SETH W. JAMES

Scams, Scams, and More Scams

August 7, 2026

By Seth W. James

As every living author with an email account, social media page, blog, or other publicly accessible medium knows, scams aimed at us have increased in frequency—if not efficacy—over the last couple of years—by at least a couple orders of magnitude.  In this month’s blog, let’s go over how we got here, a few of the most common scams, and the tactics to mitigate risk.

First off, though, every author and aspiring author out there should know the Writer Beware blog, captained by the amazing Victoria Stauss and supported by several other literary commandos, fighting the good fight.  Victoria is always on top of new scams and other threats to writers, and she and the rest of the folks at Writer Beware constantly update the blog with the warnings and answers we need.  So, since every day—every second—that passes after the publication of this month’s blog, the information in here will get older and older, and possibly out of date, it’s important for authors to check in with Writer Beware, to keep abreast of new tactics employed by the scammers.

With that, let’s dive in.

How did we get here?  The answer won’t surprise you.  Up until maybe three years ago, scams against authors were common, but nothing like the flood most of us see every week.  Even as recently as 2023-24, I would expect to receive maybe 2 or 3 scam attempts each week, usually through this blog: starting in late ‘24/early ’25, that number shot up to 30 to 50.  How?  So-called AI or other automation, most likely (as I stated in last month’s blog, there is no such thing as AI, but that’s a topic for another day).  The scams of yesterday were rarely perfect, but today’s scams contain all the telltale signs of slopAI: the wrong author name, citing the wrong book, not recognizing a volume in a series, misspellings, and—the worst and most hilarious of them all—tags in an email template that the so-called AI never filled out (e.g. [author name]).  Yes, another blight upon humanity brought to you by so-called AI.

So, what do these scams look like?  Let’s take a look:

• One of the most common and—as I’ve heard it—effective scams, is the impersonation-and-referral scam.
  1. The scammer sends a message (email, social media, contact form) pretending to be a famous author; they claim to have enjoyed the mark’s latest book and want to help them by referring them to their agent, editor, or advertiser/marketer.
  1. In reality, the contact info for the agent or editor, etc, is also fake; when the mark reaches out, the fake agent or editor puts the bite on them, often asking for wire transfers or bitcoin.
  1. How to avoid being taken in by this scam: trust no one.  No famous author is going to reach out to someone they don’t know with an email address; how could they know if you’re a lunatic or not?  Famous editors reaching out, saying they want your book/story/etc, but only if you get it polished up by their favorite copyeditor? No, never happens; they receive more than they can deal with now, they ain’t cold-calling anybody.  If you think a famous person has, in fact, reached out: verify, verify, verify.  But I wouldn’t hold your breath.
• Another common scam, one that goes back to the days before slopAI made it easier to set up, is the fake organization.
  1. From fake magazines, to fake literary festivals, to fake speaking engagements at bookstores and the like, scammers will pretend to represent venues of all types and then invite authors to submit work, arrange personal appearances, or sign up for virtual talks and events.
  1. It is usually easy enough to discover the org is fake, just by web-searching for it—or, better yet, pop over to Writer Beware and check the lists.
  1. They’ll always, always, always ask for money.  Sooner or later, before or after a submission or event, the bite will come.
  1. In the old days before slopAI, there were, of course, fake-ish organizations out there, ones that did offer at least something for the money they bilked from authors.  Phony review sites (some of which would populate online stores, which would get the author banned), splashy YouTube pages with little to no traffic, and marketing firms that would offer the moon and deliver as little as possible.  Scams have been around forever, but the new kind don’t even bother delivering crap: you give them money and they give you nothing—and then ask for more money.
• Both of the above scams and many more are often preceded by the most basic of cold-calls: “May I speak to the author?”
  1. It should go without saying, but doesn’t, that you should never jump on a Zoom call or give out your phone number to some random dude from the internet.  Once they have more contact information, the scam attempts will increase—and identity theft becomes a lot easier.
  1. If you do respond, even if it is only through email, the scammer then moves on to recommending you to acquisition editors, copy or developmental editors, marketers and advertisers, and any other service under the sun.  All payment in advance, naturally.
  1. On some occasions, if someone answers the initial approach, the scammer will go in for standard, non-literary scams: honey pots, claims of copyright violation and threats to sue, and sometimes outright blackmail (“give me the bitcoin or I’ll leave a hundred bad reviews across a dozen sites”).
  1. How do I handle it?  Don’t respond.  No serious person reaches out like this.

So, who the hell are these people?  While individual scammers are always in the mix, imitating the tactics they read about online, the similarity of scam language and approach indicate that the bulk of today’s scams are coming from just a few—or even a single—large criminal syndicates.  And this is nothing new.  I’ve also worked in scientific publishing for more than twenty years and the growth of criminal syndicates over the decades was as obvious as it was detrimental: papermills (where fake science is submitted everywhere, trying to get an acceptance to a journal by exhausting the editors and then selling authorship to desperate or unscrupulous scientists) have assaulted scientific journals going back a good fifteen years; editorial service providers, some of which are legitimate (e.g. translation services for author teams wishing to submit to English-language journals, rather than their native journals), slipping into pay-to-play authorship scams, or being setup from the get to commit fraud; and fake reviews/reviewer rings, where a group of scientists or fakes will recommend each other as reviewers when submitting their manuscripts for peer review and then returning glowing reviews to the editors—made all the easier if it’s done as part of a papermill, where the editors are exhausted by too many submissions—are all examples of the kind of scams that have assaulted scientific publishing for decades.  These same tactics, tuned to fiction, are now inundating authors everywhere, trad as well as indie.

Such criminal syndicates flooding inboxes and social media accounts everywhere have only grown in the scale of their operations since so-called AI has become ubiquitous, but it isn’t just slopAI behind it all.  News stories abound, in recent years, of Chinese organized crime—as well as syndicates from other countries—luring in people with fake job notices and then kidnapping them, forcing them to work in slavery conditions, often in remote Southeast Asian countries.  The victim of preference possesses good English-language skills and is then forced to support the various scams we all see: they answer the emails when an author is foolish enough to respond, they play the parts of impersonated famous person or editor or marketer, and they ask for the money that they’ll never see, as it goes to those who have enslaved them.  The same setup is used for non-literary scams, too, from using dating sites for honeypot scams and blackmail, to fake fundraising scams, pretending to be trapped in a war-torn region or someplace hit by natural disaster.  Regardless of all other factors, the mark is always the same: someone credulous enough to believe whatever they’re told without verifying anything.  Don’t be that person, don’t chump for these scumbags.

Well, there it is, a short jaunt through the seedy underbelly of publishing.  The best defense for authors is to suspect everyone, to not engage unless you have independently verified the people involved and are sure that they have not fallen for a scam.  And, of course, as I said at the top of this post, stop by Writer Beware every so often and keep up-to-date on the latest scammer tactics.  Good luck and don’t chump for the scumbags.