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message 1: by Feliks (new)

Apr 10, 2026 01:36PM

Surprising challenges I saw reported recently, from a struggling author. He describes scam attempts aimed at him on a weekly basis.

Here is his account of what has been happening to him. Minor edits by myself for readability.

1) eBAY scams. I was notified that 'leather-bound' copies of my book were being sold on eBay by an Indian "distributor" with patently fraudulent & phony company history.

2) "Book marketing specialists" who reword ad copy in order to inflate promises of expanded sales

3) Book Clubs who claim eagerness to promote my book to readers but suddenly vanish upon learning that there is no special swag or rewards for their book club members if they read my work

4) Instagrammers who post images of books on their IG accounts at the price of $25 to $160 per book image.

It's a challenge to write and market as is, especially as the swamp of books on Amazon continues to grow.

I wish at this point to make clear the policy throughout all "Feliks D." groups, regarding these travails:

No Feliks book group ever receives any perks whatsoever, for engaging with our in-house members who happen to be authors.

Zero. Period. Nil. Zed. Null.

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message 2: by D.C. (new)

Apr 10, 2026 02:24PM

That is refreshing to hear. I get probably 6 to 10 spam emails a day for book club scams, book review scams, publishing scams, etc. More and more of them are clearly AI generated. The scammers are getting smarter and their scam could be pretty hard to spot for many people.

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