Author scam time

 This morning I opened an email from a Ms Viola Clark who told me she was on the 'Executive Committee of The European Book Club.'  A page long email followed, extolling the virtues of my book A Hippopotamus at the Table, which is my memoir set in South Africa 1975-1977 a time of full on apartheid, when me, my husband and young baby were living there. 

Ms Viola Clark calls this offer, 'Our Author Spotlight Session, where they 'explore personal narrative within historical contexts, the ethics of witnessing, and the craft of transforming lived experience into compelling memoir''

She goes on to say 'We would be honored (American spelling - all the way through - European Book Club?) to feature you in an upcoming spotlight session centered on A Hippopotamus at the Table...."  blah blah  '' reflecting on life during apartheid would deeply resonate with our audience.... 

A Hippopotamus at the Table: My true story of life in South Africa at a time of apartheid 1975-78 

by Anna Meryt (Author) 

9 out of 5

A Hippopotamus at the Table, by Anna Meryt

'To support production, moderation, and international outreach, there is a small organizational fee associated with participation.  We are transparent about this and would be pleased to share full details if this aligns with your current plans.'

All this sounds great - an opportunity to give my book some much needed extra publicity.

So why I thought am I feeling suspicious?  I read it over several times and noted several things - the too clever wording 'lived experience into compelling memoir', for example.  I've used AI quite a lot - I often use ChatGpt for writing official letters to public bodies and sometimes get it to write closing paragraphs of various other written pieces. So I recognised AI speak.  It was all very flattering.  A bit too flattering, I thought - how had they come across my book among the many out there, read it (?), analysed it and now wanted to do a widespread publicity campaign.  Everything they said was accurate about my book, but usually if you want to get on the publicity lists of  say libraries, book clubs, research and lots of letter writing is necessary.  

I decided to look around and almost the first thing I came across in my email inbox was an article by James Blatch - who's an author closely allied with Mark Dawson - a Brit from Southampton, who's one of the biggest top 100 Indie author crime fiction writers on Amazon. I like James Blatch's no nonsense approach to writing and determination to give a down-to-earth view and lots of information in his articles. The title of James's article?  'Author Book Club Scams.'  Ah! I thought.  Sure enough, it was all about the latest way these scammers are targeting huge numbers of authors and James reckoned that if even 5% get sucked in and they send out thousands of these emails every day, they'd make a fortune.  James is setting up a counter scam, using AI to respond to AI.  He reckons that most authors who do get sucked in will be too embarrassed to admit to it.

So I decided to write back an innocent-sounding email enquiring about the 'small organizational fee'.  I received a reply within hours - it said, 'the fee for the Author Spotlight feature is $100.  This covers the editorial feature of your book, promotion to our reader network, and social media exposure through The European Book Club.' 'The purpose of the fee is blah blah... some rubbish ... so it reaches an engaged audience of readers.'

I've just written back again -  

'Thanks so much, that sounds fantastic.  Can you please tell me the size of your reader network?'

I wonder how long I can string them along?  :). 

Watch this space.