By Anne R. Allen
The self-publishing boom of the past 15 years has been a gift to the scam community. Authors aren’t the only targets of scams, of course, but we have become easy prey. I used to say there are twice as many scammers making money off of writers as there are writers making money.
But now that the AI bots are in the picture, my estimate is way too conservative. AI generated scams have made the author-scam business explode. Maybe there are 10 times as many of them as there are of us. Or 20. Or 30. In any case, you can be pretty certain that anyone who contacts you as a writer—out of the blue—is a scammer. Other red flags will be false urgency (act by midnight tonight!) bizarre email addresses, lack of a website or online presence, and outrageous, improbable names. Here are some of the funniest scammer names I found in my inbox this week:
- Benedict Bookscape
- Sophie Remarkable
- Susan Cinematic
- Marvellous Omenican
- Thane Cawdor (for fans of the Scottish Play)
- Dawn Organizer
- And my fav: Chazzy Worm
To judge by the barrage of scam emails that clog my inbox every day, I’d say there must be 30 scammers for every midlist writer like me.
The Cruel New Amazon Scam
The latest scam aimed at authors is diabolical. I haven’t experienced it myself. But for first time authors who haven’t been able to gather many reviews, it’s nasty. The scammers inform you that Amazon itself will punish you for your lack of reviews.
This scam comes via an email that pretends to be from Amazon. They tell you that as of January 2026, Amazon will penalize all books with fewer than 10 reviews with “reduced visibility and listing restrictions.”
They recommend hiring their own “Certified Visibility Specialist” to keep your book from being thrown into the pit of Amazon obscurity.
Of course, Amazon does not have “Certified Visibility Specialists” and they have not instituted a new policy of penalizing authors for not getting enough reviews. Unfortunately, this cruel scam will probably terrify a lot of newbies into forking over their hard-earned money.
Do spread the word to try to reach them. If they pay this “specialist” the cash, the cash and the specialist will disappear into the scammerverse forever.
There’s a lot more about this scam on Rod Raglin’s blog, If the fake Amazon people contact you, he suggests you report it to the real Amazon at reportascam@amazon.com
A little sleuthing on his part found that, like almost all of these criminal enterprises, this scam originates in Nigeria. For more on this, see Victoria Strauss’s post “The Return of the Nigerian Prince.”
Amazon is the Hunting Ground for Scammers
All the scam emails I get are fueled by the information on my book’s “buy” pages at Amazon. The AI bots gobble up all the reviews, plus the product description, add some shameless praise, distill it down to two paragraphs, and use it to entice you to hire them to:
- Be your super-savvy publicist; let me count the ways.
- Make you a book trailer
- Get featured by their book club which has 10 gazillion readers who all love to write reviews. (But surprise, surprise, you have to pay each and every one of them.)
- Get you featured on TikTok or Goodreads.
Some of this praise is really convincing. AI is getting smarter and smarter. But remember, none of it is real. (More on these guys in my post Update on those Flattering AI Scams.)
Amazon’s info also fuels the emails from “Stephen King,” “Colleen Hoover,” “Danielle Steel” or some other bestselling author who thinks you’re so darn cool they want to be besties. I’m sure you all know you should send those immediately to spam and block the sender.
No, you’re not blocking the real Stephen King.
And Here are Some More Fun Scams that Have Been Hitting my Inbox This Week:
1. I Can’t Find Your Book. Can You Help Me?
I’ve been getting a lot of this annoying ploy: “I saw your profile on Facebook, and you’re such a fascinating person, I’d like to read your book, but I can’t find it anywhere.”
Of course, if they really read your profile on FB, or anywhere else, chances are very good they also saw a link to your Amazon author page or your website.
Yes, they can find “your book” just fine. (Always singular. They all assume you’ve only written one book.) Don’t reply, even simply with a polite link. They’ll think they have you hooked and you’ll hear from them again. And again.
2. The Lazy Scam
The newest scammers aren’t going to the trouble of using praise for the target author’s books. The emails are simply addressed to “Dear Author.” The AI praise is usually carefully generic. The ones I get are pushing the book club spotlight scam.
But sometimes they try to get a little less generic and fail miserably. I got one this week addressed to “Dear Author” that spent 4 paragraphs praising my “horror book.” This guy informed me that he helps “place horror books into reader-driven discovery spaces where people are already looking for psychological horror, supernatural dread, moral unease, or slow-burn tension”
Happy for you, dude, but I write how-to books for writers and humorous beachy mysteries featuring a sleuth who’s an excruciatingly polite etiquette expert. Camilla fans will know why I laughed out loud at this one.
3. The “I’ve Written You a Review, But…” Scam
I’ve had three of these this week, and I had to test one out to see what would happen. Here’s how it works:
- The scammer generates a glowing AI one-paragraph “review” of your book,
- They put it in an email, saying they tried to post the review, but Amazon has blocked it.
- They ask if you have a page on Goodreads or Bookbub where they could post it.
If you reply, they do post the review, but then you get the standard “book club” scam pitch. And wow, those book clubs are so popular, half the residents of the Anglophone world must belong to them. Every one of these (fictitious, of course) book clubs has at least 100K members. And each email promotes a different club. I’m surprised it isn’t bigger news that people have gone back to reading books instead of streaming TV shows and movies on their phones. 😊
4. The One-Sentence Mystery Email
These are fun. You get an email with the header “Your Thoughts?” or “Please Acknowledge.” Then there’s a one sentence message–“Are you the author?” or “Are you active here?”
Don’t bite. Whatever bizarre thing is going on, it’s aimed at your wallet. Send to spam and block.
There’s a Lot More About Scams…
At Writer Beware this week. Victoria Strauss gives a recap of all the worst scams of 2025.
by by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen and annerallen.bsky.social) January 18, 2026
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What about you, scriveners? How many scam emails do you get per day? Have you got any from “people” with improbable, silly names? Have you pursued any of these scams to see where they lead?
Book of the Week
Romance scams are even more plentiful than writing scams. In this stand-alone Camilla Randall mystery, a romance scam leads to murder, and it’s up to Camilla, her cat Buckingham, and two ‘tween Nancy Drew wannabes to find the killer.
Book available in ebook and paperback at Amazon and Barnes and Noble
and your local bookstore can order it through Ingram
featured image by Mohamed Hassan
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