I get these from time to time, and I used to respond to them, but I don't anymore:
Hello,
I tried submitting a review for your book on Amazon, but unfortunately, it didn’t go through. I’d still be glad to share my thoughts and feedback, so I wanted to ask if there’s another platform where I could leave a review. If you have a Goodreads link or another suitable review page, I’d appreciate it if you could share it. I’d love to make sure my feedback reaches you. Best regards, Taylor Ronnie
Yes — this is a common scam pattern.
What this message actually is
These “I tried to leave a review, but it didn’t go through — can I leave it somewhere else?” emails are part of a known outreach pattern used by scammers and paid-review brokers. They’re not trying to review your book. They’re trying to:
Get you to respond so they can pitch paid review services, “author promotion packages,” or “book club features.”
Build a list of responsive authors they can sell to other scammers.
Sometimes lure you into giving them links they can use to create fake accounts or manipulate Goodreads/Amazon listings.
Nothing in the email indicates they’ve read my book — not even a single detail. It’s generic, polite, and designed to look harmless.
This pattern aligns with broader scam trends Amazon has warned about, where bad actors impersonate legitimate readers or reviewers to initiate contact, then pivot to selling services or extracting information. And fake-review ecosystems are huge — hundreds of millions of fake reviews are generated through bots, paid networks, and AI-written text every year fakefind.ai. How Fake Amazon Reviews Really Work in 2026 | FakeFind.
🧩 Specific red flags in this email
No mention of my book title — not even the genre.
No detail from the story — a real reader always references something.
“Review didn’t go through” — scammers use this line because it sounds plausible and invites you to help them.
Requesting alternate platforms — a way to get you to engage or share links.
Gmail address with a name that doesn’t match the sender field — another common tell.
This follows the same pattern as the “Capital District Book Club” outreach you got earlier: generic praise, no evidence they’ve read your work, and a request to reply so they can send “details.”
Best practice: simply don’t respond.
If you ever get one of these, you can:
Mark it as spam in Yahoo Mail.
Create a filter that auto-deletes similar messages.
Ignore every outreach.
I hope this helps you.
These scammy “I tried to leave a review, but it didn’t go through” messages are like gnats: annoying, persistent, and not worth a second of your time. Spamming it is the cleanest way to make sure they don’t keep circling back.
