Indie Author Experiment · Day 37 · 7 October 2026
Apparently the Review Scammers Found Me
Paid book reviews, strange emails, real readers, another book sale and the numbers behind one more day of this indie author experiment.
Dear Rebels,
I don’t know what happened yesterday, but apparently my email was taken under assault by a completely different kind of scammer.
And I’m not even bloody kidding you.
I received email after email after email from different weird Gmail addresses. You know those ones? The addresses with loads of random letters like x, y, w, some numbers thrown in there for decoration, and absolutely no indication that an actual human being lives behind them?
Yeah. Those ones.
And what were they offering me?
Amazon reviews. Goodreads reviews. Book review tours. “Fully vetted reviewers.” Fifty-two guaranteed reviews. Thousands of readers waiting to review my book.
Apparently somewhere on this planet there is an enormous population of people sitting around desperately waiting for the opportunity to review Before October Ends, and all I have to do is pay someone to introduce us.
How convenient.
Would I Like Hundreds of Reviews?
OF COURSE I WOULD.
What indie author wouldn’t?
Reviews are incredibly important for an author. I would LOVE to wake up tomorrow and discover hundreds of people had read my book and decided to tell the world what they thought about it.
But I want real reviews from real readers.
Not reviews I paid someone to manufacture, arrange, guarantee, summon from the underworld or whatever exactly these people are proposing.
Paying for guaranteed reviews is not allowed, and besides that, who knows if these reviews would ever actually appear?
Then They Tried a Different Approach
But then I received two emails that tried a slightly different approach.
They told me they had already read my book.
Ohhhh.
One of them explained how moved they were by my words, how the story stayed with them after the final page, and how they had even written a review for me.
How lovely.
Except…
They didn’t send me the review.
Apparently, if I wanted to read this beautiful review of my own book, I had to contact them.
Come on.
We all know where that conversation is heading.
And Then We Have My Personal Favourite
And THEN we have my personal favourite, which I’m adding here because you need to see how wonderfully charming some of these people are.
One email offered me 52 ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED Amazon reviews and then included this beautiful little message for authors:
REVIEW BEGGARS.
The email then informed authors that they should respect themselves and their work by compensating reviewers, followed by:
Excuse me???
You contacted me.
You appeared in my inbox offering something I didn’t ask for and then somehow I became a review beggar?
The audacity is almost impressive.
And this is actually what caught my attention yesterday. Not only the offers themselves, but how bloody rude some of these emails are.
How can you contact someone trying to sell them a service and simultaneously insult them?Who taught this marketing strategy?
And then there is another question that I genuinely don’t know the answer to:
How do these people find my email?Because I’ve noticed something weird.
Whenever I suddenly receive loads of connection requests on LinkedIn, almost automatically I start receiving loads of strange emails too.
Maybe it’s coincidence.
Maybe there is some connection.
I genuinely don’t know.
But what I do know is that the moment you start putting yourself out there as an indie author, apparently the scammers smell fresh meat.
And Now I Understand the “UNPAID Review Request” Emails
And you know what else is annoying me now?
I finally understand why I keep receiving emails with subjects like:
Hello?
I have an ARC Review Policy on my website.
A very clear one.
It says explicitly that I do not charge for reviews.
That is exactly why I choose the books I want to read, I read them, and then I review them.
So please, please don’t send me an email with UNPAID REVIEW REQUEST proudly sitting in the subject line because the first thing it tells me is that you didn’t read my review policy.
And I take my work, or better, my free service, very seriously.
I love reading.
I love discovering new stories.
I love discovering new authors.
And I will never charge someone for my opinion about their book.
There is also a very easy way to know the difference between something I have been paid to promote and an actual Lupe review.
If one day you see me writing what a book is about, telling you that it sounds interesting and giving you information about it, but there is no actual opinion from me, scroll down.
You will see that it is an ad.
Because when I tell you what I think, what I felt, what made me laugh, cry, scream, stare at the ceiling or want to throw the book across the room, that is my opinion.
Now for Something Much Nicer
Anyway, Rebels, after yesterday’s invasion of the Review Mafia, let’s move on to something much nicer.
THE NUMBERS.
But first…
Hurrayyyyy!
I’m so bloody happy.
Thank you to the Rebel who bought the book, and thank you to all of you Rebels reading on KU. I appreciate each and every one of you.
And you Rebels are reading on KU too. I see you.
So yes, while my inbox is apparently becoming the headquarters of every questionable review salesman on the internet, somebody out there bought my book and other people are actually reading it.
And that makes this indie author very, very happy.
Day 37: Let’s See the Numbers
Yesterday’s completed numbers are compared with the previous snapshot wherever the measurement period matches. Rolling platform numbers move every day, so I’m comparing like with like rather than pretending every percentage means the same thing.
The thirty-day view total moved from 10,129 to 10,404, an increase of 2.7%.
Interactions moved from 1,369 to 1,448, which is +5.8%. Interactions are therefore growing faster than views in this snapshot, which I’ll happily take.
Thirty-day viewers: 937. Non-followers account for 29.3% of thirty-day views. Posts remain the largest content source, followed by Stories and then Reels.
LinkedIn is doing that very LinkedIn thing where one number looks terrible until you zoom out.
And 90% of this week’s impressions are out-of-network. So yes, the seven-day total is lower, but LinkedIn is still showing my content overwhelmingly to people who are not already connected to me.
My author page is sitting at 947 views over 28 days, which Facebook reports as +738% compared with its previous period.
Engagement is at 122, reported as +481%, with three follows.
The other Facebook surface has 1,396 views, 18 engagements and 5 follows. Views are down 9% and engagement is down 69%, while follows are up 150%.
Facebook remains mostly a crossposting platform for this experiment, but it continues to send real traffic to the website.
Tumblr
Tumblr is holding at 23 followers.
No dramatic percentage today. Just 23 little humans sitting in our strange corner of Tumblr while I continue feeding them books, gothic fiction and whatever else is happening around here.
Podcast
Spotify shows 84 plays from 847 impressions over the thirty-day discovery window, with a 9.9% conversion rate.
The previous thirty-day plays snapshot was 93, so today’s 84 represents a decrease of approximately 9.7%.
Audience over the current seven-day window: 8.
The Bit I Actually Care About Today
Another book sold.
And Kindle Unlimited pages are being read.
Thank you, Rebels. I appreciate each and every one of you.
Those numbers may still be tiny compared with the giant numbers the internet likes to scream about, but they are real readers.
Nobody promised them 52 guaranteed opinions. Nobody sold them to me in an email.
They found the book and read it.
One Last Thing, Rebels
Rebels, beware of all these offers online.
I know they’re tempting.
Trust me, I know.
When you’re an indie author staring at a book with only a handful of reviews, an email promising 52, 100 or thousands of them can look like someone just opened the gates of heaven.
But please don’t fall for it.
We want readers.
We want real reviews.
We want opinions that belong to the people who actually read our books.
Love you, Rebels.