Is your inbox filled with promises to sell your books? > Likes and Comments

IDK, but all of a sudden, I'm getting these chat GBT sales pitches from people who think all my books are 'brilliant' and deserve to be seen. They promise to get the books onto Listopia and other places for more sales. They are persistent and keep sending emails demanding explanations when I tell them I am no longer spending for promotion. Anybody try one of these guys?

Ooh, careful...

Yeah! It's like a tsunami.

yes and theyre all scams.

And apparently on goodreads too (aka this bot Mica that showed up) One thing AI clearly hasn't figured out is how to read the room.😤

Yes! Promises, promises. I spent a fortune on promotion. It's an ongoing and thankless process. I have never recouped my investment, even when my books sell. Never mind expecting reviews, they are so rare. Even with massive downloads of our books when I run them for free, I still don't get any reviews.

one thing ive tried that works sell is selling my books in person. local bookstores or seasonal markets are excellent places to find readers

M.J. wrote: "one thing ive tried that works sell is selling my books in person. local bookstores or seasonal markets are excellent places to find readers"
You are lucky if you have a local bookstore - ours closed down a couple of years ago.

And Carole - reviews, er... not seen many of those for some years now. Friends here on Goodreads have been champions though and I thank you all for that.

I think Zon blocks a lot of reviews. I've seen them not publish some of mine and I always buy the books.

I’ve started seeing these messages too recently, especially after becoming more active on Goodreads. Some of them sound incredibly convincing at first.

As a newer indie author, I’m slowly learning that genuine reader connections and word of mouth seem far more valuable than expensive “guaranteed exposure” promises.

It’s honestly quite overwhelming how aggressive some of these promotion offers can become.

My experience is that every one is a scam. Blacklist and delete without mercy. That controls the problem. If someone is making a genuine approach, they won't do it from a Gmail account, and they won't gush you with AI mixed metaphors and phoney arty rhetoric.

Wait till you get to the movie deal/exclusive rights scams... lol (I'm always getting those as I write cinematic action books.

So what I do is I run the email through Chat GPT and ask "Thoughts?" and it will point out what is legit or not. Then if I'm on the fence about writing back, it will give me a challenge email to send to them - because if they are legit, they will have to show you their cards (and legit companies do this no problem) in order to continue to the next step.

One day though... someone's going to be the real deal... and the rest as they say.... is history. :-)

You don't need to use chat gpt for this. Most of the scam emails come from gmail accounts. Publishing professionals will NEVER send from a gmail account, so if the sender is an @gmail.com, it's an automatic scam. If it's not from a gmail account, look the person up on social media. Majority of the time they will have already posted that someone is pretending to be them and to block the sender.

You don't need to use AI to filter scams.

A few of these people set up quite elaborate scams. I had one fool me for a while posing as the chair of the Gothenburg Short Story Book Club, signing off as the real chair listed on Meetup. This person led me along quite well to prepare to present online to the club, but at the last moment asked for $70 'to cover admin and time to arrange the meeting'. This person never got anything but a narky email out of me. They're still out there.

We engaged with a 'literary agent' from the same company that published Harry Potter. I don't know what their game is and why they present ats literary agents, but they are all fake. We never were asked for money, but it didn't go far.
The 'book clubs' all want small fees to put your book in the hands of their group. There is a site where you can contact book clubs and offer your book for a reading subject. I think anything that comes from a gmail account is bogus. Same with all the 'book marketers' out there.
I hired a professional book marketer in the very beginning of my writing career. There is a limit to how much exposure they can get you. It was an expensive proposition and not worth it in the end. While we did gain some notoriety, I've learned if you're willing to invest the time and effort you can do it yourself.

Some helpful links:

https://jasonsanford.substack.com/p/g...

https://writerbeware.blog/

Hi Liz, Thanks for the great article. My inbox has been flooded with these scammers.

This is an important article for any author to read.