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.
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.
Last month, I participated in apanel discussion on “Finding Your Voice” for the California Writers Club Marin Branch. I’m writing my fourth novel, another “page-turner with a conscience,” and I know that I have an author voice that is me, the writer, and it’s distinct from my characters’ voices. But it wasn’t until I was asked to take part in this panel that I deconstructed that author voice, and identified how it differs from my characters’ voices. (Spoiler alert: sometimes it doesn’t, when it should.)
(Here’s a video of my presentation if you prefer to watch instead of read. Only nine minutes.)
I’ve been in a wonderful writers’ group for five-plus years now, and one of the most useful, and common, critiques I’ve received, in regards to my dialogue, is: “That doesn’t sound like your character, that sounds like you.”
(I hate it when people are right like that.)
To deconstruct my author voice, I looked through my three novels, and compiled dozens of excerpts, but because I had a time limit, could only include a few in my talk.
Robert Rose lay on his back, his hands crossing his chest. Peaceful. Deep in sleep. Lamar used to be able to sleep like that — “You could probably nod off on a fire engine with sirens blaring,” Janis once said, not hiding her resentment. He couldn’t sleep like that now.
(This is a conversation between Lamar and his daughter, Sierra, who has just returned home to Albuquerque to work on a political campaign just as her parents are separating.)
“Tell me what’s new,” he said.
“You mean, other than the fact that my parents are splitting up and I’m coming home to land in the middle of it?”
As they neared downtown, the windows of the Plaza Tower and the Hyatt reflected the afternoon sun. “You’re upset and you’re not sure how you’re going to manage,” he said.
“There you go, doing that therapy thing on me.”
“No, that’s called listening, a highly underrated part of conversation. It’s where you say something, and I pay attention. You may want to try it sometime.”
“Dad, I am a good listener. That’s why I can hear you manipulating me.”
So when I looked at these and many more excerpts, I asked myself “what characterizes my author voice?” and I came up with these adjectives and attributes.
Smart
Sharp
Snappy
Witty
Staccato
Tight
Irreverent
Dramatic, sometimes melodramatic
Over-the-top
Metaphorical
Visual
One-word sentences and sentence fragments
It was a valuable exercise for me, and I encourage other writers to try it. We all have a voice, but often, we are not conscious of it. Think of it like accents. Many of us don’t think of ourselves as having accents, but we do.
How to Distinguish Between Author Voice and Character Voice(s)
There’s a difference between author voice and character voice, but they can blur together. Many successful writers sometimes have many of their characters sound alike — one example is Aaron Sorkin, writer of the West Wing.
But ideally, they don’t. If you see a line of dialogue, or an internal monologue, it’s bestg if you can tell who is speaking without identification.
Think of the difference in how Barack Obama and Donald Trump speak. Obama is thoughtful and deliberate, sometimes painfully so, like he is formulating his entire sentence in his head before he says it. Trump is impulsive and improvisational. He has riffs he repeats, but you get the sense that he just opens his mouth and blurts, almost without thinking. He speaks in short guttural phrases, doesn’t finish his sentences.
What I aim to do with my characters is identify speech patterns like that.
Here’s a simple one. I’ve got a character in the novel I’m writing now named Mickey Macgillicuddy, who talks like this.
“Hey man, like I went to college. Well, Grateful Dead University. Hey, how can you tell when Deadheads have been staying at your pad? They’re still there, man.”
In this case, I run the risk of sounding like a cliche, but it may be worth it for the joke.
Here are a few ways to make your characters’ voices distinct.
Ask rhetorical questions or answer questions with questions. Are you accusing me of…? What do you mean by…?
Speak in long, grammatically correct complete sentences.
Speak in fragments, interrupting yourselves. Don’t finish sentences.
Use contractions, or do not use contractions.
Use words like “brilliant” or “groovy” or “awesome.”
Use verbal tics —
“you know”
“look”
“what I mean is”
“at the end of the day”
“actually”
Interrupt others. Finish their sentences.
Try to be funny, sarcastic, or self-deprecating.
Use big words, or never use big words.
Use certain sentence construction, like more-this-than-that. “Other friends didn’t disappear so much as recede.”
Tell stories or jokes. (In my presentation, I started with a joke, which comes from When I Killed My Father, where my protagonist Lamar, a therapist, tells stories and jokes and that’s as part of who he is. It’s part of his voice.
One critical way to make characters’ voices unique is what they notice, what they are concerned about, who they care about, and so on. Their inner thoughts and feelings. Their goals. Their regrets. Their yearnings. By showing their character, you also show their voice. You don’t want all your characters to sound alike, but if their journeys and their conflicts and what’s meaningful to them are unique, their voice will reflect that. Let’s look at Lamar’s voice. (This is him talking to his daughter, in the same scene as the excerpt above, about listening.)
“OK. My Story, by Lamar Rose. Chapter 1. I still care for your mother. I do. I take marriage seriously. I take my responsibility as a husband seriously. I believe in keeping my promises. But love is a verb, not something static. It’s how you act. In our case, it’s become acting—on my part. Your mother doesn’t even bother with the acting.
“There’s a difference between the unconditional love I have for you and what I feel for your mother, which is conditional love. I’m going to love you no matter what. I want you to love me too, but if you don’t, well, I’m never going to stop loving you or being your father. It’s not a choice I have to make.
“But I can’t make a marriage work by myself and I’m no longer willing to give up my own life because I made a promise. I can’t live a healthy life married to your mother. I can’t heal her—I’m not sure she wants to be healed—I can only heal myself. So I am. I apologize for not consulting you, not giving you a warning. This has nothing to do with you.”
“But why did you move?” she asked. “You love the house, the garden. Mom doesn’t care about any of that.”
“I brought that up, said we should figure out who lives where, to which she said something like, ‘after all you’ve done to me, I’ll be damned if you kick me out of my house too.’ Those were the exact words—they’re seared in my mind.”
Sierra flinched.
“Sorry,” he said. “I should have kept that to myself.”
“What did you do to her?”
That’s when I ended my presentation. My nine minutes were up. You can learn more about my author voice and character voice in my books.
I’ve been listening to podcasts almost everyday since the beginning of the pandemic, and now I’m a guest on a podcast. What a thrill!
Thank you to hospice doctor and End of Life University founder Karen Wyatt for hosting this engaging conversation about addressing end-of-life challenges through fiction. She read my novel, When I Killed My Father: An Assisted Suicide Family Thriller,enjoyed and appreciated it, and asked me questions no one asked before, like why my protagonist did what he did when he didn’t want to. As well as some of the more common questions, like do I support assisted suicide/euthanasia? (You’ll have to watch to learn the answer to that.)
If you enjoy this conversation half as much as I did, that’s still a lot of enjoyment. I shared this with friends and through Twitter and Facebook, and one friend remarked on what a warm and terrific interviewer Karen Wyatt is. I couldn’t agree more.
We talked for a long time and could have kept on going. If your time is short, and you want to take a peek, jump to 3:23 or 35:07.
For the billions of you who have not read the book, here it is in a paragraph: What if your ailing father asks you to kill him? And what if, at your father’s memorial, from the pulpit at the front of the church, your sister accuses you of murder? When I Killed My Father: An Assisted Suicide Family Thriller is a “page-turner with a conscience” about a man caught between what is compassionate and what is legal.
Thank you again to Karen Wyatt for her generosity and curiosity as well as the courage to tackle what is still a taboo subject for many. If you appreciate this kind of conversation, check out Karen’s other interviews on the End of Life University podcast. She posts a new one every Monday and she’s on episode 365 now — that’s the equivalent of a full year of interviews. This week’s “interview” is a solo episode about How to Live a Death-Aware Life.
In May, I was invited to be a guest on the Let’s Talk Death podcast, which is also a video now, to discuss my assisted-suicide family thriller, When I Killed My Father. I talked about how the book was inspired by my family coming together to deal with our mother’s dementia, and how somewhere along the way, I imagined a fictional situation characterized by conflict instead of communication.
I wrote the book because I believe it’s important to talk about death. But it’s not easy to talk about death and it certainly wasn’t easy to write the book. Now that it’s been several years since our mother’s death and several years since the novel’s publication, however, I find that it’s not as hard for me to talk about these issues as it used to be. And if you watch or listen, you’ll see it’s not a heavy conversation. It was fun, enough so that part of me feels like there’s something wrong with that. But no, there isn’t.
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