Lately, I’ve been getting warm, personal emails from bestselling authors. I’m touched by this, because I really didn’t know how much they cared. Another exciting development is the number of professional book marketers who see tremendous potential in various titles from my backlist. I most appreciate the effort they’ve put into these communications, not only gathering facts about the works, and myself as the author, but providing very coherent, persuasive arguments. I mean, these guys are good.
Scary good. Actually, literally terrifying.
Most of my professional experience has been in advertising. One of the things you quickly learn in that business is you need a healthy dose of cynicism. As Lilly Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.” It also helps to have your ego ground into a gelatinous paste on a regular basis. We didn’t just experience rejection, it came at us all day long, every day. So I’m probably the least susceptible target on earth for flattering marketing ploys.
Thus, I knew
almost immediately that I was being played by Artificial Intelligence. But what threw me was how incredibly
sophisticated these appeals were. The
best were not just factually sound, but textured and nuanced in how they framed
their arguments. They have complete
fluency in the language of both marketing and publishing. And worst of all, it didn’t seem possible
that they weren’t written by a human being.
That’s because the composition had an emotional quality, a personal
touch that rookie promotional writers take years to develop.
It seems pretty
stupid to try to scam everyday fiction writers, of all people. Clearly they don’t have access to our tax returns
or go deep enough to find the entry for advances/royalties. Though as I often remind myself, you can make
a lot of money by taking a little money from a lot of people. As the headline on a recent article in The
New York Times puts it: “Hungry for
Affirmation, Vulnerable to Scams: As a
Writer, I Know the Feeling.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/books/review/publishing-scams.html
This is the crux
of the matter. All aspiring artists are
equal parts devotional, ambitious and insecure.
We get into it because we want to create, often driven to do so. And we want to succeed, because success means
having an audience that appreciates our work, and provides the means for
continuing in the pursuit. But since no
one can truly be an arbiter in their own efforts, we have to rely on others to approve
or reject. It’s a perilous place for
anyone yearning to achieve in their chosen art form. So boy, vulnerable as you can get.
The scams that
feed on lonely hearts, often elderly, and then steal their life savings are
particularly heinous. The material loss
is financial, but the emotional toll is far worse, since the hopes and dreams
of the victims, their most heartfelt, are used against them. To say nothing of the self-recrimination and embarrassment.
These frauds targeting
writers are a close cousin. I’m sure an
fMRI would reveal that the same areas of the brain that light up from romance
are kindled by a writer being offered the validation they so eagerly
desire.
As I write this,
there are striving writers out there who are being seduced by these diabolical
con jobs (I mean that literally, even biblically). I wonder about myself at that stage, and how
it felt to have those tender emotions hanging off my sleeves, dripping from
every pore. I’d be a sucker for sure,
and I’m not sure how well I’d recover.
My hope is that
anyone reading this will 1. Never reply.
2. Report the scam to the platform, even if you think it’s not worth
it. 3. Tell every writer they know to
watch out. They’re after you, and
you won’t always see it coming, no matter how experienced, cynical and
hardboiled you think you are.
