These days, when I go to my various email addresses (I have several for a few different books I've written), I am invariably showered with compliments. One emailer commented that he had just recently revisited a book that I had written on the Boston Celtics 35 years ago and found it to be "an especially timely moment to spotlight the book within a serious discussion-driven readership."
Another emailer had discovered a biography I wrote about the adventurer restauranteur Rocky Aoki. He commented, "It's the kind of story that deserves to be seen, talked about, shared, argued over in Goodreads comment sections, and celebrated, not quietly tucked away in the forgotten aisles of the Amazon algorithm dungeon."
A third email centered on my most recent book, The Real Hoosiers, which this mysterious advocate found "the kind of book our members gravitate towards; stories that challenge mythology and deepen understanding."
Okay, we've established I'm fantastic. But, as you've probably deduced by now, these emailers are not so much interested in my books as they are in my money. The first emailer represented something called The Boxall 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, and wants to engage me with readers who "value thoughtful discussion and meaningful literary conversation." The second emailer was from Listopia, which sounds like a small tropical island with a very colorful waterfall, but he explained it as a public Goodreads list where readers vote on books, and those votes push books up in popularity and visibility. Goodreads, in case you're unaware of it, is an entirely legit site where readers discuss books.
The third emailer says that once I give the green light, he will present my book to the community where readers will highlight passages, post reflections, and connect the story to larger themes. To get started, he said he would need an author bio, a book description, and—here we go—a registration fee required to enroll the book into the challenge lineup.
These are all money grabs, which I kind of realized after the first one. Though, like most writers, I read through all the compliments. These come-ons have attracted a lot of attention lately, as they've even targeted famous writers such as George Saunders and Colson Whitehead. One writer told his story to the New York Times. He had paid a "substantial fee" to something called TheNationalBooksFoundation.org, which sounds legit mainly because there is something called NationalBook.org. But this author found out that after he sent the money, his flatterer disappeared.
This takes me back full circle, when I was in junior high sent away for enrollment in something called—you can all laugh—the Famous Writers School. My mother endorsed the idea mainly because the school was founded by Bennett Cerf, a TV personality at the time. I don't know what my parents paid, they didn't have all that much money to spare, but by the late '60s it had been exposed as a fraud, Bennett Cerf or no Bennett Cerf.
All of us these days need to be aware of scams. But if you're looking for a general class of people who, shall we say, are amenable to these kinds of things, you might look to writers. If you've done this for a living, particularly if you've written a book or books, chances are that, somewhere along the line, you've come to the conclusion that your genius has been overlooked; that, boy, that classic book you wrote 30 years ago is really a national treasure.
So, feel free to email me any compliments you might want to proffer, but please understand that I'm pretty immune to scams.
