Caution on Emails With Praise…
They Hit You With Praise and Then Ask for Money…
For some reason, lately, this ploy has been happening. This is my third in three weeks. These folks never research who they are sending to, but do at least pretend to have read the book they are trying to get money to promote.
The most recent for me was tonight… Here is the letter I got on a book that has been in print for 12 years and just reprinted this last spring with new covers. Ready for this???
Dean,
My name is (Deleted) . I came across The Slots of Saturn, and it struck me as more than a superhero origin; it’s a sly, human story disguised as cosmic mischief. You wrote it like someone who’s seen behind the curtain, who knows that humor and heartbreak are often the same thing wearing different suits. Poker Boy might play in the realm of gods and ghosts, but what you really captured was how absurdly fragile and brilliant people can be when luck decides to look the other way.
I’m part of a quiet circle of just over a thousand lifelong readers, not critics, not marketers, just people who still read to feel something. We talk privately, pick the books that hit hardest, and when they do, we post honest reviews on Amazon and Goodreads under our own names. No sponsorships, no campaigns, no algorithms, just real readers keeping storytelling alive in the way it used to be: by reading, feeling, and telling the truth about it.
Your work has that timeless pulse, the kind of writing that reminds people why fiction still matters. If you’re open to it, I’d love to tell you what it looks like when our readers take on a book. It’s simple, human, and it lasts longer than any publicity cycle ever could.
Fun, huh? If I had an ego that cared, it might have felt stroked. (grin)
And by the way, I could have easily written that just from the sales copy of a novel without reading it. But zero doubt this is AI generated.
I responded by thanking the person for the kind words and offering to suspend my $5,000 speaking fee if they wanted me to talk about my book and writing for an hour. If legit, with a real writing group, the person would have jumped at that. Instead the response letter was claiming no scam. All that was wanted was a pdf of my novel… Uh, sure… (His select group would have loved it, of course.)
After that I am sure there would have been $250 to $500 fee to get the book out to all their readers… (Expenses you know…)
That is standard for this kind of thing. And if the person gets 10 writers a week to jump for it, not bad money.
And in this indie world, with everyone so afraid of not doing enough “promotion” a ton of beginning and middle-staged writers would flop for the $250 and the praise. Sadly.
So caution, gang. Money flows to the writer and good promotion is free and makes you money in the process.
11 Comments
Bonnie
In addition to those (and I’ve never responded so good to know where they are headed), I’ve gotten emails from people that say they just want to talk to me about writing and engage in discussion. I’m not at all certain what they want to get from that but when I got the second one from a different writer (both were reasonably well known writers of books about cats), I put them in spam.
Terrance Davis
A writer friend just got this exact email. He thinks the scammer used AI to summarize the book and sales copy so it seemed like a human had actually read it.
dwsmith
The Writer Beware website has been warning writers on this kind of scam for months now. Just head-shaking the people who will play on other’s dreams.
djmills
If AI wrote that, AI is getting better at spelling and fully formed sentences.
Jason M
It seems you haven’t used an LLM lately. Their grammatical and syntactic capabilities now exceed those of most human writers. And they’re becoming much better at finding meanings. But they do have a certain overconfident sound that marks them as AI.
dwsmith
Why in the world would I use any AI for writing, since they stole my writing to train their programs?
Lazy writing, all the way, and damned funny at times. If it wasn’t so tragic with all the theft.
Jason M
I didn’t state whether you should or should not use AI for writing. This wasn’t a comment on fair use, copyright, or training. Believe me, I wouldn’t come to your blog for that.
I stated that the tool’s grammatical and syntactic skills have grown more sophisticated than DJ Mills realizes.
dwsmith
I suppose, but not one real writer I know cares since we don’t use it. It’s for lazy writers looking for a shortcut instead of learning. Those kind are gone quickly either way.
Vincent Zandri
I wake up to three or four of them every morning…DELETE….DELETE…DELETE…rinse and repeat. SPAM doesn’t work since the bots know how to get around it.
dwsmith
Only got two so far, but sure that will increase. I have a lot of books for them to find and praise. (grin)
Anthony Izzo
Thanks for highlighting this issue, Dean. I’ve been getting 5-6 of these per week. Either wanting to promote my books or feature my books in a book club. All for a price, of course. All scams.