Literary Love Bombing
Scammers are raising the literary bar with a Gmail account and a “hype-hungry book lovers” dream team that exists somewhere between their imagination and a Nigerian internet café.
I’ve grown suspicious of unsolicited emails praising my work when my husband, who is in Sweden right now, would be hard-pressed to name one of my titles if you held him at gunpoint. Imagine my surprise, then, when he said he’d bought and dispatched one of my paperbacks to our home, “for you to photograph on social media.”
“Oh? Which one?”
“Your latest.”
“Medusa’s Musings?”
“No, the uh, guidebook. You said you’d made a new cover for it.”
Ah, Splash It!
I had mentioned designing a new cover for my PR and media book. Sweet of him to remember.
Takk!
Excited to see my handiwork, I ripped open my Amazon parcel to find a copy of “Help in a Hurry Workbook: How Dr. Caroline Leaf’s ideas can help you succeed and grow.”
Oh.
Nice thought. Shame it’s not my book. *Squints at the cover* Someone called Lucas Benny penned it, not me.
The title includes the words ‘Caroline’ and ‘Hurry,’ – I’ll give him that – just not in the right order.
I think of a writer friend whose husband tattooed her title on his bicep – he really did – with a banner and everything. Sigh.
We authors need a thick skin, but we’re also hungry for recognition. And that combination is what the new breed of literary scammers — the love bombers — count on.
The Approach: Two Classic Tactics
Option A: Dominion Dan’s opening pitch was pure poetry. “You literally wrote the press playbook … “the practical, punchy, and ridiculously useful Splash It! so, where’s the noise?”Oh, my! At least somebody’s taking an interest in my work. I feel seen.
Happily, Dan has a “wild tribe of smart-mouth, hype-hungry book lovers; literary warriors who review books like their Wi-Fi depends on it.” They will read, “screenshot and live in Splash It!”
“(Then) they will unleash their reviewing fury across the Amazon ecosystem.”
(Mine eyes have seen the glory!)
Option B: Natalie doesn’t normally “reach out to authors directly because “I respect your space and time,” but could not “scroll past Medusa’s Musings.
“I paused. Something about Medusa reclaiming her voice, cutting through illusion with venom and vulnerability; exposing the fracture between humanity and technology made me stop and think: This is not a book I can scroll past. I must speak to the talented author behind this masterpiece.
“Your writing is razor sharp, deeply relevant, and beautifully unsettling. Medusa’s Musings does not just reframe mythology; it challenges readers to look directly at the illusions shaping their daily lives and to question the very foundations of our digital existence.”
Who would have guessed? Natalie knows how to get my book into “international book clubs, philosophy reading circles, and women’s empowerment networks. She sees “Medusa’s Musings sparking conversations far beyond the page.”
The Catch
Dan caught me an hour after I’d unwrapped my husband’s thoughtful gift. “Help in a Hurry was the wrong book? An easy mistake to make(!) Uha, I’ll try again.”
So I replied, thanked Dominion Dan for his perspicacity, and explained I’m revising – ‘still tinkering’ – to get my nonfic books up to date for 2026.
One advantage of publishing on Amazon is that you can revise your work at any time for free. (IngramSpark charge $25 per manuscript after the 60-day leeway period.) If you don’t regularly update your nonfiction work, you might render it irrelevant, depending on the topic obv.
Dan’s response was immediate. He understood the author mindset. Of course, he did. “Ah, the eternal tinkerer’s curse, tweaking chapters like they’re IKEA furniture and hoping Amazon doesn’t collapse mid-update. I respect that.”
Just out of interest, I asked, what was Dan’s fee for unleashing his rampaging reader tribe? (Bearing in mind that Amazon forbids paying for reviews under pain of expulsion from the platform.)
“Oh, it’s not a fee, rather a tiny “thank you tip – nothing wild,” just $20 per reader.”With a minimum of 30 readers, that’s $600 to watch my book get mauled by fictional “book-loving chaos goblins who read, highlight, question, and scream (affectionately)”
Bargain!
Natalie would not have reached out had Medusa’s Musings not “genuinely inspired” her.
“This is not about spamming. (Of course, it isn’t!) This is about recognizing potential that deserves to be seen by the world.
You are the only author I have contacted today.” (How flattering!) Natalie “would not forgive” herself if she did not offer me “one of only two remaining slots for her “strategy package at just $999 – marked down from $1,300.”
Missing this opportunity could mean “waiting months before another chance. Your book inspired me today, and I believe the world needs to experience it too. Do not let this moment pass you by.”
Oh, Gee! I think I just did!
How They Hook Authors
Dominion Dan is the digital evolution of Dickweasel Dan from The Rooster Diaries. But where Dickweasel moves into the homes of his vulnerable marks for free nesting privileges, Dominion, with his “wild tribe of smart-mouth, hype-hungry book lovers,” pounces from cyberspace.
He and his ilk of literary predators, the author love-bombers, have raised the bar on the old “Dear Author, let me review your book for a small fee” approach to using AI to craft personalized homilies to your ego. The extracts and sound bites suggest they might even have cracked open your tome. (Newsflash: They haven’t!)
They have tapped into author psychology and our incumbent insecurities, not least our reluctance to “put ourselves out there” when we’d rather do anything else but market. Their understanding of author psychology is superb. Show me an author who isn’t convinced their books deserve more attention, more reviews, more noise.
Dominion Dan and Natalie’s approach tick every box in my scam-spotting handbook (under the pseudonym Stella Firewall,) Gone Phishing! Here are some red flags:
- The Gmail Gambit: Real marketing experts don’t conduct business from Gmail (both Dominion Dan and Natalie had Gmail addresses.)
- The Invisible Web Presence: A Google search for Dominion Dan yields nothing. Natalie’s website seemed hastily constructed using a free website builder with no discernible references.
- The AI-Generated Gushing: The praise is so fulsome and OTT, it feels too good to be true.
- The Third-Party Payment Shuffle: Eventually, you’ll be directed to pay some “assistant” in Nigeria through Upwork or Fiverr – they work in cahoots with the scammers.
| So, remember: If an email makes you feel like you’ve won the literary lottery or involves a fictional tribe of “book-loving chaos goblins,” best to hit the delete button. |