It’s seductive. Or it was, before I realized it was a scam.
Here’s another, from a “book club.”
Most of these emails promised some sort of promotional support, sometimes very specific, like “targeted reviewer outreach to 75 to 100 active Goodreads reviewers.”
Though they started out fawning, some segued into some variation on “you’re invisible on the internet and here’s how I can help you.”
At first, I was curious. I looked up the senders. Most of the time, they didn’t exist. Their names were made up. They promised visibility and sales and reviews, but they had no website. If they were a real human, they were also operating in full witness protection mode. Any successful marketing expert with clients would contact me from their business domain, not from so-and-so-marketing-specialists@gmail.com.
To their credit, rarely did they say they read my book. They said they “came across it” or it “caught my attention.” More often than not, a healthy fraction of the flattering language was scraped from promotional material I wrote. No wonder it was flattering.
Before I Wised Up
Earlier this year, I responded to one email, allegedly from a Dallas-based book-group leader, who told me my novel, When I Killed My Father: An Assisted-Suicide Family Thriller, had been chosen by her group because of “its emotionally complex premise and the profound ethical and relational questions it raises.” She promised a zoom Q & A, members posting honest reviews on Goodreads, and more.
In my email to her I asked if this was for real — I said I received a lot of AI-written solicitations, often from people who had no presence on the web.
She replied that she was a real human being and her book club was part of Meetup. She followed up with more promises, claimed there were no marketing fees and — you can guess where this is going — her next response included an “author profile submission form,” and there, in small print, the kicker: VIP registration fee: $125. Not to mention a bank in Delaware and an account holder with a Nigerian name.
Lesson learned. Nothing lost but time.
Book Club, Literary Festivals, and Famous Authors
The emails evolved. Last spring, I received an email from Kate Bolick, an actual author, inviting me to participate in the Newburyport Literary Festival in Massachusetts, an actual literary festival. I was intrigued enough to check. And of course, the sender was not the real Kate Bolick and the participants in the festival had all been selected months earlier.
Two other variations have shown up recently, invitations to book clubs and personal letters from best-selling authors like Suzanne Collins, Stephen King, and the like. Suzanne Collins’ email included her book Hunger Games in the signature, but could not have been more generic. The sender’s email address gave it away — contact.suzannecollins01@gmail.com.
Some were admittedly clever.
Others were obvious scams like this one that they forgot to finish. (I highlighted the last sentence.)
I have probably received two or three hundred such emails in the past six months. Many raved about books I did not write. Others appeared, at a glance, to be solicitations from traditional media, like BBC Radio and actual movie production companies.
To Complicate Things
Because I’ve been inundated by these scam emails, I am suspicious of any stranger reaching out, but just this past week, I got a legitimate email that I ignored. It was from a TV reporter in San Francisco who’d been assigned a story about the history of Sausalito from World War II to the present, including the houseboat scene. Which I know a lot about. His email address was @cbsnews.com, and there was no flattery or mention of my book, but I was still hesitant and I was traveling, so I didn’t respond until two days later. He emailed back, said he’d already filed the story. Alas.
There are legitimate book marketers, some of which I’ve used — like Fussy Librarian or Bargain Booksy or BookBub. They essentially sell ads, and, for me, I usually earn less than I spend, but they do generate sales and it’s an inexpensive way to reach new readers.
I’m Not the Only One
I’m a member of BAIPA, the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association, and at our meetings, we’ve discussed these scam solicitations. Many other authors also get them regularly. There’s also a lot about these scams on the Writer Beware website, a project of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Writer Beware has been around since 1998, long before these AI scams started, but scams targeting writers, like vanity presses, have been around for even longer.
Arguably we writers, often solitary creatures who work in obscurity and wish for fame and fortune, are an easy target, especially when we get an email full of hyperbolic praise and promise of greater visibility and sales.
The solicitations themselves should be suspicious enough — after all, reputable publishers, literary agents, radio stations, literary festivals rarely contact authors — and the flattery is over the top, but what author doesn’t like praise?
Writer Beware lists a number of giveaways: excessive flattery, language that is clearly lifted from your own book descriptions and reviews, buzzwords like branding and metadata and visibility and optimization, no website, and instead of company email domain like so-and-so@literaryagency.com, the email comes from so-and-so-literary-agency@gmail.com.
Writer Beware’s cautionary post “Return of the Nigerian Prince: A New Twist on Book Marketing Scams” tracks with my experiences. These AI-generated emails often spell out proposed services in great detail, like “updating key words” and “pitching books to top book bloggers” or are vague and fake-friendly like “I’d be delighted to discuss this further with you.”
Here’s a list of dozens of specific scams from Writer Beware: Book Marketing Scams
As is the case with other kinds of scams and spam, most of these operations are built on volume, so even if only a few authors get fooled, the scammers can make money.
And while there are plenty of homegrown scammers, like the Dallas-based book-club leader I corresponded with, most scams are operated by organized crime syndicates in places like Nigeria and and the Philippines, and the people doing the grunt work are often victimized or even enslaved. Though these days, because of AI bots, there are allegedly fewer actual humans behind these scams.
Last month, I walked down the hill to The Junction, a beer garden in Tam Junction, to join a hundred or so Deadheads for a free “Dead At The Junction” concert hosted by Alex Jordan. I ran into some friends who are regulars at Dead-adjacent concerts and I also chatted with three strangers, all of whom knew who I was.
“You’re the crossing guard guy,” one said.
I am a bit famous, arguably infamous, in my small community of Tam Valley. Primarily because I’ve been a crossing guard for seven years, on Shoreline Highway, kitty corner from Good Earth Natural Foods, for those who know the area.
Of course, I wear a fluorescent yellow vest, which says “CROSSING GUARD” in bold black type on the back, and a matching hat. Plus my stop sign. So I’m very visible.
I am also known for doing exercises on my corner. Every shift, morning and afternoon, I do six sets of bicep curls with a red resistance band with black handles, plus two sets of lunges. A passer-by who teaches at a gym once praised me on my technique!
Here I am at my corner on Halloween in 2023, wearing a prop from “Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery,” the play that I adapted into the novel, Pirates of Sausalito.
I am also frequently spotted walking to and from my corner, to pickleball at our local park, or to the Tam Valley Community Center, for murder mystery rehearsals and performances.
I’ve achieved a small bit of fame as an actor in these murder mystery plays, as well as a writer and director — we perform our show four times each year and usually sell out, so that’s an audience of about four hundred every year.
Over the years, I’ve also volunteered at Creekside Friday, serving beer and wine, or preparing buns for burgers and hot dogs. Three or four times, I’ve volunteered for the Crab Feed, a couple times for Oktoberfest.
In short, I am famous, or at least well-known, in my community, primarily for being a crossing guard, but also to a lesser extent, for walking, acting, volunteering, and playing pickleball.
What I am not famous for, alas, is writing novels. I’ve written four novels, but that’s more of a secret than I’d like it to be.
True, there are dozens of friends and acquaintances who know I’m an author, and many have purchased or read or listened to my books. Or come to my author events. And now and then I hand out bookmarks promoting my books or upcoming events.
Of course, the main reason I’m not famous for being an author is that I don’t write in public, but in my teeny-weeny book-lined study that used to be a storage shed.
Here I am tabling at Maritime Day in the Park two years ago, right where some of the true events Pirates of Sausalito is based on took place. I’ll be there this year on August 1. It’s free, with live music and food and drink. Come and say hello.
And I don’t walk around the neighborhood with a fluorescent vest that says “AUTHOR.” I could.
I do have a book bag that says “ASK ME ABOUT MY BOOK” and I have draped it around my neck at festivals and book fairs.
I am writing another book, which I hope to publish next year, and who knows, after that I might not only be famous in Tam Valley but worldwide. A guy can dream.
The second chapter of Pirates of Sausalito is narrated by Dawn Felton, the daughter of Fenton Felton, the greedy developer who wants to evict the houseboaters so he can build a luxury marina. We’ve just met him in Chapter 1, where he pressures Police Chief Tin Holland to clear out the houseboaters immediately or risk losing her job. “Sink their damn boats,” he says. “Whatever it takes.” (You can listen to Chapter 1 here.)
In Chapter 2, we also meet Honest Abernathy, who, as Dawn says, “is handsome and charming, dresses like a pirate, and has more than enough low life in him to infuriate her father.” She’s no hippie, but she’s rebelled by taking up with the long-haired and flamboyant Honest, the self-proclaimed leader of the houseboat resistance. It’s her birthday and he has promised her a birthday present that will “blow her mind.”
You can listen to the whole audiobook of Pirates of Sausalito for $10. Go to AMPlify Audiobooks and use the coupon code “pirates”.
Pirates is also on the shelf at Sausalito Books by the Bay and is available at the Sausalito and Tiburon libraries. It’s also available on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books, and wherever you get your audiobooks, including Libby, the library audiobook app, where it’s free with your library card in Marin and San Francisco counties. (If your library doesn’t have it, you can request it.)
Here’s the first review I received for the audiobook.
On Wednesday, May 20, 7 pm, I’ll be giving my “Sausalito Houseboat Wars: What Really Happened” talk for Marin History Museum. It will be at the First Presbyterian Church, Fifth & E Streets, San Rafael. Tickets are $20. Get them here.
In the late 1970s, the “houseboat wars” erupted in Sausalito on the site of Marinship, the abandoned World War II shipyard. Hippies and squatters were living free and easy on houseboats in a ramshackle shantytown, but public officials and developers set out to evict them and build new docks to attract more affluent residents. The counterculture was in full flower, and the houseboaters resisted eviction with street theater, civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, and more. All in front of TV cameras.
Join me for a colorful retelling of those turbulent times, including excerpts from houseboat residents and journalists, photographs by Bruce Forrester and Pirkle Jones, and video clips of TV news reports from the waterfront. I’ll also read an excerpt or two from Pirates of Sausalito: Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, which is fiction, but based on and inspired by those true events. As Larry Clinton, former president of the Sausalito Historical Society, said, “If it didn’t happen exactly this way, it could have.”
When I launched my book in May 2024, I reached out to a librarian at the Mill Valley Library about hosting a talk, and she connected me to the Mill Valley Historical Society. They wanted me to talk more about the history my book is based on than the book itself. I was wary — I never promised historical accuracy in my book, and now I had to distinguish what really happened from what I imagined.
But the librarians knew what they were doing. Enough people registered for the May 1 event, we had to move from the basement meeting room to the main reading room — and it’s unlikely that many people would have come if I were talking only about my book. To prep for the talk, I plunged back into the research, and fortunately, the real history is as full of drama and colorful characters as my novel. The talk went wonderfully and I’ve delivered this talk about ten times now.
P.S. You can learn more about the novel here and the history here. There’s a video on the history page of my Mill Valley Library presentation, which I encourage you to watch — but not if you’re coming to my talk, which will be a rerun of the library talk. Below is the video, which is 50 minutes long. I’ve posted highlights below.
When I turned my play (“Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery”) into a novel (Pirates of Sausalito), the toughest challenge was how much to get into the characters’ heads. You don’t have to write that in a play, though it’s useful to think about.
I chose to let ten characters narrate their parts and some had inner lives very different from their public lives. Mickey Macgillicuddy, for example, lives in a tiny houseboat in Aquarius Houseboat Harbor, which developers want to turn into a luxury harbor. Mickey is a flaky burnout, but he’s also funny. He loves an audience. The first time we see Mickey is in Chapter 4, which is told from the point of view of Honest Abernathy, one of the leaders of the houseboaters’ resistance. Mickey is preening for the young woman lawyer who is helping out with legal strategy.
“Yeah,” Mickey says, “like, I went to college. Like Grateful Dead University. That’s where I got my higher education, a PhD in LSD. Hey, like, how do you know deadheads have been staying at your pad?” He pauses. “They’re like, still there.”
But Mickey is not the flaky hippie he appears to be. I can’t tell you more that that because I want you to listen to this chapter, from my audiobook. This is Micky narrating Chapter 5, “Eviction Raid.” It starts as he watches the police boats on their way into the harbor to evict the houseboaters.
[AUDIOBOOK] Pirates of Sausalito, Chapter 5. Eviction Raid (Mickey MacGillicuddy)
I would love to hear what you think. There are four chapters before this, so you’re jumping on a moving train, but this is the first time we see things through Mickey’s eyes.
Later in the book, Police Chief Tin Alley asks Mickey if it’s true he lives in a small houseboat. “It’s so small,” he says, “if I order a large pizza, I have to eat it outside.”
I have long wanted to create a “brand” for my four books to unify them. Make them look like they belong together. My books are not a series, but they share enough similarities that they do indeed belong together. But the covers do not demonstrate that.
Here are the front covers as they exist now — in the order published.
They do not look like they belong together, though the first and the fourth are close, and my intention was to redesign the other two to match.
When I Killed My Father was easy, though I have not uploaded the new cover to the two sites where I publish my books — Amazon/KDP and IngramSpark. (One of the benefits of self-publishing is that authors can upload new covers and corrected manuscripts at any time for no cost. It can be time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be.)
Wasted has not been easy. Over the last number of years, I designed more than ten different versions of the cover and was not happy with any of them. Now I’ve got three that I think are better. I welcome your feedback.
When I designed the Wasted cover in 2015, I was pleased with it. I’d been a graphic designer for decades, but I did not realize until later that there are “rules” about book covers that I did know, one of the most important of which is that the cover telegraphs to the reader its genre. Here’s what designer Joel Friedlander, former president of Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA), said about the Wasted cover:
Obviously the designer is skillful, but the big fail is that the book looks like nonfiction or a corporate publication, and has no trace of what must be the excitement and drama in the story.
Guilty as charged
I’ve been messing with all sorts of cover ideas for a while, and when I sought feedback on them a two years ago, more people liked the one I considered ugly than any of the others. But I didn’t like it.
This is the ugly one.
I recently created another version of the cover that I like better. Then I took the existing cover, the one that looks like a nonfiction primer on recycling and adapted it to fit the brand. Rules are made to be broken, right?
Below are these two new versions. What do you think?
So here are new front covers that all share the same branding.
And then I had another idea, to make the branding more explicit by including the tagline: “Page-turner with a Conscience.” I have used that line many times in marketing the book, during book talks, in this author letter, on my website, and on sites where I sell my book. So I took another pass at each of my novels and added that to the top.
What do you think? I value your feedback. I’m too close to my books to be as objective as I need to be. Please share your feedback in the comment area below or contact me via email at johnbyrnebarry@gmail.com.
One way or the other, I am committed to branding my books.
Now that I look at them at the small size most people will see them, the “page-turner with a conscience” is barely visible, so I probably need to scrap that idea or make it bigger.
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
P.S. You may wonder whether devoting all this time to redesigning my book covers might not have been better spent writing my current novel. The answer is surely yes, but designing taps into a different part of the brain than writing and it’s “fun.” That’s my excuse anyway.
I would love to hear from you, even if you don’t have an opinion on the covers.
The second chapter of Pirates of Sausalito is narrated by Dawn Felton, the daughter of Fenton Felton, the greedy developer who wants to evict the houseboaters so he can build a luxury marina. We’ve just met him in Chapter 1, where he pressures Police Chief Tin Holland to clear out the houseboaters immediately or risk losing her job. “Sink their damn boats,” he says. “Whatever it takes.” (You can listen to Chapter 1 
I chose to let ten characters narrate their parts and some had inner lives very different from their public lives. Mickey Macgillicuddy, for example, lives in a tiny houseboat in Aquarius Houseboat Harbor, which developers want to turn into a luxury harbor. Mickey is a flaky burnout, but he’s also funny. He loves an audience. The first time we see Mickey is in Chapter 4, which is told from the point of view of Honest Abernathy, one of the leaders of the houseboaters’ resistance. Mickey is preening for the young woman lawyer who is helping out with legal strategy. 
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