I’ve written about this quite a few times on my website–about how I keep getting solicitation emails praising my writing and offering to boost views, boost readers, get my books in book clubs and book conferences, movie trailers, movie deals, publication deals and agents, etc.

A new tactic, and I don’t think a bot is necessarily behind this one: leaving a positive Goodreads review, then emailing and positioning yourself as a marketing expert with a proposal you’d like to send.

I have these sent to spam, but I always check just in case these are real. I’ve gotten three emails so far purporting to have left reviews on Son of the Siren…and it turns out, they actually have. Under the name they signed with the email. These marketers have hundreds of Goodreads reviews, and I looked, and the average rating by them is five stars. So, they’re running around 5-starring books and then sending out a business proposal email saying they’re book marketers.

I don’t know what to do about this. This one puzzles me. Because those 5-star reviews (which are nonspecific and generic) have boosted my ratings on Goodreads substantially. I went from a 4.12 to a 4.19, which Amazon has fully rounded to a 4.2 Goodreads score. This is not a bad thing for me.

But those star ratings seem to have strings attached to them, if you get the emails trying to propose business with you. So I don’t know if I should report them or not. I’m not even sure how to go about reporting them.

What would you do in this situation? I have continued to report these emails as spam and will continue to do so, but if these spammers helped you out in a positive way, would you leave their reviews, or report them?