Anatomy of a Scam

One of two similar emails I received from the same scammer 1 day apart.

 

Several times a week, I get solicitations from email marketers, book bloggers, and other writing service industry people wanting my money in return for some promised promotional outcome.

Most of the time, I delete them out of hand. They are nearly always generic, clearly mail merge letters. Sometimes they will have something that tries to be personal, but that's rare. 

This one was the rarest of the rare: it references the title and themes of my most recent novel. My curiosity led me to first search the internet for the company and the person. A combination of "Book Niche Alliance" and "Rachel Key" found nothing. Which got me even more curious. 

So I fired up a private browser and copied/pasted the website link. That's where things got interesting. This is from their testimonials page. 

If this company is good enough for John Grisham and David Baldacci, it's good enough for me...right?

Why on earth would a spammer use such well known author names/photos for such generic praise? But that wasn't my first clue. No, the first clue was a wix address. And the wix banner still over the home page. 

The URL - with a ".wixsite.com" address and the banner says amateur.

Then I looked at the so-called staff looking for Rachel. And here she is...

She looks like a lovely person. Too bad she's a model in a corporate headshot gallery

 

 Perhaps Rachel is one of a set of triplets who dress identically, because I found her in a reverse image search in a lot of other places.

 

How much do you want to bet none of the team members are real?

 

But here's the thing: the pitch was personalized and relevant to my book. The why is easy to understand - who doesn't want to be flattered by someone who seemingly read and loved your novel?

The how is a little harder. My 2 theories are:

1.  Someone posted a review with this information in it or
2. (and worse/more creepy) the book was fed into a LLM and this was its summation. 

 The first email had this subject heading and content:  

A multiverse story with emotional depth — let’s help it travel further

"We recently discovered Entangled Realities and were struck by its beautifully layered exploration of the multiverse. But what truly stayed with us was its emotional heartbeat   the way it speaks to grief, displacement, and healing with such care and resonance."

From the second email, screenshotted at the top of the post:

"I recently came across your novel Litany for a Broken World while browsing visionary and metaphysical sci-fi in the Kindle Store, and I was immediately drawn to your layered, emotionally intelligent premise. A young girl lost in the multiverse, a grief-stricken doctor, a lonely seer and the convergence of their brokenness across dimensions this is the kind of story that not only entertains, but resonates on a deeply human level."

So, would I have liked this to be a real human being so deeply moved by my book? Yes. Absolutely. And indeed, I have had readers tell me how meaningful and powerful they found it. Perhaps as it wends its way into the world, others will be profoundly moved by the story. But it will have to manage without the help of the equally fictional Book Niche Alliance.

 

Have you received a similarly weirdly personalized pitch? Let me know! 

 

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