The Publishing Scam I Almost Fell For (and What It Taught Me About Pride)

From Edie: Heidi McGill shares how a publishing scam almost fooled her. Discover the warning signs, learn how scammers target writers with flattery, and see what this experience taught her about pride and discernment.

The Publishing Scam I Almost Fell For (and What It Taught Me About Pride)

by Heidi McGill @HeidiGrayMcGill

I nearly got flimflammed this week, and pride is the only reason it almost worked.

I’ve deleted the emails claiming Oprah wants to feature me, Reese Witherspoon’s book club found me, and Steven Spielberg wants to option my next release. My Christian historicals don’t land on those desks, and I’m not well known enough to pretend otherwise. Most days I spot the spam before I finish the subject line.

This one didn’t read like the others. It opened soft and specific and... flattering, in a way that felt earned instead of scripted.

Dear Mrs. McGill,

I hope this finds you well. I listened to the audiobook of Desire of My Heart last month, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Aimee Lilly’s narration brought Rachel’s story to life in a way that caught me completely off guard. I lost my husband three years ago, and there were scenes I had to pause and sit with because I wasn’t ready for how closely they mirrored my own grief.

I work for a small production company reviewing faith-based titles for adaptation. We’re putting together a short list for a limited series, and I brought up your name. The team had already heard me mention your book multiple times, so it wasn’t a hard sell. I know you’re independently published, so rather than going through an agent, I’d love for us to speak directly so we can move quickly.

Thank you for writing such compelling Christian fiction.

Warmly, Sarah Whitfield

My heart soared reading her words. Someone had sat with Rachel’s grief and found her own reflected there, and that connection is the reason I write these stories. I’m blessed to have Aimee Lilly narrating this series, and knowing her voice carried Rachel’s heartbreak into someone else’s healing meant more to me than any royalty statement ever could.

Somewhere between the second read and the third, a small voice inside me said this isn’t right. I heard it. I set it down next to the part of me that wanted so badly for the email to be true, and for a moment, the wanting won.

It took my husband, reading over my shoulder, to hover his cursor over the sender’s address and confirm his suspicions in one glance. A string of random letters and numbers sat behind her name, nothing close to a real production company. He asked why a legitimate producer would want me to skip my agent, and why she wanted to move so quickly. Said aloud, the answer was obvious. Read alone, still glowing from feeling seen, it wasn’t obvious at all.

Pride Doesn’t Always Look Like Pride

I used to picture pride as boasting, some version of me announcing my greatness. This didn’t look like that. It looked like, well, finally being noticed.

Obadiah 1:3 names it plainly. “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’” (NIV). Not someone else’s pride. Mine. The deception didn’t come from outside my judgment. It walked straight through the door pride had already propped open.

Paul warned the Corinthian church about something similar, on a larger scale. “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14, NIV). Sometimes he comes as light, as something that looks good and sounds kind and asks for very little in return, at least at first. That email didn’t threaten me. It flattered me. It found the exact dimensions of the hole I wanted filled and poured itself into it.

Staying Alert Without Being Suspicious

I don’t want to walk away from this story cynical, checking every kind word for a hidden hook. That’s its own kind of exhausting, and I don’t think it’s what either passage is asking of me.

What I want is to keep listening to that small voice, the one that said this isn’t right before I’d even finished reading. That voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It only needed me to stop long enough to hear it instead of letting a flattered heart drown it out.

Discernment rarely announces itself with a warning label. Most of the time it’s a quiet nudge, easy to miss, easier to ignore. My job isn’t to distrust every compliment that comes my way. My job is to stay awake enough to notice when a compliment is doing more work than it should, when it’s aimed less at encouraging me and more at disarming me.

I never replied to Sarah, whoever she actually is. I closed the email, sat with how easily I’d almost been taken in, and thanked God for a husband willing to ask an obvious question out loud. Not every warning comes directly from scripture. Sometimes it comes through someone standing close enough to see what I couldn’t.

The next flattering email will come. They always do. I’d like to think I’ll catch it faster next time, not because I’ve grown less flattered by kind words, but because I’ve grown more familiar with what it feels like right before pride talks me out of my own good sense.

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Heidi Gray McGill is a Selah Award finalist and five-time NEST Award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary fiction. Her Discerning God’s Best series has earned over 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon, where readers describe her work as ‘faith-filled fiction with flawed but lovable characters.’ She began her writing journey in March 2020, after retirement, proving that God’s calling has no expiration date. A sought-after encourager in the writing community, Heidi speaks and writes on the craft of storytelling, writing with biblical conviction, and reaching readers across generational and cultural divides. She is both independently and traditionally published, and she writes despite progressive vision loss, which has only sharpened her perspective on what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel to her bestselling series at HeidiGrayMcGill.com. Christian Fiction. Relatable Characters. Life-changing Stories. Fusing Faith and Fiction™ Listen to the book mentioned in this post on Heidi Gray McGill’s YouTube Channel.