Fan Mail from Nobody

Authors, Your Inbox Is Lying to You

Let me paint a picture for you.

An author gets an email from a reader praising their work. It’s a wonderful feeling to know someone is connecting with “your baby.” One you’ve poured sweat and tears into in order to birth it to the world. That email is a sort of pat on the back or a warm virtual hug. The kind that makes you sit up a little straighter in your chair.

I’ve received these and it makes you feel so good. It helps mitigate the sting of those low reviews on Goodreads. You accept it, you smile, you move on.

But something sinister is happening in the inboxes of authors across the country. I know this because I posted on my social media to see if I was alone. I was not.

If you’re a writer you may have noticed more and more of these praising emails the past six months. You know the ones. They go into great detail on the storyline or characters, but something is just off. It reads like Cliff Notes (are those even still around) and has an AI feel to the writing. Technically accurate. Emotionally hollow. Like someone handed a robot your back cover blurb and said “make it sound like you cried.”

Case in point. I received an email raving about a novelette I wrote in 2012. Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel. An ebook. Not exactly flying off the digital shelves at this particular moment in history. Yet there was “Laurie” writing to me like she had just discovered a lost manuscript in her grandmother’s attic. She knew the character names. She knew the themes. She even called it a novelette, which she got from my own website description, but I appreciated that she did her homework before lying to me.

Laurie is not real.

Then there was the one about my children’s chapter book. Whoever wrote it knew that the main character smells like cotton candy when he gets excited. Very specific detail. Very impressive research. That information is also printed on the back cover of the book. You can literally read it in a bookstore while standing up. They did not go deep. They went to Amazon, clicked the image, and zoomed in.

For about eleven seconds, I was flattered.

If you’re like me, you either delete it instantly or you click the name to study the actual email to figure out where it is coming from. The address is always a little off. The domain is always a little suspicious. And “Laurie from Severn House” is always emailing you from a Gmail account.

One of these came in impersonating a real editor at a real publishing house. I did not know her. But I found her. Because apparently when someone uses my name as bait in a scam, something in me goes full Elsbeth. For those who don’t watch CBS on Thursday nights, Elsbeth always solves her case. Thankfully no one was murdered in this particular investigation.

I tracked down the editor’s actual work email and forwarded the whole thing with a note explaining what was happening. Professionally. Calmly. Also slightly hoping she would read it and think, well, someone out there is impersonating me to get to this writer so maybe I should find out why.

She did not respond.

It went into the slush pile. The scam email about me, impersonating her, sent to her, is currently sitting in a stack of unsolicited manuscripts waiting to be reviewed. I like to think it is still there. I like to think one day she will open it, read a glowing assessment of my work written in her own name, and think: honestly, not bad.

What is the end game? I never engage long enough to find out. At some point I have to assume a money ask is coming. Maybe they want a fee to “submit” your manuscript. Maybe they are collecting contact information. Maybe somewhere there is a very patient scammer who has been corresponding with authors for months, just waiting for the right moment to ask for a Western Union transfer.

I am tempted to find out. I genuinely am. But I also know that the minute I respond, my inbox becomes a full time job.

That tiny moment of joy instantly switches to: oh, not this again. You would think I’d be used to it by now. I am not.

So be wary out there, authors. Real editors are busy. Real readers do not email you from personal accounts about a twelve year old ebook. And nobody, I promise you, nobody is sitting around mining Goodreads to find their next favorite voice in literary fiction.

Just keep writing what you love. And maybe set up an email filter.