If you’ve been around on the internet long enough, you have likely received unsolicited messages via direct messaging, be that through social media or email. It seems to be a rite of passage, telling you that your profile is starting to garnish attention. But after you get a few of those messages, you start to see the patterns of those who are pretending to be interested in what you are doing, only to try to sell you something.

I don’t know what it is about the publishing industry, but we seem to accumulate a lot of these. Some of them are obvious scams. And some of them are from people who are just starting out in whatever support role they have chosen to take on board to support writers. But those who are starting down the new business road, they clearly don’t understand marketing or how their tactics are making them look like a smarmy used-car salesman.

In today’s post, I want to discuss this type of marketing tactic and explain why it reeks of a scammer. And I want to explain why we should avoid using it ourselves, regardless of what we’re selling (be that books or services).