Hi Everyone, this is a heads up: if you've had an email from "James Patterson," it isn't him.
I was contacted this week by someone claiming to be James Patterson, writing from a personal Gmail address.
The message was flattering and specific: it praised our "foundation" as an author, claimed our books were being buried by Amazon's algorithm, and offered a spot in a "curated reading circle" for authors — all we had to do was reply with a link to the book we wanted featured.
Seeing the name "James Patterson" made my heart jump for a brief moment, but alarms bells were ringing.
- James using a gmail address? Not likely.
- James doing the outreach himself? Not likely.
- James finding time to look at author profiles? Not likely.
A quick Google confirmed that it's a scam, and it's a well-documented one.
The real James Patterson doesn't contact authors and writers this way, and he doesn't use a Gmail address — enquiries go through his publisher, Hachette.
This particular script has already caught out other unsuspecting authors and sadly, vulnerable writers.
The pattern is worth knowing, because it isn't unique to this one name:
- An unsolicited email from a well-known author, agent, or publisher, sent from a personal or generic email address rather than an official one.
- Flattering, slightly generic language about your "potential" or "foundation" that could apply to almost any author.
- A claim that your book sales are suffering because of an algorithm or some other invisible force, positioning them as the one who can fix it.
- A vague opportunity — a "reading circle," "scouting team," or similar — with no name you can verify.
- A low-cost first ask, like sending a book link, designed to get you engaged before a request for money follows.
If you get one of these, the safest move is not to reply with any book links or personal details. You can mark it as spam or phishing in your email provider, and if you want to check whether it's genuine, contact the author's publisher directly using the details on their official website, not the email address the message came from.
If anyone in the I Turn Pages community has come across a similar message, we'd like to hear about it. The more people know what these scams look like, the more aware our writing community becomes.
UPDATE: Here is the email address of the scammer: writer.jamespatterson@gmail.com
I also found out that we can report these scammers so here is the email address: reportphishing@apwg.org - I just hit forward and sent the email to this widely used anti-phishing reporting address. Gmail has a 'Report phishing' option when you view the original message's headers, or you can report it at https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish.
Agree, be careful! Luckily you spotted the random 's.' We must make new writers more aware of this as they could fall for these scams. Here are two in just this short post.