Author Spam Assessment Tool
This new Racket Publishing subscriber benefit helps scribes discern legit emails from bogus and dangerous ones.
More than two decades ago, Bill Gates predicted that spam would soon disappear. Whoops. These days, plausible-sounding book review scams like the one below are rampant.
Mary—no doubt a pseudonym—is not affiliated with Macmillan Publishers. The Gmail address is a dead giveaway, but many recipients won't pick up on that fact. Go ahead and search LinkedIn for her profile, but don't be surprised if it's nonexistent or a spoof.
The (Partial) Solution
Expect this problem to only exacerbate. Thanks to AI, it doesn't take much effort for these unscrupulous folks to gin up ostensibly legitimate emails, Discord communities, and book reviews. Sadly, authors desperate for their books to find a larger audience often bite.
In that vein, allow me to introduce the latest Racket Publishing subscriber benefit. It's a simple but effective tool that lets Claude suss out whether that message is legit or not. The first screenshot below shows the UI; the displays Claude's results.
Racket Publishing members can use it on any email, but I trained the tool on book award scams.
Phil Simon
A Note
To state the obvious, the tool is not 100 percent effective. No anti-spam mechanism is. I found, though, that it saved me time evaluating whether someone liked one of my books or was just trying to scam me.