When a scam knows exactly what a writer wants to hear

This blog comes to you from London, where I’m spending time with my baby girl. We’re both working from home, tapping away at our respective jobs, stopping for tea and checking what the other one wants for lunch. After so much working on my own, having her company is lovely. Even when neither of us is saying anything. My daughter is there, right there. And that’s amazing!

Meanwhile, I’m still digesting all your wonderful feedback about my last post on scam emails directed at writers. I loathe and detest these scams. They prey on that sweet creative hope that someone has noticed the beauty in your work. Someone has understood what you were trying to say. Someone wants to invest in it. We spend so much time trying to get the words right. Of course, we’re going to feel a little flutter when an email arrives saying someone has read them and loved them.

Your responses showed just how carefully that flutter is being exploited. Remember, The Art of Writing is a very international community of writers, so these experiences are from writers all over the world. It doesn’t matter, the following stories from Blog readers are universal, as so often is the case.

Valerie Clifford (no relation – lol!) received an approach from someone claiming to be an editor at Penguin. She checked the name. Yes, that person really did work there. But Valerie went a step further. She contacted Penguin directly. They told her a scammer was using their staff member’s name, and that they did not approach writers in the manner described. This has become quite common with literary scammers. They steal identities.

Valerie has also received approaches supposedly from book clubs. Again, the clubs existed. But one had posted a notice asking authors not to send their books or manuscripts. The real club wanted nothing to do with the approaches being made in its name. She now deletes these intrusions, which she says are often long, polished and terribly time-consuming. Will she miss an opportunity? She wonders about that too. That hook these people leave dangling, I hate that! What if this one is real?

Dorothy Topfer received two beautifully written emails from someone purporting to represent Flame Tree Publishing in the UK. The second encouraged her to find an agent and recommended a particular person in Sweden. She didn’t follow it up. She still doesn’t know what the eventual scam would have been, or whether money would have entered the conversation later. There was no payment request in what she described to me. But it left her with that uncomfortable question: what, exactly, was going on?

Gabriella Contestabile’s experience shows how convincing the praise itself can be. She was in Italy when an email arrived about her short story collection, That Time of Day. The sender described individual stories, their themes and their connections to Italian heritage. It was the sort of response Gabriella had dreamed of receiving from a reader.

The email invited her to take part in a book fair in the South Bronx. When she explained that she was travelling, the sender suggested she could participate by video instead. A few things began to trouble her. How would that work? How would her books get there? And looking at the event, how did her collection fit with the writers being featured?

So she checked the person who had contacted her. The woman was real. She did valuable work encouraging children in underserved communities to read. Her Instagram account showed the organisation and its activities. There was plenty to make the invitation feel credible. Then the real woman posted a warning: her account had been hacked, and people were receiving false invitations to the book fair.

That same day, Gabriella received the details of what her participation would cost. Several hundred dollars. She blocked the contact. A week later, another request for money arrived. She blocked that one too. Thankfully, she didn’t pay anyone a cent.

What stays with me is how precisely the email found its way in. It praised the things Gabriella most wanted readers to recognise in her writing. And it arrived while she was in Italy, preparing for a reading connected to her contribution to an anthology about the Italian diaspora. 

Please don’t feel foolish if you’ve replied to one of these emails. Gabriella checked. Valerie checked. These approaches borrow real names, real organisations and the credibility of people doing good work. A convincing description of your book doesn’t establish who is sending the email. Neither does finding a real person with the right name.

The end game? And thank you Miggy Munroe from New Orleans for that question, wheedling money out of you in some way, shape or form. And that wheedle will come later, after you have established a relationship with the contact.

Thank you to everyone who wrote to me. Your experiences help other writers recognise what might be happening, particularly when the email in front of them. We’re allowed to want our work to be noticed. We’re allowed to be delighted when someone understands it. I’m furious that anyone would use that hope against us.

In other, much lovelier news:

Our first Florence retreat has sold out, so I’m thrilled to be running a second! Sharpening Your Story, 23–27 May 2027, will bring just seven writers together at Palazzo San Niccolò.

This one is for you if you love your story but keep wandering down interesting side streets. What are you really trying to say? Which characters, memories and scenes belong? And how do you bring everything together without taking the reader on seventeen detours?

We’ll help you find that focus. Bring your idea, your chapters or the draft that’s tying you in knots. There’ll be time to write, walk through Florence and talk it all over with people who understand why your story is keeping you awake.

Four days to give your story some direction. Let Florence supply the only interesting side streets. This new retreat (and more than likely my last one in Europe for 2027) is now up on The Art of Writing website. If you’re interested, drop me a line at clifford.lisa@hotmail.com and I’ll send you the programme. And please check your spam or junk folder if you’re waiting to hear from me! My replies to your blog emails sometimes land in there. I do write back, even if your inbox thinks I shouldn’t.

In more fabulous news:

On Saturday 7 November, I’ll be moderating ‘What Is the Process of Writing for Publication?’ at the Florence Literary Society’s Publishing Day, held at the British Institute in Florence.

Joining me will be Monika Verma, Vice President and literary agent at New York’s Levine Greenberg Rostan; Mark Kessler, literary agent with Susanna Lea Associates; Dr Noah Charney, author, editor and Reedsy’s Professor of Writing; and Dr Sarah E. Hill, author of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control and The Period Brain.

We’ll be getting into the questions writers ask me all the time. How do you recognise what isn’t working? Whose feedback should you trust? What should you tackle first when rewriting? And when is your manuscript ready for an agent?

I love bringing these international publishing conversations back to the writers I work with in Australia, Italy and online. Different markets, different perspectives and plenty to learn. Am already sharpening my questions!

Find out more about Publishing Day here.