Spam emails case study: they don't always ask for money right away

At this point, it’s getting fairly easy to tell a spam email if a marketer or book club contacts us out of the blue and asks for money while promising all kinds of great results. General rule of thumb: if it’s an email offering a service and asking for money, it’s spam.

However, I’ve noticed a growing number of emails that start with a pitch to get the author emotionally involved and don’t mention money until the second or third email. I responded to one from a ‘book club’ recently even though I highly suspected it was spam, because I wanted to test their system. Here’s the interaction.

Them: you have a cool book. We want to feature in our book club and you’ll get exposure to new people (with official language/bullet points that was, in itself, a red flag because it’s not personal).

Me: sure. you can feature my book. waits

Them: sends a near repeat of the first email, promising cool things and asking if I want to confirm the slot

Me: sure, but I don’t have a marketing budget for this book, so…

Them: okay, cool. It doesn’t cost anything for the book club to read your book, but if you want the feature slot, it will cost $100 and you get repeats ‘cool’ things'

Me: like I said, I don’t have a marketing budget for this book. Though if you want to read it, go ahead.

Them: no response

Anyway, just throwing that out there in case it’s helpful to anyone else. Because yes, almost all the current rash of book club emails are spam. And it’s normally easy to tell because things are still worded too ‘professional.’ But be aware they might not ask for money until a few emails in.

They want to get you emotionally invested in the cool things they’re offering and then drop the ‘it will cost this much’ line. Because by that point (ideally for them) you’ll have a vision in your head of what could be and not want to let it slip through your fingers.