & law & banking' atmosphere for 36 years of my life. Since 2012 I've been getting these spam emails & phone calls, but I have NEVER given them a hearing.
But the problem has worsened since the pandemic. They get our details from Goodreads, Fable, Storygraph, BookTok etc., & then spam us when they know we need more reviews. Other book review sites that we are on also sell our information to these AI spammers willingly & some unknowingly, it is easy to do so.
Most of these spammers are AI spammers, don't give into them - they are just robots disguised as people to cheat & get your email & bank details. AI reads all our daily information especially on GR & then the various AI contact us to spam us. Especially when they know we need readers or reviews for our books.
Please be alert. Don't be so hasty for reviews, Rely on humans only - fellow indie-authors, real human readers & other certified HUMAN book professionals who can be vouched for on LinkedIn. If they are not on LinkedIn, They don't exist, period.
Remember that. :)
A torrent of them lately. I feel like I must have hit some algorithmic threshold.
Fiza wrote: "It happens to me all the time. Practically thrice in a day since 2023. I have never given into them, I am quite tech-savvy, AI savvy & have got a lawyer's brain because I've been raised by a profes..."Thank you, Fiza- great advice :)
Jasmine
Yes, I had some really interesting ones but when I asked for the website and price details, one had a website but most did not then reply. Seems to have stopped now.
I just throw them to spam. Book clubs won't email you to spotlight their book. Always look at the email address. If its an agency it will have a professional address. Agents never ask for money upfront. They make money when your book sells.
Dr. wrote: "Fiza wrote: "It happens to me all the time. Practically thrice in a day since 2023. I have never given into them, I am quite tech-savvy, AI savvy & have got a lawyer's brain because I've been raise..."Most welcome Dr. Jasmine. :)
Yep ... I get these often. At first I was flattered. I mean hey, I'm getting noticed. Then the scams started. If I'm bored (rarely) I'll need with them to waste their time so they're not preying on someone else. More often than not I'll trash and block the email address
Sadly Teen or young adult indie-writers here on GR get bullied easily by these scammers & then lose a lot of money. It is sad, I know many such stories post the pandemic. :(
Yes. They drive me crazy. I block, block, block. But they seem to just multiply.
The newest attempt that I've been seeing right here on Goodreads is a fresh five star rating for one of your books (no review) and a friend request. DON'T ACCEPT. If you don't accept, the friend request--and the glowing rating--disappear in a matter of days. Total fishing is what that is.
Yup. I’ve had several. I had one who wanted me to login to a d2d account they created under an email they created for me and put my info in. When I asked why I couldn’t create one under my email, they said that there were some things to configure on their end yet. Either trying to steal my account information or copyright information. Either way, no bueno. This was much before launch (now a couple days away), but one of the many attempts. Emails all the time. Instagram is a trove for them. They’ll always try to find a way. If it don’t smell right, run the other way!
Yes, I have a lot to say about this topic Aaron describes my situation, maybe not as many, but the same pitch. Authors never pay to be discussed in bookclubs. I've got some claiming to be an author interested in my book. Whenever I get an email, supposedly from an author I look up the author's contact information. Out of the dozens of such emails two authors confirmed that the email was from them. Bookclubs, agents, authors, and publishers, be aware of them all. I believe we authors are susceptible to such despicable tactics because we see the good in others. It's a shame we are forced to deal with the scammers.
Mark them as phishing.It won't stop them, but it will
repay the annoyance in-kind.
Goodreads did away with their messaging function for just this reason. Scammers were opening fake accounts and used messaging as a way to get contact information from new authors. Then they would send out their scam emails to us unsuspecting authors. But since messaging on Goodreads has gone away, the scam emails to me dropped from a stream, to a trickle. It's still a game of whack-a-mole, but it's a start.
There are two scams in particular I want to share with the community. One is The Berlin Book Club. I checked. There is a real one with a website consisting of Americans who gather around books they are reading. Everything seemed legit to appear via zoom and address this group of over a thousand members. Then this guy asked for money.Another was this person who said he could get my book nominated in Goodreads. I reported this person and their details to the Goodreads monitor who is doing follow up. She also sent a warning out to the Goodreads members
Yes I got a series of emails just this week, they looked professional and well written. Professional publishing business's, the Gmail address struck me as strange. The more I looked into the origin of the company and the person, the more revealing it was. A business domain only set up a month ago, Address of the business changed multiple times. Emails being sent at 3 am my time, if the location they were claiming was correct. But the kicker was, when I did a Whois search and found out the domain was registered in Nigeria, which would have fitted the time zone that the emails were sent.Then when I questioned the person gently, suddenly their story changed and they were now an independent editor, marketer.
My advice is be extra careful when dealing with unsolicited contacts of help particularly if they want money. Some of these scam sites are polished. Most professionals will have a proper domain name not a generic name.
I’m gonna be real — this is how I look at it.Most of these emails are coming because you’re active somewhere else.
If you’re on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, posting your book… you’re gonna get solicited. That’s just part of the game.
So I don’t look at it as all bad.
I treat it like fishing.
Yeah, a lot of it is garbage…
but if you have a solid filtering system, you can actually catch the real opportunities mixed in.
That’s literally what I’ve been doing.
I’m in Baltimore, and out of all that noise in my email, I filtered through and ended up landing:
• overseas connections
• a book club opportunity
• a Zoom interview coming up March 23
(sent them a pitch video and everything)
All of that came from the SAME type of emails people are calling spam.
So the key ain’t just ignoring everything —
it’s learning how to filter instead of react.
The more visibility you get, the more messages you’ll get…
and that also means more chances to catch something real.
I’m still new myself, but the system I’m using has been working.
Curious —
anybody else actually filtering through these instead of deleting everything?
Georgina wrote: "Yes, I had some really interesting ones but when I asked for the website and price details, one had a website but most did not then reply. Seems to have stopped now."I had the same experience, flashy website but they are hosted on free domain "burner" sites. No professional would be that cheap to have their website with some random name. Also if you use Who is website you can get the domain details and see how long it's been registered, Usually only months if that.
Fiza wrote: "It happens to me all the time. Practically thrice in a day since 2023. I have never given into them, I am quite tech-savvy, AI savvy & have got a lawyer's brain because I've been raised by a profes..."I have come to the realisation that if anyone "is desperate" for reviews, they have no faith in their own work.
It's like any social media platform, people believe how many friends or followers is a mark of success. Which it isn't.
If your writing is good and people want it, they will read it, not because of how many followers you have.
Do a enticing book blurb and let your work speak for it's self.
I got same comment under my book yesterday as James mentioned and so far I have not received any feedback from Goodreads support regarding this... Now I understand that these comments are common practice here...
I also get emails from so called book agents, last week I called one out because I actually contacted the literary agency they said they were emailing from. The agent there assured me it was not her, and she took steps to shut them down.
It's frustrating.
Is this a common problem?