What happens when the sharks master AI?
How book marketing "experts" leveraged my reviews and taught me what really matters
The day my memoir was published, the sharks began circling.
The first email arrived a few days later. “FOUND YOUR PROFILE ON BOOKBUB” screamed the all-caps subject. “Hope you're doing great! I had a few questions about your book and would love to chat whenever you have a minute.”
I’m not stupid; I suspected that this was more than a fan letter. But as a new author, I yearned for confirmation that the years I’d spent writing and publishing Carrying the Tiger hadn’t been a waste of a time. And you never know when someone will serve you a good idea.
We exchanged emails and it quickly became clear that “Amelia Ada” was in the business of creating book videos. I turned down her offer to make a trailer for Carrying the Tiger — the sample she sent looked like a low-rent version of a romantic movie trailer, wildly inappropriate for a grief-powered memoir like Tiger — so she suggested creating some “User Generated Content” videos instead. Amelia assured me that “UGC” can really boost a book’s sales. When she offered to provide a no-obligation sample I thought, why not?
The two videos Amelia sent, barely 24 hours later, were unnerving. Each consisted of three young adults enthusiastically saying short phrases like “incredible insights,” “must read” and “unforgettable journey” — but without identifying the book they were talking about — introduced by a dumpy-looking young man who said “Today we’re diving into the captivating world of Tony Stewart’s latest book. Let’s hear what people are saying.” Obviously the three chirpy endorsers had recorded themselves saying a list of phrases like “I loved it” without any idea how they would be used, and now the filmmaker had gotten someone to spend thirty seconds recording an intro that made it sound like they were talking about my book. None of this was remotely convincing, though it implied the existence of an infrastructure - a toolkit - that enabled people like Amelia to turn out book videos extremely quickly and cheaply. When I told Amelia I wouldn’t use her videos, she tried to bill me $100 for her effort, then accused me of scamming her and threatened to destroy my online reputation.
Welcome to the shark-filled world of book marketing for self-published authors.
While this was playing out, four other friendly emails arrived. Each sender began with an innocuous come-on and then, after some back and forth, revealed that they wanted me to hire them to create videos for my book. I began to wonder if these were really all the same person operating with different aliases - or several people using the same toolkit.
A few days later, I stopped advertising Carrying the Tiger. I wanted to save my money while giving the initial readers time to finish the book and write online reviews. When I stopped spending money, the marketing emails dried up, too.
Over the next few weeks, dozens of reader reviews appeared at places like Amazon and Goodreads. They were generally very positive, and many said that reading Carrying the Tiger had been a deeply moving experience.
Once there were sufficient reviews to provide “social proof” that people liked my book, I paid for a two-week price-drop promotion and ran a series of ads to support it. Like blood in the water, my money drew the marketing sharks back to me. But now, fueled by the emotive language of those online reviews, they were able to take a more tailored approach.
“Your book moved me, and it deserves more readers,” read the subject line of the first email, from “Toni Cather.” (Toni Cather may be a real person, but I quickly came to distrust the names on all of these emails.) Her letter began:
“I just spent time with Carrying the Tiger, and it’s genuinely moving. Your story is steeped in grace, vulnerability, and love. It’s rare to see a memoir handle grief and joy with such equal tenderness.”
She went on like that for several paragraphs, before explaining that she is a book marketer who would love to help publicize Tiger. Unlike most of the emails that followed, she provided links to a website and even a phone number. But when I visited the website I found it rather simplistic, and several of the authors she cited as clients were too famous to be credible.
Still, I might have followed up with Toni had hers been the only email. But within a few hours three more arrived:
Helping Carrying the Tiger Reach Readers Who Truly Need It - from “Alice A Tyler”
Helping Carrying the Tiger Reach Those Who Need It Most - from “Melissa M Armstrong”
Helping Carrying the Tiger Reach the Hearts That Need It Most - from “Elena R Chandler”
The sender names each featured a credibility-enhancing middle initial, and the emails, though varying in trivial ways, were structurally identical and conceptually similar — as well as very flattering:
I know how rare it is to come across a memoir that balances grief, love, and spiritual grace with such clarity. The honesty in your storytelling and your ability to speak to both loss and renewal makes this book an offering, not just a narrative. - Alice A. Tyler
By sharing Lynn’s journey, your own grief, and the grace you discovered along the way, you’ve created more than a book; you’ve extended a hand to every reader who has stood in love’s shadow, walked with illness, or searched for meaning in loss. - Melissa M. Armstrong
You’ve created something truly rare: a memoir that confronts life’s hardest truths with grace, love, and even joy. It’s not just a tribute to Lynn it’s a gift to every reader navigating grief, caregiving, or the terrifying unknowns of serious illness. — Elena R. Chandler
So, Carrying the Tiger is “more than a book” and “not just a tribute”, but rather “an offering” and “a gift to every reader?” In my wildest dreams I couldn’t come up with such hyperbole, though part of me wanted to believe it.
All three writers offered substantially the same set of services, and all claimed to have done this before. But in each case, when I googled the sender’s name there were no hits, except for an obituary. None of them had a credible online presence.
Could it really be a coincidence that three marketing experts with similarly structured names were deeply moved by Carrying the Tiger and sent emails with nearly identical subject lines and marketing pitches, all on the same day? Perhaps, but only if they were all using the same toolkit, which served up my name and email address to the three of them in quick succession. Presumably they had paid for the toolkit - such things aren’t free. Then, it trawled Amazon and Goodreads, identified me as a target customer, mined the online reviews of my book, and generated these over-the-top letters.
It might even have worked, had there been just one of them.
Or even just three! Over the next two weeks I received twenty more such emails, fifteen of them effectively identical. The others - the ones from senders who didn’t use a middle initial — had slightly different structures and service offers. But all claimed, in beautiful prose, that Carrying the Tiger had deeply moved the writer, who just happened to be a book marketing expert.
Recently I read an article in The New Yorker about how the widespread availability of AI is changing higher education. What does it mean when the essay you are reading was written, in whole or in part, by a computer? How can you trust the thoughts and feelings that appear to underlie the words? It’s unsettling and a bit scary. And that’s what I felt, reading these emails.
I started trying to identify which of them might, possibly, come from a real marketing expert. After all, just because they use an AI-powered toolkit doesn’t mean they have nothing to offer. But how to identify the “real” experts?
I tried replying to a few of the almost-identical ones, but their responses, all beautifully written, were hard to trust, especially when they suggested I contact clients who turned out to be famous authors. Here’s the reference list that “Mary G. Crawford” sent me:
Darcy Coates (USA Today bestselling author of The Haunting of Ashburn House) | darcycoates925@gmail.com
N.K. Jemisin (*Hugo Award-winning author of The Fifth Season) | norakeita909@gmail.com
Jesmyn Ward (*National Book Award-winning author of Men We Reaped) | jasymward222@gmail.com
(I’ve altered the email addresses in case they were real.)
Although I was pretty sure these were fake addresses, I decided to write to them and see what happened. In my experience, if you send an email to a successful author, you’re lucky to get a reply in a few days, if ever, and often there’s an assistant involved. But less than two hours after I emailed N. K. Jemisin (accidentally addressing her as “Dear Ms. Ward”) I received this:
Dear Tony,
Thank you for your message. Yes, I did work with Mary Crawford recently, and I’m happy to share my experience.
To be honest, I was initially quite hesitant to work with another book marketer, as my past experiences hadn’t been very positive. However, Mary completely changed that perspective. She was professional, communicative, and clearly very good at what she does.
Her strategy was thoughtful and well-executed, and it truly brought more visibility to my book than I had seen before. I also saw a clear uptick in sales during our campaign, which was encouraging.
In short, I can vouch for her without hesitation she knows her craft and delivers on her promises.
Wishing you all the best with your memoir!
Warm regards,.
The email stopped there, no signature or signature block. As if the whole thing were canned text that had been pasted in with just one or two words changed, and the person who did it couldn’t be bothered to pretend to sign it.
But it’s a great letter - and for all I know, N. K. Jemisin may have written it. If I hadn’t already been suspicious, would I have hired Mary Crawford? No way to know. Presumably some authors do, or this entire industry of “marketing experts,” with its sophisticated supporting infrastructure, wouldn’t exist.
But I still wanted to reach a real person, so I decided to reply to the only email I’d received that was clearly not computer-generated. Here’s how she began her pitch:
“Your book caught my eye. It’s rare these days to find a book that combines [insert one-sentence genuine compliment e.g., “tense pacing with rich character depth”].” — The Favourite Brush (name changed)
Yes, the sender had screwed up and included part of the template in her email. Clearly a human being was at work here!
Over the next two days, I exchanged almost twenty emails with The Favourite Brush. She apologized for the template error and then explained that she is an expert on Pinterest, a visually-oriented social media site about which I knew very little. She sent me an excellent explanation of how she would promote Tiger on Pinterest, and why doing so was a great idea. No one else had recommended Pinterest, which suggested she was working from a different playbook. However, Favourite’s first two replies began with a variation of “Thank you for your thoughtful and honest reply.” I received this combination, “thoughtful and honest,” from at least a dozen people. As if they all use the same tools to generate their responses, and some higher power has decreed that calling an author “thoughtful and honest” is the best way to gain his trust.
Over several emails, Favourite sent links to her website and Instagram page, which revealed that she is a Nigerian woman. Her service description was a well-written bullet list that defined three levels of Pinterest services, the smallest of which cost $250.
Curious, I spent an hour on Pinterest but couldn’t find any heartfelt memoirs. So I googled “Does Pinterest work for book marketing?” and found several Reddit discussions where people basically said no, it doesn’t. I asked my sister, a frequent Pinterest user, and she snorted at the idea.
But I really wanted to talk to Favourite, so, late one Friday evening I emailed her suggesting a video call in which we could share her screen and show me how Pinterest would work for Carrying the Tiger. She replied almost immediately, and ten minutes later we were looking at each other.
Onscreen, Favourite struck me as an energetic, intelligent and somewhat nervous woman in her late twenties. Her room was very plain, fluorescent-lit, and the green cinder-block wall behind her was completely bare. She was casually dressed, consistent with the fact that it was 2:45 AM in Nigeria. In short, she was very much a real person.
Favourite shared her screen. When I asked her to show examples of her work, she googled “successful author on Pinterest” and then clicked the Google link, which led her to Jane Friedman’s Pinterest page. Jane Friedman is a well-known publishing industry expert. Her Pinterest page is full of ads for books and services aimed at authors. There wasn’t a memoir in sight.
“This isn’t what I’m looking for,” I said. “Can you show me an example of a heartfelt memoir like Carrying the Tiger?”
“Sure,” said Favourite. “Just give me a minute.”
Three times she tried to find what I wanted, each time using Google to search for something like “heartfelt memoirs on Pinterest.” She seemed unfamiliar with Pinterest itself, uncomfortable navigating it. And all of the examples she came up with were irrelevant.
Eventually I told Favourite that we should stop, since it seemed that she had never performed the service she was selling. She tried to talk me into staying, using the same language I had read in her emails. She seemed to believe that she could really help my book. Reluctantly I told her to stop, and ended the call.
What are we to make of this? I liked Favourite as a person. I imagine that she bought into a system that promised her a good income selling services to self-published authors. As in any multi-level marketing scheme, after paying a fee and doing some training, she would be given email addresses like mine and told what to tell me. Other than the one error, her emails were indeed tailored to my book, and the sales pitch was well written. Had I hired her, her toolkit might even have delivered the services she promised, though I doubt that showcasing Tiger on Pinterest would have increased its sales.
I was touched to discover that behind these emails was a hopeful young woman who seemed genuinely to believe in what she was selling. But also disheartened, because if I’m right, Favourite has paid for a set of tools and techniques that don’t provide the value she expects - and therefore, probably won’t pay off for her any better than they pay off for the authors who hire her.
I continue to receive sales emails - six of them came in while I was writing this article, all of them variations of the same material, two from the same person. It is hard to believe that any of these were sent by real marketing experts, just as it was hard to believe, twenty years ago, that all those Nigerian princes really had a fortune for me to share.
When I published Carrying the Tiger I thought that if I could just execute the right marketing, sales would eventually take off. That may still be the case. But I’ve had to harden myself against the shark attacks, and assume that anyone who emails me is trying to get something. It is draining to go through the world like this, and, I think, not good for my soul.
So I was heartened the other day when I received two emails via the Contact Me form on my website. The first asked whether I have ever found another GP as caring as Dr. Weinstein, the doctor whom I mention early in the book. (Unfortunately I haven’t.) The other wrote:
I just finished reading your book. Thank you. My husband died 16 months ago from cancer. It was helpful to me to hear your journey. It gave me comfort, validation and hope. Wishing you the very best LIFE has to offer.
Just that. No suggestion that I start a dialog with her, no offer to help me. Her words are exactly what I most want to hear, and they come from a human being who has actually read my book.
Success for Carrying the Tiger isn’t defined by profit margin or the number of copies I sell. It is defined by the number of lives I am able to touch, the number of people who are helped by my words. And in order to reach them, I do need to market it.
This is what it’s all about. This is why I keep swimming, even in shark-infested water.
I wrote Carrying the Tiger: Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy while Grieving to help others who face similar challenges. I hope that reading about my journey will help you better prepare for what lies ahead, understand what you are going through now, or make peace with what you’ve already experienced. Click here to learn more or read a sample chapter, or click here to order it from your preferred online retailer. It’s available in print, eBook or as an audiobook narrated by me.
The above text was hand-written by me. Below is the description on Tiger’s Amazon page, about half of which was copied from those AI-enhanced marketing letters. If they’re going to flood my Inbox with variations on this stuff, why not make good use of it?
When Tony Stewart’s wife Lynn is diagnosed with cancer, he is thrust into a world of uncertainty, fear and life-threatening challenges. Together Tony and Lynn confront mortality with grace, humor, and unwavering love. Then, after Lynn’s passing, Tony journeys through grief—not to escape it, but to honor it—and slowly opens his heart to healing.
Carrying the Tiger is both a love letter and a guide for anyone walking beside illness or loss. As Tony describes his experiences during those years, he also reflects on their meaning: How can one feel tenderness and joy in the midst of shattering grief? What does it mean to live and love with one’s whole heart, regardless of the outcome?
Poignant, heartrending, and ultimately hopeful, Carrying the Tiger is for anyone seeking comfort in discomfort and a new perspective on life. In the darkest of places, it finds moments of light—and teaches us how to live fully, even while letting go.
I think your Google search of these sharks' names might be more fruitful if you dropped their first names: "A. Tyler" and "R. Chandler," might reveal something related to publishing.