Or maybe there's nothing much they can do. As Post-Doctorate D points out, one can call oneself a marketing consultant without directly claiming to be a company employee, though one could argue that the email Jan received could certainly be confusing, particularly to someone not used to dealing with scams.

Perhaps if Jan had engaged and gotten follow-up emails, we might be able to tell what the scammer was up to. But the initial email doesn't necessarily break the law.

I've gotten similarly apathetic responses to the use of Amazon's name from Amazon, which was content to confirm the email wasn't from them. And when I notified the agent of a bestselling author that the author's name was being used in a scam, I got no response at all.

Maybe they all feel as if they would just be playing whack-a-mole.

I was going to reply and quote the email from BookBub, but a reply simply engages with them further and I don't want to go through all that again.  A rude reply could end up with some 1 star reviews so that is not an option I want to try.
I've now had three emails from people purporting to be from BookBub, so the whack-a-mole scenario is probably true.

...general fiction (whatever the **** that is)...

Isn't "general fiction" whatever's not something else?

I quite agree that all romantasy is not porn. It's true that the self pub example I gave has a considerable amount of explicit sex, but the major trad authors in the genre certainly aren't excessive in that regard.

It's also true that this preoccupation with how much sex a genre has follows a long tradition of looking down on romance. I must admit that when I was young, and the only examples of romance I saw all the time were of the shirtless male variety, it didn't seem like a particularly serious genre. It wasn't until I became an author and read some of the romance novels written by people I became acquainted with through author groups that I realized it has just as much potential for literary merit as any other genre.

Porn is chiefly defined by the fact that sexual titillation is the primary element. Sex is not part of the plot because there generally is little or no plot beyond the sex. Where sex is part of a well-developed plot structure, and particularly when the sex is necessary to the plot, the book shouldn't be classified as porn. Some of us may prefer closed door or only implicit sex. Others may want something more explicit, both as readers and writers. Either way, it's how it is used, not the mere fact of its existence, that separates porn from other genres.

Having been a high school teacher, as a writer, I tend toward implicit or metaphoric sex, even though I'm not always writing YA. I want my books to be books that a high school English teacher could without hesitation recommend to students. But as a reader, I'm willing to accept sex as part of the plot without labeling the material as porn.

Trad pub struggles with these issues a little, too. The trad author who runs the Substack book club I'm in clearly seems to be writing romance with a touch of fantasy. But Random House Penguin generally classifies her recent books as general fiction (whatever the **** that is) and/or women's fiction. General fiction seems like an effort to dodge romance without having to call something lit fic that's written for a broader audience. Women's fiction seems to imply that somehow it's written only for women, which I don't think is the case. Sigh!

I think part of the problem is that literary classification is falling victim to the culture wars and to polarization that leads to a white hats/black hats mentality. (Definition: Every author--and every person--is somehow either good or evil. There's no room for subtle shades of gray nor any kind of centrist position.) I know some authors, otherwise intelligent people, who are willing to start lighting the torches and sharpening the pitchforks at the slightest sign of deviation from what they consider correct, even as they mock the other extreme for having the same failing. Given how attitudes about sex and gender have become part of this conflict, I suppose it isn't surprising that romance ends up in the crosshairs. But it is disappointing.

 

I've had a reply from BookBub. They don't seem overly concerned, although you never know what is going on behind the scenes. It could also be a bit of publicity for them, but perhaps not in a good way 

Hi Jan,
 
Hope you're doing well, and thanks for reaching out! I can confirm we don't have an employee with that email address working at BookBub, so that doesn't look like a real account. Let me know if we can be of any additional support on our end!
 
Best,
Julia Dickman
Account Coordinator
BookBub Partners & Author Websites
http://insights.bookbub.com

Women are a larger segment of the reading population than they are of the population as a whole, so part of this isn't surprising.

But trad publishers and authors won't be the only ones to benefit. Indies already had pretty big shares in both romance and fantasy sales. If some prominent indie women start start making a real effort in romantasy, I suspect that they'll end up with a decent piece of the pie.

Actually, now that I think of it, that's already happening. Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, a two-sister writing team with their own publishing house (King's Hollow) to publish their work, have the bestselling Zodiac Academy series. The first book is currently at #150 in the US store and #13 in romantasy and has over 110,000 reviews.

I would imagine that they are probably others. I'm just not sure off the top of my head.