So, let’s start with this:
As this is a living document, I’ll update them as I get them, so you might want to save/bookmark this page. This list is most recent to oldest, and I’m trying to update with stuff I have in my trash, too. If you have one I don’t have, please let me know.
Book Visibility Specialist | Book Haven Book Community | Blumhouse | Canelo Publishing Ltd | Jacksonville Book Club | Marginalia | Modesty Mark | Metro Philadelphia Book Club | Now That You Have Seen Me | Radio Deutschlandfunk | ReadRise Agency | RTÉ Radio 1 | September Withers | SpyGlass | Texas Holdem | WFUV Broadcast
Authors Guild: Publishing Scams Alerts
RED FLAGS
Here are the primary five things we’re going to use to judge these email scams:
🚩COLD CONTACT: Legit book clubs and book marketers do not cold contact authors. 1) Book clubs don’t need our permission to highlight our books in their clubs, and 2) both should be too busy to need to fill their calendars by cold contacting us.
🚩EMAIL ADDRESS: No gmail.com. No weird name combo. No name of the ‘book club’.
🚩ONLINE PRESENCE: They don’t provide links to their legit organizations, socials, testimonials, Google reviews, LinkedIn, etc. Bc that would make it easier for authors to find out they’re not legit.
🚩BOOK VOMIT: They just verbally vomit your book blurb, tweaked just enough as ‘riveting’ or ‘exactly what our members value’. Marketers will also pull your current rating stats, saying you deserve better.
🚩LARGE MEMBERSHIP: It always seems between 1.5-2k, when they mention it, but they never seem to have a social media presence, or if they do, it was established relatively recently. This also applies to marketer websites (and if you look hard enough, if you’ll find a boilerplate page they didn’t update).
🚩USING REAL ORGANIZATIONS and people/leadership names to fool you into thinking they’re legit. Again, real organizations won’t be cold contacting you. And program managers/owners/CEOs definitely won’t.
🚩WORK AROUND YOUR SCHEDULE or only having space in the next two weeks. That’s not how legit scheduling works with legit organizations. They have a schedule, and while they may have some wiggle room, it’s never ‘around your schedule’.
Now That You Have Seen Me
🚩 This is not my book
🚩 The name in the signature block is not the same in from block, which is also in the email address… sorta?
🚩 There are no website or social media links. Where are the testimonials? Who are these authors?
SpyGlass
🚩 This is for the German version of my third book.
🚩 Lauren Whitney is the President of Television, overseeing television development & production. She is not a film development executive.
🚩 While I’m impressed with her signature block, they emailed me from a gmail account.
🚩 The president of any organization is not going to contact me. They have a team for that. But that team isn’t going to cold contact me for a book that dropped in 2015, much less the German version, and even if they were interested in either version, they’d contact my publisher
🚩 The email is chocked full of grammar errors. No self-respecting company would let something like that represent them.
🚩 Do you see that long ass subject line?
Blumhouse
🚩This is for the Spanish version of my first book.
🚩Melissa Aouate is the President (no producer addendum) of Blumhouse Television, not Blumhouse Productions. As such, 1) she wouldn’t be cold contacting an indy author (she has a team for that), 2) her signature block wouldn’t look like that hot mess, and 3) she wouldn’t be emailing from an aol account.
🚩It was an interesting rewrite of my book blurb, but it was still a rewrite of my book blurb.
🚩What author hasn’t thought about having their book translated into a film or serialized television adaptation? But 1) her area is television, and 2) she would say she wants to talk about adapting it to television (except her team would… and they would be contacting my publisher, not me directly).
Texas Holdem
🚩This is not my book.
Marginalia
🚩I didn’t receive the first email, because there was no first email.
🚩Speaking of emails, you see they used a gmail account.
🚩The signature block has real information in it. Beth Golay is a real person who hosts a 29 minute podcast called Marginalia on NPR, that you can listen to on 89.1 FM, where she and her co-host talk about books she’s read. They’ve had interviews with “Pulitzer Prize–winners, US Poet Laureates and two Nobel Laureates”.
🚩They’re aware that people are out there using their info to solicit money from authors, and they ask that those emails be forwarded to info@kmuw.org.
Jacksonville Book Club
🚩Book clubs do not require your permission to use your book.
🚩There no subject line,
🚩There’s no link to the book club, or at least the author events to show previous authors. Oh, right, bc scam.
September Withers
🚩 The email not only falls into my normal email red flag, the actual September Withers has this note on their website:
🚩 If anyone says they dropped a review on your book before they try to sell their services did not drop a review on your book.
🚩 Most of the second paragraph is verbal vomit.
🚩 No links to a website or testimonials.
WFUV Broadcast
🚩 WFUV is a real non-commercial radio station owned by Fordham University in NYC. They are not a ‘platform dedicated to thoughtful conversations with writers and influential voices in thriller fiction…’
🚩 Alisa Ali is a real person at WFUV. She does not do author interviews.
🚩 Verbally vomiting my book blurb
🚩 No signature block
ReadRise Agency
🚩 ‘Favour Rebecca’ has a website for ReadRise Agency. But if you go there, you’ll notice a lot of links that don’t work or go to other ‘marketing’ websites that look like carbon copies of this one, staff photos that are either thefts or AI-generated, and a carousel of nonsense ‘testimonials’.
🚩These scammers have a well-written email that looks like they’ve really spent time on your book, or in this case my trilogy. However, the reason my books aren’t well-ranked is bc the last one came out in 2019. Award-winning or not, a series that’s seven years old isn’t going to rank well. Duh.
🚩Signature block has no links
You should bookmark this page, in case you get a suss email in the future, but if you’d be interested in my happier bookish content, consider hitting this button!
Book Visibility Specialist
🚩This is for the Spanish version of my book for a book that dropped in 2021.
🚩No business information.
🚩Vomited book blurb
Book Haven Book Community
🚩’Clement Michael’… yep. And then he signs the email with ‘Clement’. Mr. President, why are you cold contacting me for a book that dropped in 2014?
🚩Book Haven Book Community should not be confused with Book Haven Books, which is a really nice bookstore in Northern NJ that celebrates diversity.
🚩They do not have a website, nor could I find any book-related information about a quarterly Book Fest. Bc, well, scam.
Canelo Publishing Ltd
Now, this is a good one. Doesn’t verbally vomit my book blurb, talks about my series, reads like they actually did their homework, but if they’d followed my primary link or scrolled down to the bottom of my book info on Amazon, they’d see I have a publisher. But they didn’t.
🚩Emily Bedford <emilybedford.canelo@aol.com> - Really? A Senior Editor using AOL? Nah.
🚩Canelo Publishing, Ltd. is a real publishing company. Emily Bedford is a real senior editor there. However, they don’t cold contact authors, only accepting books through submission, and their current submission period is closed.
🚩Why didn’t they add links to her bio or the publishing page? Bc a good detective will see the submission link at the bottom, and click on it.
RTÉ Radio 1
🚩Anthonia Lucy <lucyanthoniapromotion@gmail.com> - Really? This one is super lazy.
🚩Verbal Vomit
🚩RTÉ Radio 1 is a real radio station. Lucy Anthonia (or Anthonia Lucy) is not.
🚩Flexible scheduling? Nope
Radio Deutschlandfunk
🚩 Jona Teichmann <jonateichmannprogramd@gmail.com>
🚩Verbal Vomit
🚩Deutschlandfunk and Jona Teichmann are real. Deutschlandfunk even occasionally reviews books… with a German connection. But there is nothing on their website stating how they curate those books, and I only found two over the last three years. Jona Teichmann is the program director. She is far too busy to be cold contacting authors.
🚩Working around my schedule? For a country-wide radio station? I think not.
Modesty Mark
🚩Modesty Mark <markmodesty213@gmail.com> - Could it be a real email? Sure. But the only thing I could find was a FB account run by a woman from Africa that didn’t talk about books at all. So I’m going to say no.
🚩Vague text. They pulled the title of my first book, and that’s it. Lazy.
Metro Philadelphia Book Club
🚩 Paul <dmetrophiladelphiabookclub@gmail.com>
🚩 Verbal vomit
🚩 There is a Metro Philadelphia Book Club, but it’s a Meetup group specific to Philly, and they don’t cold contact authors for any pay-to-play author spotlight. The photo at the bottom is the organizer’s picture on the Meetup group. The button at the bottom will take you to the Meetup page.
I got a very similar email from "Emily"! I couldn't figure out why it felt off, but this definitely solidifies my thoughts. Thanks!