But It Doesn't Look Like a Scam! It's a Demi-Scam!

The first indicator of a scam email is the sender's address. If it's Gmail, delete it. The majority of scammers choose Gmail because it's free, doesn't require any validation, and recipients tend to trust it. (Not me! Even though Gmail is my provider of choice.)

The message I received today was from a Yahoo account (not much better, really, but different from the norm). The sender has a legitimate website, however dubious. More on that later. (I've highlighted the questionable details.)

April, I found your book while browsing Running From Herself, and Leah's decision to walk away from the music world before it completely consumes her says a lot about what this story is really about. She is not simply tired of performing. She has reached the point where continuing to play the game means risking the part of herself that made the music matter in the first place.

I also liked that Wyoming does not become some magical place where all of Leah's problems disappear. The saloon, the bartending job, the local relationships, and the financial pressure give her somewhere to breathe, but they do not erase what brought her there. Then one performance pulls her back toward Nashville and the industry she was trying to escape.

That tension between making music and being made into a product feels especially natural coming from you. You have spent years on the music side yourself, so the conflict around creative control, promotion, commercial pressure, and the identity of the artist has more weight here than it would in a story that simply uses music as decoration.

Leah's relationship with Caleb adds another part I would not want readers to overlook either. The story is not only about escaping an industry. It is also about the people who understand the creative part of you, the people who can challenge you, and what happens when you have to decide whether success is still worth the price being asked of you.

That seems to be why the reader response is so different from the usual reaction to a music themed romance. People are talking about the grit, vulnerability, resilience, artistic integrity, and the feeling that the characters are lived in rather than manufactured. That is a very different promise from simply putting a musician, a small town, and a romance on the same cover.

You have also already put real work behind the book through your music and writing platforms, reviewer coverage, interviews, and the recent price promotion. So there is already plenty of activity around Running From Herself. What caught my attention is that the deeper reason someone might want this particular book can be easier to miss if they only see the broader women's fiction or small town framing.

That is where Book Visibility Mapping comes in. The result I would want for Running From Herself is for the right reader to understand much sooner what kind of story is actually waiting inside it. Someone looking for a realistic music industry story, a woman fighting to keep her creative identity, a gritty second chance, or fiction about choosing purpose over commercial success should be able to recognize that connection when they encounter the book. Leah's struggle with Nashville, her relationship with music, the Wyoming setting, and the question of what success is worth are already part of the story. The aim is simply to make those qualities easier for the readers who would value them to recognize.

There is almost a funny contradiction at the heart of Leah's situation. She runs away from the music industry to get some peace, then apparently decides the best way to achieve that is to perform on a stage and attract the exact people she was trying to escape. Apparently, creative freedom needed a little more drama before it could get started.

Would you be open to seeing what I found around the readers who may connect most strongly with the music industry reality, Leah's fight for artistic freedom, the Wyoming setting, and the question of whether success is worth losing yourself for? Let me know if this resonates with you or not.

𝓙𝓸𝓼𝓱𝓾𝓪 𝓡𝓸𝔂
Book Visibility Mapping Strategist
Co-founder, InsightIgnitee
insightignitee.net

First off, he found my book Running From Herself while browsing Running From Herself? Ingenious! I wonder what book he expected to find! 

That aside, I will grant that the message reads like a real person wrote it, not AI. I'm no AI expert, but I'm pretty sure if you ask it to "personalize" a message, that's kind of a basic function, though.

Because he mentions that I "recently" did a price promotion and "interviews" (one interview), reviewer coverage, whatever the hell that is, the guy clearly ran an AI search. It's not as if he searched the entire internet to find all that. 

Things AI got wrong: Leah was never a bartender, and most of all, the book is not a romance and was never categorized as such. To be honest, I could overlook that mistake since it happens all the time, but here it's just one more red flag. 

The human aspect is reflected in his "funny contradiction" line. Nice touch, I must say. 

So, of course, I clicked his website link. (Yes, never click unknown links, but I figure if he wants my money, his goal is not to plant malware, but rather to grab my money the old-fashioned way--via fraudulent services.) 

To be honest, I still don't know what his company does; something to do with discovery optimization? With that in mind, they use metadata and "system alignment". Okay, but seeing as how it miscategorized my genre, I'm not of a mind to trust their optimizaton.

As you know, I am forgiving of typos, but I also can't help but notice them (in others' work, unfortunately; not so much in my own). 

"How InsightIgnitee help Martin Moore-Ede"

That same line is repeated in every video testimonial heading. 

And as for testimonials, there are two that were recorded by verified authors. The trouble is, one of the books was published in 2009 and still only has 41 reviews. How badly was it doing before the author hired InsightIgnite? As for the written testimonials, they almost all feature authors who were approached by their reading groups. Does every author belong to a reading group? Am I the lone holdout? Granted, some of these authors' books have over a thousand reviews, but one writer with a lot of books published only has 3 - 5. It's really impossible to make any judgements based on these numbers. How much does genre and book series play into popularity or lack thereof?

However, what I do know is, InsightIgnitee's prices are wild, from $500 to $5,000! (depending on the package). Hey, five thousand dollars for the prospect of five reviews? My sluggishly performing novel has already beat that number! Who's going to make their investment back paying those rates?  

By the way, what's with the terrible company name?

 (nighty-night!)

I'm not one to engage with these cold contacts normally, but AI gave me a sample response that is really too good to pass up:

"Hi Joshua, thanks for the note. I noticed your email repeatedly refers to Running From Herself as a 'music-themed romance.' It is actually women's fiction, and it is not a romance novel at all. Given that your agency specializes in precise metadata alignment and technical discoverability, I'm surprised your intake process missed the book's actual genre. Because of that, I don't think this partnership is a good fit. Best of luck with your Q4 2026 launch." 

Yes, I'm rather bored. And tired of being taken for a rube. I've also learned a new term: "demi-scam". I need to add that to my posting vocabulary. I have a feeling it'll crop up from time to time.

A predatory service (demi-scam) actually gives you what you pay for, but it is wildly overpriced, technically flawed, and completely useless. 

So, be wary--vewy vewy wawry--when you receive a communication like this. Do your research if you have any doubts.

I'll check back and let you know if Joshua responds.