The Author's Trap: How Book Club Scams Really Work
In recent months, I’ve started to receive emails claiming to be from book clubs. Typically, the sender begins the email with a paragraph of glowing praise about my book, A History of the Guards Armoured Formations 1941-1945. Next, they inform me that their particular club has thousands of loyal members just crying out to read a review of my book, or have me appear as a guest in an online “meet-up” (a bit like a Zoom call). The emails always seem to come from the USA or Canada. All very flattering. All very suspicious.
A couple of weeks after I received my first invitation to be reviewed by one of these so-called book clubs, the Society of Authors (SOA) issued a warning about various author-targeted scams currently circulating. I’m naturally suspicious of unsolicited emails, especially when they make unsubstantiated claims and promise the earth. I usually report them as spam, block them and forget about them. But I was a little curious about how the scams worked, why they targeted authors, and who got paid.
A Google search returned a very informative article by Victoria Strauss, co-founder of the Writer Beware® website. Based in the USA and sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association ( SFWA®), the stated mission of Writer Beware® is to “track, expose, and raise awareness of the prevalence of fraud and other bad practices in and around the publishing industry.” A very laudable endeavour. Published in September 2025, Victoria’s article is titled, Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams. It makes fascinating reading.
In one day, I received two suspicious emails offering to promote my book. Instead of simply deleting and blocking the senders, I thought I'd do a little digging of my own. What I found shows exactly why authors need to be careful about unsolicited outreach. (Note: I've changed the names and email addresses to protect privacy, but all other details are accurate.)
The first email claimed to be from “Andy Smith,” organiser of a book club in Washington, DC, with “4,000+ members.” The second purported to be from “Charlotte Doe,” claiming to be a bestselling author. Both were fake, and examining their email headers revealed why. Despite claiming to be from Washington, DC, and Sydney, Australia, respectively, both emails showed a +0100 time zone—indicating they originated in the UK or Western Europe. Someone in Washington would use US Eastern Time (-0400/-0500), not European time. And someone living in Sydney, certainly wouldn't be sending emails on UK time either.
The technical details provided more clues to the fraudulent origin of the emails. Both used free Gmail accounts with names like “bookclub.readers1@gmail.com” and “charlottedoe1@gmail.com” (note the “1” suffixes, suggesting someone already had those names). A legitimate book club with thousands of members is likely to have a professional, branded domain. I think the same is true for an established bestselling author. The “book club” email linked to a music journalism archive with no connection to book clubs. The author’s impersonation included Amazon links tagged with “utm_source=chatgpt.com,” suggesting that the content was generated by AI. Both emails contained tracking pixels to monitor whether I opened them, marking me as an active target for future scams.
The way the emails were written was suspicious. One email opened with “Hi,” missing my name entirely. Both offered generic praise that could apply to any book, without providing specific details about my work. The book club email made vague promises to “explore how we might spotlight” my book without any actual dates or plans, while the author’s message had an incomplete sentence: “I also wanted to share a recent discovery that might interest you”, followed by nothing, like the template was never finished.
The lessons learned are straightforward. Legitimate opportunities come through professional channels with verifiable credentials. They use proper business email addresses, include specific details about your work, and do not usually require tracking pixels. When you notice red flags, such as free email accounts, inconsistent sender locations, generic comments about your work, broken templates, unusual links, and tracking technology, it is a scam. These operations harvest author information, build email lists to sell, or set you up for future “promotional service” fees. If something feels wrong, follow your gut instincts, report the email as spam and block the sender.
Zero Trust: Your Digital Defence Against Social Engineering
At present, none of these fake emails have come with an attachment or specifically asked me to click a link, but some might. Whatever you do, and I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT OPEN any file or click on any link. At best, it will be an attempt to harvest your credentials and at worst, your computer or mobile device will be infected with malware or ransomware.
Cybercriminals are extremely good at devising new scams and manipulating their victims: it’s called social engineering. Their whole raison d'etre is to trick you into making a mistake and giving them access to your personal data or hijacking your computer and everything on it. This means you have to be ultra-suspicious of unsolicited email, text, voice, and any other sort of communication.
In the tech world, “Zero Trust” is a security principle that says “never trust, always verify” and assumes that no user or device can be trusted by default. Taking a zero-trust approach to your communications might seem bleak, but with AI tools making social engineering attacks and scams more sophisticated, it’s better than the alternative.
Book Club Scams - Key Points: Red Flags Every Author Should Know
According to Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware®, many of these scams originate in Nigeria. The scams involve emails that appear to be from book clubs offering to feature a book, but there's a catch: you must pay a “spot fee” or “participation fee” ranging from USD $55 to $350.
How the scams work and red flags:
Gmail addresses instead of professional email domains
Some of the book clubs simply do not exist and have no online presence, while others impersonate real book clubs that do exist on platforms like Meetup.com
The emails are personalised by using AI to scrape data from sites like Amazon, and reference specific details about the target book and author
Over-the-top fluff and flattery about the author and their work
Payment is typically requested via a PayPal friends and family account (which cannot be reversed) or through an Upwork contract from third parties in Nigeria
Real book clubs do not charge fees to authors for appearances or features
The good news is that the scammers may be sabotaging themselves by sending so many emails that authors are getting rightly suspicious and sharing warnings on social media. Remember, zero trust: if a book club or any group asks you to pay for the opportunity to be reviewed or interviewed, it’s a scam.
