Brief
Fake Goodreads group members are selling paid author spotlights
Scammers impersonate large reader groups, pitch an ‘author spotlight’, then invoice hundreds of dollars for a post the moderators never approved.
Why it matters. If someone emails you from a Goodreads group and asks for money, it is not the group.
ALLi’s 11 September news roundup flagged a Goodreads scam targeting authors. Threads on the platform itself, including in Swifties Who Also Read, show the pattern: a message claiming to represent a large reader group, offering an author spotlight, written in flattened AI English, then a fee. Moderators in those threads say the senders are not members authorised to sell anything.
Writer Beware has separately tracked promo-site operators moving onto Goodreads groups with the same low-engagement play. Do not pay. Do not send a mobi or EPUB to an address that is not in the group’s official links. If you want to be in a reading challenge, use the group’s public process. Report the account to Goodreads; second-hand reports from other authors often go nowhere.