ALERT! THIS SATURDAY, January 24th, is the winter 24-Hour Short Story Contest! Only 500 participants permitted so SIGN UP TODAY!

---

I have a new hobby. I’m pissing off book marketing scammers!

We all know their work. Like wolves following a herd of caribou, these scammers circle Amazon and legitimate book markets, looking for new releases. Then they slip into the author’s social media, promising a tsunami of new readers, swollen sales and massive reviews.

They express (false!) deep understanding of the author’s work, lament the tragic lack of the attention it deserves, and express their readiness to catapult the author all the way to a Pulitzer … for a price.

In the worst case, the author bites. Imagine her distress when she learns the florid words were the work of AI and there was never a plan for literary success. Now the scammer no longer answers her emails, and her bank account is hollow.

I was introduced to the game after I was hit with the “fellow author” scam. It was a few days after Sunbury Press released my memoir, A Version Of the Truth. I got an email from an author in Norway who said he’d “come across my work” and wanted to correspond as fellow writers. I Googled him. He was legitimate (or at least appeared to be so). So, we traded a few emails, but something was…off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the writing seemed bloodless. And he kept guiding the focus toward marketing.

The guy got a mention in the New York Times Book Review, so why this obsession with sales? Plus – and it pains me to admit this – unless he was in a full body cast in an Oslo hospital and someone was force-reading him “my work,” there’s no way a novelist about laborers in Norway would have come across a memoir by a Baby Boomer woman in California.

I tracked it back and it was the “fellow-author long game con” with a fictitious marketing contract as the goal. The real author had probably never heard of me. He has now. His publisher agreed to alert him to this new form of catfishing. I’ll never know who was behind the ruse, but that was the start of my hobby.

Engaging with the scammers is tricky. Sociopaths can be so unpredictable. But I can’t resist poking them. If there’s a photo, a Google reverse image search tells me whose smiling face I see on my screen. So far, it’s never been the scammer’s. Often it’s a retail model, and I remind the scammer that identity theft is a no-no. Even when I can’t track down the image’s owner, the effort to alert them satisfies me.

I know the scammer never read my book, so I always quiz them. “Before I pay your fee, tell me. In which chapter was there a fire?” There was no fire. I just like to think of them trying to find it.

The other day I got a pitch with a special fun element. Eight purported former clients, gushing about the services that had moved their book into the spotlight. It was a slow morning, so I looked up each book by author name and, as a favor to the scammer, I reported my findings to them.

Their purported (fake!) “thriller author” is a financial analyst. I suppose books about money could be listed as thrillers. Maybe he analyzed Ponzi schemes…

And their fantasy author? On Amazon, the sole author by that name writes cookbooks. With imaginary ingredients? Is that the fantasy part?

The “business author” does exist but his sticker price of $33 for a 91-page paperback might explain the total absence of reviews.

Their “YA author” is a psychologist who writes about death and dying. Not usually YA reading fare.

And there’s the glowing endorsement from their supposed Sci-Fi author. Only a collection of poems about seeing God is listed by a writer with that name. No comment.

Here’s the scammer’s response to my challenge:

“Those are client names used across pen names, hybrid releases, and non-public listings. That’s extremely common in category fiction, business titles, and early-phase launches.”

What?

Substack writer Jen Heller’s comment said it all. “When they respond incoherently like that, it usually means the real person slipped up and typed something instead of using AI.”

RELATED

• Episode 32 – Save Yourself THOUSANDS!: Our Scam-Detection Process Explained Step-by-Step!
• 11 Ways to Know If a “Publisher” or Other Service Provider is an Overseas Scammer (You’ll probably only need to check #1 to prove it!)
• FRAUD ALERT: Why 5-Star Reviews on Trustpilot Can NOT Be Trusted – by James M. Walsh, Esq.
• A NEW WAVE OF SCAM EMAILS IS TARGETING AUTHORS! “My book club wants to review your book!!”
• OPEN AND OBVIOUS DANGER! Gmail Email Scammers are Targeting MILLIONS of Authors! – by James M. Walsh, Esq.

Marsh Rose is a psychotherapist and author of creative nonfiction. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Cosmopolitan Magazine, Salon.Com, Hippocampus and others. Her memoir, A Version Of the Truth, was published by Sunbury Press in September 2025 and her story, “False Memory,” won first prize for creative nonfiction from New Millennium Writings in 2018. Her website is https://www.marshroseauthor.com. Marsh lives in Northern California with a professional athlete. (He’s 12 years old, considered a senior for a racing greyhound.)

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING A BOOK?

Angela is not only the publisher of WritersWeekly.com. She is President & CEO of BookLocker.com,
a self-publishing services company that has been in business since 1998. Ask her anything.

ASK ANGELA!

>>>Read More WritersWeekly Feature Articles<<<