Spam and Fraud!

Every day I receive upwards of twenty emails offering me marketing services. Usually, they are extremely long tirades of praise for ‘my book’ – rarely actually named – a detailed analysis of the gaps in my marketing, and then an offer to fix those gaps – at a cost.
I have learned to read through them all before deleting, because there have been a few genuine emails mixed into the pile, and this has been a valuable trick because I have learned much about what to expect.
Most of the generic emails are just feelers and instantly recognisable and don’t take too much time before I hit the delete button.
But the ones that do name one of my books take a little longer because at first glance they seem to be from a reader who has actually read the book.
I now recognise that the substance of the email is usually an AI-generated reworking of my blurb and biography. Long, elaborate sentences of praise are designed to make me feel good and respond positively, followed by detailed ‘analysis’ of my Goodreads and/or Amazon ‘followings’. The ‘hook’ is the offer of miraculous services to fix all of this.
The spammers have also discovered my website and are using the contact form in a similar manner. I began with a policy of responding to every contact form, as I felt it was only polite. Usually, I respond with a polite thank you for your comment and a ‘not interested’ for any services offered. They don’t give up though, as my response is often countered with a second attempt, and sometimes even a third.
I no longer respond to contact form emails that are not genuine questions or responses.
So, I was patting myself on the back for being pretty savvy about dealing with spam, until I fell, hook, line and sinker for a publishing fraud.
I received an email ostensibly from a publisher saying she had reviewed one of my books and was interested in having a discussion about publishing. Wow! That was unexpected. I googled the writer and her publishing company and all seemed to be quite genuine. So, I responded.
I received a reply saying that she would prefer to work through an agent and she even helpfully supplied a name. Being self-published, I didn’t have an agent, but as I had already been thinking about going down this route I started putting out some feelers. I even consulted a writers’ Facebook page asking about the process and sought advice about finding an Australian agent. I received several suggestions of helpful advice, mostly asking why I would want an Australian agent if the publisher was in New York. I thought about it, and had to agree, so I wrote to the agent the ‘publisher’ had suggested.
She was lovely. Extremely helpful, read a section of the manuscript and agreed that it should be taken further and re-published with a large publisher. I began to hope that, just maybe, my big break had finally arrived.
At this point, I began to feel that this had all been a bit too easy, and so I decided to do some more checking before proceeding any further. I emailed both the publishing company and the agent’s company, providing the email addresses I had been using and asking them to verify them.
Both were total frauds.
All my hopes and expectations came crashing down and I was grateful that I had not reached the point of signing any contracts or exchanging any money. Lessons learned!
My father used to say to me that if something was almost too good to be believed, then it probably wasn’t genuine. So true! I am now doubly cautious, of course, but still embarrassed at just how easily I was taken in. I still find it difficult to believe that there are people out there who spend their time deliberately trying to defraud people. This had been quite a lengthy process with several exchanges of emails and we weren’t even close to formalising any sort of arrangement, so the fraudsters were obviously in for both the game and the long haul, willing to put time and effort into reeling me in.
So, I remain self-published with obvious gaps in my marketing, still receiving copious emails from spammers who just do not give up.