Stop Playing Inbox Whac-A-Mole

All authors share seminal experiences. For starters, they know the tremendous work involved in producing a quality text. Ditto for the difficulty in marketing their new babies. Today, however, they're also doubtlessly familiar bad actors are targeting them. The increasing amount of spam they receive is a new type of hell.

These messages aren't just nuisances that waste the time of authors and aspiring ones. They are nothing short of pernicious. Read posts like this one on Writer Beware if you don't believe me. This one is also terrifying.

Spam and the Gates' Prediction

Bill Gates got it wrong. We didn't solve the spam problem by 2006. In fact, at least for authors, the problem has exacerbated. Thanks to generative AI, bad actors easily pretend to do the following:

• Run popular Goodreads book clubs.
• Work at established publishers
• Represent A-list authors.
• Promote your underappreciated title to just the right readers.

They then tailor ostensibly legit emails to current and future authors.

At best, recipients spend time and energy evaluating these shifty messages before discarding them. At worst, they fall prey to these sophisticated scammers with zero legal recourse.

I'm not being theoretical here. I've written many texts. As early as January of this year, I received anywhere from eight to 12 bogus emails per day—and sometimes twice that number. Blocking individual senders in Microsoft Outlook proved fruitless. GoDaddy's ProofPoint didn't fare much better.

I was only able to make real progress when I moved to Fastmail in March of this year. My only regret: that I waited so long.

Solution

Since that time, I've built an intricate but effective set of filters that squash the vast majority of questionable messages. Even better, the filters improve every week. I estimate that the 5,400 lines of code in Version 52 vaporize more than 90 percent of bad actors' nefarious attempts. I estimate that fewer than ten of their bogus emails sneak through every week. My goal is to get as close to zero as possible.

Today, I'm pleased to announce that I'm offering this service to authors who want to reclaim their inboxes.

Process

Here's how this works:

1. I move you from Outlook or Google Workspace to Fastmail. (Yes, you can preserve your current email address and old messages, but you will probably have to rebuild your current email rules or filters.)
2. I'll install powerful spam filters in your account that we can tweak to meet your needs over a Zoom call you can record. You can decide if you want questionable messages to appear in your spam folder or to never see them at all. (Yes, we can delete messages at the server level so you never have to see them at all—even in your Spam folder.)
3. I'll show you how to customize them based on your needs. Maintenance is not difficult.

Cost

$599 USD, excluding Fastmail subscription fees.

FAQ