Let’s Talk Scams Targeting Authors…

So, you want to see one of the great innovative ways that AI is making our lives better?

They’re making it easier for scams to sound completely believable! Oh, wait, that’s a BAD thing! Silly me.

Over the last year, I’ve been hit by an increased number of emails from people who want to take my book “to the next level.”

It used to be that these were easy to avoid and dismiss because they spoke in generalizations. They’d say, “Hey, I loved your book, [insert book name], and want to talk to you about how you can reach the audience you deserve.”

Now? Well, here’s an example introduction:

Dear Noah,

When I first stumbled across your book on Amazon, I’ll admit, I expected another “space opera” with flashy battles and starships. But what I found in your story was something richer: a gritty, character-driven adventure about survival, trust, and the haunting weight of choices. Maurice “Moss” Foote’s scrappy resilience, Hel’s mysterious compulsion, and Roy “Hellno” Herzog’s loner code immediately pulled me in. These aren’t just characters on a page, they feel like people readers will argue about at 2 a.m. over coffee (or wine). That’s the magic of your writing: you create worlds that entertain and provoke reflection.

That’s not even the most convincing one I’ve seen. Not by a long shot.

And they’re only getting better.

What they’re selling changes too. Before it was focused marketing. Then larger structured multi-staged plans. This one is part of a shift to trying to focus on book clubs, claiming to have connections to thousands of book clubs, and hey, if you can get them all talking about YOUR book, they’re going to talk to other people and that’s word of mouth marketing right there!

What angers me about these is that they prey on things struggling authors like myself are full of: hope, desperation, a desire to be seen, a need for validation.

And of course these emails are instant validation. Wow! This person not only read my book, they GET it.

No, they didn’t. That was an AI bot either scanning the book itself because it’s been pirated illegally, or scanning the comments and reviews of it, then generating its own praise.

Rather than simply block these emails unseen, I admit to looking at many of them first. Part of it is curiosity to see how their game is evolving… But I must admit with a degree of shame that part of me seeks the dopamine hit of seeing praise… even though I know it’s completely artificial.

And I think that’s how they plan to get people like me in the long run. This kind of crap will get normalized. And eventually one will stand out that makes you go, “Wait, maybe this ISN’T a bot?”

It made me think a bit about seniors and how we think they must be senile when they fall for what we see as an obvious scam… but maybe that’s not the complete picture. Maybe it’s a combination of them getting inundated with them all the time, ignoring most, but then one stands out as different, and maybe they’re having an off day mentally, and that combination leads them down the rabbit hole.

Something else I do when examining these emails is to check everything that can be checked. This one even gave a New York address at the bottom, looking all professional-like.

Megan Moore
Professional Book Marketer
Caisey Daine Network Marketing Org
One World Trade Center, 85th Floor
New York, NY 10007
USA

So I looked into it. Her email was the usual “first/last name+number” red flag, but what about this “Caisey Dane”?

Oh, she exists. Sorta. Did a search and found a TikTok profile. About a thousand followers. But all the other links connected to that name? It’s just that profile popping up on other author TikToks asking if they’ve ever been featured in a book club… and a few Facebook posts indicating that she’s a scam.

But the depressing part came when I looked at the TikTok profile. Mostly it was book covers, but there were videos from a few authors there, introducing themselves and their books.

All of them were older than me, and full of hope, desperation, a desire to be seen, and a need for validation.

Now, all this is just me talking about my own personal experience. If you want some actual evidence about what is going on and how it works, then I suggest checking out this article: AI-supported spear phishing fools more than 50% of targets | Malwarebytes

Bottom line? AI is being used to troll for information about their target to generate specific emails that pertain directly to them. And the click-through rate is crazy: Over fifty percent.

Now, a human doing research about their targets can match those rates, but AI can do it faster and cheaper. Which, of course, means you’ll see it used on a wider range of people. Authors are just one of many, many targets.

If anyone out there is a hopeful writer, I hope this provides you with some tools and healthy skepticism when these emails start seeking you out.

If you’re a reader, I hope this gives you an idea of what writers (especially those who publish their own work) have to put up with every day.

But hey, I will say this. Getting my books into book clubs would be great! So if you have a book club, do me a solid and recommend one of mine to go on your group’s to-read list!

Remember, all my work is ethically sourced and organic! No artificial intelligence or preservatives! Artisanal storytelling, just like Mom used to make!