When I’m visiting family in Oklahoma, the last thing I am concerned about are emails. When I finally checked my email Sunday morning, I had over a dozen spam messages. I received 7 different emails on September 11th alone.
The scammers are obsessed with Tea & Sprockets. Books naturally go out of print and book sales ebb and flow as an author creates newer work. A book I finished in 2011, featuring primarily childhood poetry, is not the material I am promoting nor performing in 2026. I have written 17 books featuring thousands of poems since then, and I try to read new poems when I do perform, so neither I nor the audience gets bored.
AI has only increased number of spam emails that I get. They are lazy, not factual, and programmed to send daily unsolicited follow up emails. None of them bother to properly research the people they are reaching out to. Focusing on review numbers of old titles and offering services that break KDP’s TOS, just shows a lack of due diligence when it comes to understanding the industry whose authors they are trying to scam.
The worst offender was “Lori Lizotte,” who continued to email me daily until I finally responded angrily yesterday about being harassed. While people with this name exist, I highly doubt this is the name of the actual sender. None of the women with this name who do exist appear to be authors or work in book publishing. I’ve had plenty of scammers imitating celebrities in my inbox recently, so I am deeply skeptical.
I’ve written numerous blog posts about not being interested in pay for play promotional services, online book clubs, and other such offers. I’m also not interested in performance opportunities where I pay a fee for stage time. A very brief perusal of my blog or FAQ would save these folks much time and energy.
I am not interested in your promotional gimmicks. Period.