Today’s post is by author Teri Case.
Since I published my debut novel, Tiger Drive, in 2018, I’ve seen my share of scams. The more books I’ve published, the more calls, texts, and emails I’ve received from supposed reviewers, book clubs, television producers, and popular authors. As technology advances, the schemes become harder to spot and filter out.
But, I’m cautious by nature thanks to my upbringing (if you’d like a fictional adaptation or taste of it, read Tiger Drive), and I’ve grown into a literary citizen. I enjoy looking out for my fellow authors. So, if you receive an email from another author like the one that I received below from Colleen Hoover, check yourself and follow these simple steps before you get excited and reply or click on any links.
The Email
Step 1: Review the sender’s email address
Different email servers have different steps to confirm the full email address of the sender. In general, you can click on the sender’s name following “To:” and the full address will be displayed. Below is an example of how to check the sender’s address.
Step 2: Confirm the author’s email
Find the author’s website on the internet. Their website will most likely have a Contact or Contact Us section that shares the best contact email(s) for them. Often, the email address will match their website domain. For example, mine is teri@tericase.com. Hoover’s writing requires a business (Hoover Ink, LLC) and a team, so she uses Microsoft Outlook for her email which creates a centralized hub for her team to organize emails, calendars, and more. Some authors do not offer their email addresses but do offer a contact form. If so, skip to Step Three.
Step 3: Be a literary citizen
If you want to be a literary citizen, alert the author that you’ve received a supposed email from them. Use the email you found on their website and forward the suspect or fraudulent email.
Hello Ms. Hoover,
I thought you should know that someone is sending an email out pretending to be you. I’ve attached the email below. I’m sorry this is happening to you.
Best,
Teri
If you’re lucky, the author or venue will reply and say, “Yes, that was me. I can’t wait to speak to you!” But it’s more likely, you’ll get a response similar to the one that I received:
Hi Teri,
Thank you for sending this over. We have had a lot of people email us about the same thing and there are so many different addresses being used to impersonate Colleen.
Please report it as fraud, and we will forward the email to our legal team.
Thank you again.
Stephanie
Hoover Ink, LLC
www.colleenhoover.com
Other solicitations for money
Have you received invitations to have your book discussed at book clubs with tens of thousands of members? At first, I ignored the emails. Though they offered praise for and helpful insight into my novels (probably thanks to AI), I knew the offer was less of an invitation and more of a pitch to buy their services and entry into said book club. Eventually, I decided to start responding as follows:
Wow! Thank you for the encouraging feedback about my novels and your enthusiasm to share my novels with your book club. You are more than welcome to read and share my novels with your network. I can do a Zoom with your members as well. However, if a fee is involved, then I will have to decline.
On a few occasions, I’ve received responses that they are excited to hear from me and that they will be including my novels, and they fully understand that I will not pay a fee to be included. However, they will need to collect a small contribution from me to cover their advertising costs. My response: No thanks. And there it ends.
There are also the silly outreach emails from people claiming to love my voice on social media and asking where can they find my novels on Amazon and Goodreads. I haven’t responded to or followed this trail, so I don’t know their angle, but it hardly seems worth it if I have to first explain to someone (or something) how to use Amazon or Goodreads. My educated guess is they are trying to engage me for their own deceptive reasons. If I write back, they’ve likely mastered the first step of their plan, so it’s best to delete or send their inquiry to spam.
Finally, there are the offers for book reviews that I’ve received via direct messaging in social media. To explain the risks, I’ll point to Victoria Strauss’s guest post for Writer Beware,“The Book Marketing Scam That Went the Extra Mile.
Scammers will continue scamming. As authors become aware of each con, a new one will appear. It’s constant, but do not become discouraged. Literary citizens will continue to be literary citizens, and the creative community will prevail.
Update (Jan. 24, 2026)
I received a text on my personal cell number: “Are you the author of FINDING IMOGENE?” Using Google, I asked, “I received a text asking me if I’m the author of my book.”
Google’s AI Overview offered this nugget: “Receiving a text asking if you are the author of your book is very likely a phishing attempt, often initiated by AI to target Independent authors.”
If I were to reply, my cell number would be moved along the phishing chain for the next point of “flattering” outreach.
Although I had considered that AI was being used for scams, I had not considered that it can be used to initiate the scam.
Teri Case is the award-winning author of Tiger Drive, In the Doghouse: A Couple’s Breakup from Their Dog’s Point of View, and Finding Imogene. She lives in Washington, DC, and runs the Tiger Drive Scholarship for students who want to reach, learn, and grow beyond their familiar environment by attending college or a trade school. Learn more at tericase.com.
Timely post! I just received one of these book club scam emails. No mention of money and profuse, detailed praise of my book. But the first clue I had it was AI and a foreign language was how in the fifth paragraph the writing changed from first-person to second. I did not respond (somehow that’s the scammer’s goal?) and I reported it to FTC. But for a minute or so I basked in all the praise and insight.
Hi Lisa,
Yes, the “insight” can be very good, too, and basking for a few minutes in the praise is still worthwhile – that’s the silver lining of these hustles. After all, you wrote the book no matter what or who is curating and offering the “insight.”
Teri
Thank you, Teri, for this informative piece (and Jane for hosting the article). The most frequent scam emails I’ve received after publishing my book have been from people offering ostensible marketing services. The offers that are likely illegitimate are from people who don’t have an email address associated with a website domain or, in fact, any apparent presence on the Web. Even if they are not a scammer, how effective can their marketing services be if they don’t even know how to use SEO to enhance discoverability of their own work? I’ve also received solicitations for unspecified “business opportunities” from ostensible CEOs of huge multinational corporations — emails that included the real person’s scraped photo but, again, only a gmail return address for replying to. But the most hilarious scams have come from people who evidently copied and pasted a template for their illicit pitch into an email without bothering to substitute my name and the title of my book for the boilerplate names in their template.
Ha. Isn’t one of the first rules of marketing to know your customer’s name? Thanks for sharing your experience.
This is great information, especially about how to best identify the email address. I get so many of these scam emails, and we need to know how to deal with them. Thank you for sharing in such an accessible format.
Thank you, Cathey.
Alas, so many authors are getting these fraudsters’ emails…. Coming thick and fast too.
The particularly well done scammer emails, the ones that glorify my incredible insight into the human condition, I save to a file I call, “They Wanna Make Me Famous.” They are fun to return to, to bask in now and then. The poorly done ones get relegated to “Junk/Block Sender” and deleted.
I like this recommendation to contact the real authors so they can take steps to protect their work and their good names. I’m not sure how to report to the FTC, however. Any pointers on that?
Thanks!
Hi Sally – Here’s the link to the FTC site where you can report fraud.
https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
Thank you for this timely post! I just received an email glorifying my book in great detail, then offering to market it for a fee. No website, just a name I couldn’t match to any legitimate person or company. It’s amazing how deceptive AI is. Chilling, even.
Thank you for this. Great article.
I’ve tasted this bit of ugliness recently. The loss of time and trust is what hits below the belt. I was excited when a publishing house asked me to apply for a ghostwriting job. I read the materials, which stated that I’d have to take a writing test. No biggie. Heck, I’d be paid $100. What I didn’t realize was that it was actually two tests, and they were lengthy. Plus, involved signing a contract giving the publishing house copyright and the right of distribution for written work produced. (One test required a short story over 8,500 words. The second test required I three chapters, totaling over 10,000 words.) When I asked to have the copyright clause removed, my HR contact relayed their refusal. Then, I was informed my file was closed. No discussion. No workaround. Was I wrong to stand my ground? I feel so stupid and used. Why have this clause in a test? Is this practice commonplace, and I’m out of touch? Have you ever heard or gone through this as a path to a writing job?
Hi Susan,
I am very sorry about your discouraging experience. It sounds like you have learned a lot from this “opportunity,” and it generous of you to share how it unfolded with the authors here. You may help someone avoid the same issue.
In general, I think a a good rule of thumb is to always be paid for any trial chapters you write. If a payment is not involved, and you are also asked to pay a fee, it is a red flag. Secondly, you absolutely had the right to question the contract. I highly recommend joining the Authors Guild. As a member, you can submit any contract and receive legal advice: https://go.authorsguild.org/account
Wishing you great success. Thanks for being you.
Hi Teri, I made the mistake of replying to the first “review” offer to inform the person I do NOT pay for reviews. The person emailed back “so we can go forward.” NO!
(btw, he wanted me to “tip” all the reviews $25 min.; I calculated it would cost $40,000.)
After that, I do not reply at all. I will not encourage, even though it goes against my Midwestern manners of politeness.
As for the famous ruse. That happened to me on X. I’ve been an author for 40+ years, including a novel published by Simon & Schuster, and have friends who are considered in the top-tier of publishing, so it didn’t wave any red flags at first. However, once it did, I did what you suggested. The fake-famous author recommended an agent. That’s when I knew I wasn’t chatting with the real author. I check her website, called the fake person out after I got the email address, then contacted the real author. In hindsight, I wish I had reported the scammer before I blocked the person.
I’d like to add one more step. Authors should check Writers Beware. I found two of the scams I almost fell prey to. One was an interview for an e’zine in London. I made it clear all along I do not pay to be interviewed (and never heard of such a practice).
This year I have been getting such a proliferation of scams in my Authors Guild e-mailbox that I have asked the webmaster how can these be vetted and dumped in Spam. I may be missing out on legitimate offers because I don’t open the majority of the email anymore.
Hi Christine,
Thank you for the heads up about the Authors Guild e-mailbox and for reaching out to the webmaster.
Teri
Another one I got recently was a proposition for book promotion. Whole first part of the email was speaking very highly of my book. Then came the pitch! Trust no one!