Discussion summary
A discussion about scams involving book clubs and book review schemes in 2025 highlights the prevalence of AI-generated spam and impersonation tactics. Participants emphasize that legitimate book clubs do not charge fees and caution against scams targeting authors and readers.
What the discussion says
- AI-generated emails are easily recognizable by their grammatical errors.
- Fake book clubs often impersonate real people on platforms like Goodreads.
- Legitimate book clubs do not charge fees for participation.
- Scammers target authors with well-crafted impersonations and fees.
- Authors and readers should be cautious of fee-based schemes.
“The main spam I get these days are 'your cloud account has expired' scams.”
“Real book clubs don’t charge fees to their guests.”
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- Hacker News
- Is it me or are those emails clearly understood to be AI generated?
The grammatical usage and structures are a huge tell. Perfect and soulless.
by tarkin2 - The main spam i get these days are "your cloud account has expired, pay immediately or you will loose your data".
It's something telling about the internet when spam transitioned from Viagra to cloud computing 8-/
by johnea - Thanks for sharing this. New authors have enough challenges without getting scammed. I've written a (free) guide for the writing process here: https://frequal.com/forwriters/
The writing is just the first step, however. Promotion is a whole another set of hurdles. I can easilybsee an eager or despondent author falling victim to a promotion scam.
by TeaVMFan - I wrote a book on localization for Xamarin many years ago. I get about one email a week "inviting" me to join a book club. The well-crafted ones tend to impersonate an actual person on Goodreads.
At this point, I would happily give away my book, but Apress has the publishing rights. And since the sales are about a century away from being profitable for Apress, I don't see them letting me give away the book any time soon.
by anotherlab - > The catch, as you’ll doubtless have guessed, is that the author has to pay a fee for their appearance, variously described as a “spot fee” or a “spotlight fee” or a “spot-securing fee” or a “participation fee”.
Am I being too naive to assume that legitimate book clubs shouldn't be doing this anyway - or is all online activity just a way of generating income now?
- Yog's law : Money should flow toward the author
- The need to defend against scams and abuse is a cost distributed across all of society - it’d be amazing if there were a way for all to share the costs without creating a giant firewall to wall off the bad countries.
How does one take the good and reject the bad? Even our immune systems still get beaten by cancers.
by cadamsdotcom - With the whole ecosystem stacked against new and indie authors, and AI getting so good I can see why some people could easily fall for this. I made the tough decision at the start of my Sci-Fi novel writing career to work 100% on the book and 0% on the marketing. It meant I got zero traction and attention in the market (except by word of mouth), and I had to keep my day job, but totally took away all the stress and anxiety.
When I retired last year I took the next logical step and now I give my eBooks away for free, being content with the fact I've achieved something good and I'm giving back to the community.
by boznz