Exposed: The Shocking Scam Preying on Writers You Need to Know Now

As authors, we’ve all been inundated with DMs on social media asking how our writing journey is going. Invariably, after starting out saying they want to be our friends, they turn to selling their fake reviews or sketchy book promo services. Now those same scammers have upped their game.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a nice email, purportedly from the children’s book author, Kevin Henkes.

It was a very pleasant message introducing himself. He included a link to one of his books and another to his Amazon author page.

I didn’t expect a children’s book author to contact me out of the blue, but I’m active in a number of writing communities, including the occasional article here on the Writing Cooperative. And I’ve learned a lot about book marketing from other indie writers, so I’m always happy to connect with writers and compare notes.

Still, the message was kind of strange. Kevin introduced himself and asked: “I’d really love to hear more about your writing journey and the stories you’ve brought to life. If you’re open to sharing, I’d be glad to check out your work, feel free to send over your book link, website, Goodreads, or Amazon page.”

Yeah, my scam antenna went up, but there didn’t seem any harm in replying. So I said hi back, said I was a writer of Silicon Valley thrillers and hope he’d check out my books.

That was the last I heard from Kevin.

Steve Martini Says Hi

Yesterday, the author of legal thrillers, Steve Martini, sent me an email to introduce himself. Was this a new trend among authors to connect to each other by email?

No. The message looked and sounded too familiar. So I pulled up the message from Kevin and compared them side-by-side. The introduction was different of course, but the last paragraph was identical: “I’d really love to hear more about your writing journey and the stories you’ve brought to life. If you’re open to sharing, I’d…