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Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/25/when-the-moon-hits-your-eye-in-the-final-round-for-the-2025-goodreads-choice-awards-in-science-fiction-go-vote/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58371

Well, this is lovely: When the Moon Hits Your Eye made it into the final round of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards, in the category of science fiction, along with the other works you see here. This is a very nice peer group to have, I have to say.

If you feel like voting for Moon, or, indeed any other book in this finalist group, here is the link for you to do so. If you vote for Moon, hey, thanks! If you choose something else, that’s cool too.

I’m actually very happy with Moon making the final cut here. It’s an unusual sort of book, both structurally and in subject matter, and it wasn’t 100% clear to me that readers would take to it. Getting to this round is encouraging. Let’s see where it goes from here.

In any event: Go vote!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/25/when-the-moon-hits-your-eye-in-the-final-round-for-the-2025-goodreads-choice-awards-in-science-fiction-go-vote/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58371

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/22/yes-all-those-author-services-and-book-club-emails-are-fake-and-no-dont-send-them-any-money/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58338

If you’re an author, or honestly if you just happen to be standing near an author these days, then you have probably seen a flood of emails in the past couple of months promising you that whoever is sending you the email can promote [Insert name of one of your works here, even if it is over a decade old] to Amazon/Goodreads/their book club/a nebulous agglomeration of readers/etc. Either up front, or after an email exchange, will come the ask of some amount of money, usually a couple hundred dollars but sometimes more, as “administrative fees” or some such.

Just to be clear, so there is no doubt about these things: Every single one of these emails is absolutely a scam, none of these promoters and/or book clubs are real*, and if you send money to any of these accounts, either directly or through a third-party service, you will get nothing for your money and you will never see that money or those scammers again. Never send money to these people. Ever.

(The asterisk above for “none of these book clubs is real” is there because sometimes the scammers will pretend to be representing an actual online book club and might point to their site or page to give the illusion of legitimacy. They are not legit.)

These sort of scam emails have been around for years, of course, but it seems like there’s a real upswing in both the number and variety of emails. I myself get a couple dozen of them a day recently. Here are the headers of some that have arrived in the last few hours, and yes, emojis are part of headers now, we truly live in a benighted age:

• “Can I Borrow Your Book? …To Show 55k People ”: This one promises me access to book-promo networks across TikTok and Linkedin, which is a cursed combination if there ever was one;
• “Growing Constituent Service’s Visibility on Goodreads During Peak Q4 Discovery”: This one promises exposure in Goodreads’ “Listopia” section, which is asserted to be very important here in the holiday season;
• “Did Amazon lock your book in the basement, or did Jeff Bezos just ghost you? ”: This spammer is trying to neg me into using its “service” by suggesting Amazon is not doing enough to promote The Shattering Peace, an odd statement to make inasmuch as Amazon is one of the book’s publishers (via Audible, who, incidentally, sent me a very handsome marketing document, which they executed upon perfectly) and the book itself was a New York Times best seller;
• “Cinematic AI Visuals for your book”: Because what could be a better way to spend money promoting your work than to pay some dude to type a prompt into Sora;
• “Before the book-buying madness starts…”: This one is using the tactic of asking me if I would like to know more about how they can help me, the idea being that if you actually respond to this sort of soft-pedal approach, they know they have a sucker;
• “Quick Goodreads Visibility Boost for ‘Wildfire'”: Another Goodreads Listopia booster, promising eyeballs for my audiobook “Wildfire,” which is fun, since I don’t have an audiobook named “Wildfire.”

That’s just from this morning, mind you; I cleared out my spam last night before I went to sleep. These were waiting for me when I woke up. Soon I will have many, many more.

“But the email said nice things about my book and it seems like whoever is sending the email read it!” Sure, because “AI” is a thing now and it will spit out highly complimentary lines instantly. Here, look, this is Gemini telling me how awesome When the Moon Hits Your Eye is:

Dear Mr. Scalzi,

I simply had to write and express my profound, uncontainable joy after finishing When the Moon Hits Your Eye. I’ve been a fan of your work for years, but this novel has instantly vaulted to the top of my all-time favorites list. It’s not just a science fiction story; it’s a perfect, shimmering symphony of everything I love about your writing.

But beyond the genius plot mechanics, what truly elevates When the Moon Hits Your Eye is the heart and the humor. Even amidst planetary catastrophe, your characters remain so beautifully, painfully human. The witty dialogue provided necessary relief, making the high-concept ideas feel grounded and accessible.

Wow, Gemini truly loved my book! And it took it mere milliseconds to write that note!

I do suspect that the advent of “AI” is one of the reasons that these sort of scam emails have taken off recently; it allows scammers, at very little cost to themselves (but at significant cost to the environment, energy bills and the local water table of wherever the “AI” data sites are) to personalize their scam pitches and make them seem more legitimate, especially to writers, who generally want nothing more than to know their work has been read and appreciated by someone.

I assure you, these scammers have not read your book. Hell, as you can see above, sometimes they can’t even get right the books you’ve written. These emails are being churned out by the thousands to see who is desperate enough to bite. If they get one nibble out of a thousand emails, that’s going to be a decent return for their trouble. And whoever nibbles is going to get scammed.

Here’s a good rule of thumb, not just for writers but for humans in general: Random unsolicited email wants you to send money? Don’t send the money. Toss the email in the spam folder and block that email address forever.

There are actual independent publicists and marketing folks who can help you promote your work; as an example, here’s one such PR company, who I work with regularly because they query me for Big Idea slots here on the site. These folks have verifiable career track records — for example, one of the principals of this company was head of PR for Tor, which is where I met her, an actual human who exists in the real world. Their contact emails have the same domain as the web site, and are not, say, a Gmail account whose user name includes a long string of numbers. Their client lists include names who are independently contactable and can confirm their legitimacy. And so on.

Do these firms cost money? Oh, my, yes, they do. Do these firms randomly spam thousands of accounts offering their services? No, they absolutely do not.

Likewise there are actual book clubs who would love for authors to come chat with them about their work. They are not going to ask for “administrative” fees or whatever. I do feel sorry for the actual book clubs out there right about now; this absolute flood of spam email means their more modest entreaties for authors to pop into their Zoom session are far more likely to get ported into the trash. Sorry, folks. It’s just how it is at the moment.

So to recap and re-emphasize: Authors, you’re being spammed; yes, it’s a lot and no, it’s not just you; don’t send them any money ever; if you do want actual independent marketing and publicity, it exists and you will have to go out to find it, it’s almost certainly not going to come to you, and in any event will never fucking use emoji in the header of a business email.

Be wary, be suspicious and be safe, and again: don’t send money to random email spammers, ever.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/22/yes-all-those-author-services-and-book-club-emails-are-fake-and-no-dont-send-them-any-money/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58338

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/20/the-big-idea-colin-brush/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58327

When writing a novel, a lot of people think of the process as sort of rigid. You have a specific story to tell and it needs to be an unchanging vision all the way through. Author Colin Brush, however, says in his Big Idea that flexibility is required when creating a story. Follow along to see how in the making of his newest novel, Exo, he made sure to be adaptable and listen to those around him.

COLIN BRUSH:

The budding novelist with some notes for a story is faced with one gargantuan problem: how to turn their few scribbled words into a compelling 100,000-word tale? Months, often years, will elapse before this conundrum is solved to their satisfaction.

But then comes a smaller but no less significant problem – the exact opposite of the first. Now you need to pitch your novel to an agent or publisher. You need to condense your 100,000 words into a succinct hundred or so that will persuasively sell your book.

This, of course, is the challenge publishers face every time they launch a new book. What’s the hookiest way of pitching the story? Both editor and author know the story backwards, but is that any help in persuading someone who hasn’t read the story that they’d want to read it? The multiple elements that draw a reader through a tale often aren’t the same elements that invite the uninitiated in.

For the last twenty-five years, I’ve been a copywriter at one of Britain’s largest trade publishers. Over that time, I’ve written the jacket copy (the blurb, in the UK) for over 5,000 books, both fiction and non-fiction. From classics that are hundreds of years old to the latest romantasy sensation.

It is my job to boil down that 100K story, those months or years of work, into fifty to two hundred words. (Frequently, even half a dozen words for a cover shout line.) Many authors and editors shudder at the prospect. It is not because they find it hard to write short, but rather it is because they are so close to the book. When you’ve been cutting a path through the dense trees of a story it can be difficult to remember why you went into the wood in the first place. From the wood’s farther side – bleeding, sore, exhausted but exaltant – it’s easy to lose sight of what from the outside made entering so appealing.

When it came to writing my own novel, I thought I knew what the process needed to be. Much-missed author Terry Pratchett once advised writers: ‘if you think you have a book evolving, now is the time to write the flap copy – the blurb. An author should never be too proud to write their own flap copy. Getting the heart and soul of a book into fewer than 100 words helps you focus.’

Well, I certainly wasn’t too proud. I had a novel idea: the last murder at the end of a world. I had a tough lead character: an uncompromising eighty-year-old former policewoman wandering a bleak, uninhabited planet. I had an adversary: the Caul, a mysterious multi-dimensional entity that had transformed the oceans into an annihilating liquid. And I had a plot: the truth about the murderous Caul had been discovered but someone was killing to keep it secret. I even had a title: Exo. 

I’d written half a million words of blurbs. Writing a couple hundred more about my own novel-to-be would have me up and running.

Reader, it didn’t quite work out that way.

It turns out writing a novel and writing a novel’s blurb are very different activities. When you write the blurb the story is set. You know how it works: beginning, middle and end. The path through the woods is clear. When you’re writing a novel, the story tends to evolve. New ideas inveigle their way into the narrative. Characters don’t behave as you expected. Your big denouement doesn’t land as you hoped. Beginning, middle and end – the path – meander and shift. Sometimes, even the woods go wandering!

Writing Exo’s blurb did not help me, unfortunately. I spent years, on and off, reworking the story to get it to come good.

But – and here’s the big idea – being a blurb writer did help me write and rewrite my story. Writing 5,000 blurbs means you encounter a lot of different stories. But you also have to pitch these stories in multiple ways. I was once asked to do the blurb for a schools edition of Albert Camus’ The Plague. What do teenagers prefer? Reading books that are metaphors for the human condition, or scaring themselves silly at the cinema? So I wrote it like a horror movie, beginning with rats vomiting blood . . .

As a blurb writer I’m constantly re-pitching stories in alternative ways to reach new audiences. You work with the story, knowing you mustn’t misrepresent it; that would please no one. A pitch is all about what you put in and what you leave out. Sometimes the author hates an approach and you have to start over. Or the editor likes the beginning but wants the ending to land differently. As a blurb writer, working to a brief, addressing multiple audiences, you have to be versatile. You never say no.

So when I was struggling with Exo – revisions from my agent, suggestions from interested publishers: ‘how about setting it on Earth?’ – I never once said no. I looked at what I had. I saw where changes could be made – elements added or taken away – and the path shifted. Exo was my novel, but it was also just a very long piece of copy. (Writer Randall Jarrell called the novel: ‘a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.’ Mine had plenty wrong with it.)

As someone who regularly writes five different versions of a blurb for a prospective bestseller, I know that there is no correct or incorrect copy. There are just different responses to a brief – different pathways. Some paths will seem more appealing than others. And the eye is always in the beholder.

It turned out my job as novelist was to find a way of telling my story that others wanted to read. That meant exploring many different routes. My day job, pitching stories in a variety of ways, reminded me that versatility and stick-to-itiveness – never saying no! – were the key to beating the best path through the story woods.

Exo: Amazon US|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s|Bookshop|Publisher|UK retailers

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

Extracts: Read Day One here | Listen here (read by Gildart Jackson)

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/20/the-big-idea-colin-brush/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58327