A few days ago I received this e-mail:
I hope this mail of mine finds you all fine n’ well. I am a big fan of yours and your novels. You are a magician of a writer and a true wordsmith!!! I love the great plot-lines that you so awesomely create. I was humbly wondering could I please get a book of yours containing an autograph of you please. I know the request of such is very high, but I live so far way from there, I live in a small country called Bangladesh. In fact I live in whole another continent! It would mean a lot to me. adore your writings, like millions out there, and I am just a fan of your thundering wordsmanship. My land mail address is :
I’ve deleted the name and actual address out of consideration for the sender, should he be legitimate.
Years ago I received several similar messages from somebody in the former Czechoslovakia. The writer professed to be my biggest fan and also confessed to being penniless. All he wanted was one autographed book. To be honest, I cannot remember at this late date whether I sent him a book or not. (Turns out I did not.) A year or so later while at dinner at a mystery convention with eight other authors, one of them began bragging that they had a huge fan in . . . Czechoslovakia, but that the man was so poor he couldn’t afford to buy her books so she sent him one gratis. Another author jumped in and said they also had a huge fan in Czechoslovakia and they also had mailed the fan a free autographed book. It turned out that a majority of the authors at the table had mailed a book to the same guy, all believing they were doing a favor for their most ardent fan. We were each his favorite author.
Of course, it became immediately obvious that he’d found a line of suckers in America about a mile long and was selling autographed books on the street or E-bay. I cannot decide if my newest fan is a scam artist or genuine fan—note the universality of his message, no mention of character names or even of book titles. Send this to a million authors, how many books are you going to receive in the mail? In any case, it sure was a nice e-mail.
If only the writer had said, “I like the way you handle Thomas’s relationship with Kathy,” or even, “my favorite book is X because…,” then I might be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the message is so general…SCAM!
Hi, Earl. I just cut and pasted the same email into google search, and came up with your post. I have gotten similar emails before, but I always like to check.
I think I won’t be sending him a book. : )
I just got one of those from someone in Bangladesh. Yeah, I think it’s a scam. I’m asking around to see if any of my other writer friends got the same email.
I got the same one yesterday, word for word. I figured it was a scam, but it’s hard to look away from someone describing your “thundering wordsmanship”!
Scam. I just received an email with the same starting paragraph with some notable changes for the artist he/she was emailing for freebies. I found your page by googling for the first sentence.
Add A Comment