Authors fall prey to scam artists and fraudsters

Most every author, including me, wants to be noticed by the reading public, media and book world. The perceived wisdom is that a strong social media presence raises an author’s profile and sells books. In the past 15 years or so, authors have been pressured by publishers, editors and agents to maintain a website and regularly post about their work on Facebook, X and Instagram.

Whether this online activity actually increases book sales is debatable. But this much is certain — all of this visibility makes authors easy targets of scam artists and fraudsters.

Literally every day over the last 12 to 15 months, perhaps longer than that, I receive emails — often three or four a day — from editors, podcasters, movie producers, marketing promoters and book club presidents. They all want to make me famous and my books international best-sellers. What more could an author want?

The trouble is they are all — to paraphrase Elaine Benes on Seinfeld, commenting on another personal issue — fake, fake, fake. Generated by AI in workshops in Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and other distant locales, they offer effusive praise of my “brilliant” writing and supposed extra-special story telling skills.

Here, for example, is the assessment of Meena, the event organizer of A Few Good Pages Short Story Book Club in Dubai, U.A.E. of my recent book: “I recently discovered The Dollar a Year Men and was immediately drawn to its fascinating look at the people who helped shape Canada’s wartime success from behind the scenes. Bringing together business history and the story of national service offers a perspective that feels both timely and deeply insightful.”

Meena does not mention how much it will cost me for her to feature my book with her club members and nor do I reply to her to ask. It is difficult to imagine that a book on Canadian businessmen during the Second World War will have any appeal to readers in Dubai. But based on stories of authors who have foolishly forked out money, the fee would be in the $500 to $1,500 range and you rarely get what you paid for.

Besides Meena, there is — to list only a few of my email senders — Skye Bennett of the Silent Book Club in Melbourne; Sharon Auerbach, of A Different Kind of Non Fiction Book Club; Samantha Schafrank, the host and producer of The Source on Royal Literary Space; Jodi Horowitz (allegedly) from Barnes and Noble bookstores; and (my favourite one) Rexson John of Book Pride Publishing who wants to run a giant video-ad of me and my books in New York Times Square.

“A Times Square billboard does not just give you attention,” John assures me. “It gives you proof that positions your book differently from everyone else still trying to be noticed.”

Writers who have paid con men like Rexson John thousands of dollars for a 15-second ad on a Times Square billboard were disappointed “that their book cover has been poorly Photoshopped on to a stock image,” according to a Guardian story of March 12. The email addresses of these promoters are always suspect and there is never a phone number or address attached to the offers.

Even more brazen are emails from scammers who impersonate real editors at large publishing companies with fake emails. I even received a formal email from a U.S. editor “impressed” by my work who was interested in offering me a contract for a new book. I wasn’t fooled because I know this particular editor whose name had been hijacked. The email and the address attached to it were fake.

Though AI technology is the chief generator of this current scamming, fraudsters have been trying to swindle and fool authors and readers for centuries, even before the invention of the printing press. In the mid-ninth century, a forger who called him self Pseudo-Isidorian created a massive number of fake letters and documents to support the expansion of the power of the Pope and the Catholic Church.

In the 1760s, writer and politician James Macpherson claimed to have discovered unknown Gallic poems by an ancient poet named Ossian. Macpherson’s books on Ossian were popular and captured the attention of the literary public including, later, Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson. But skeptics such as English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson and others eventually proved Macpherson had invented nearly all of the poems.

In more recent times, Clifford Irving hoodwinked publishers with a supposed autobiography of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. This fraud was ultimately exposed and Irving spent time in prison. And in 1983, the German magazine Stern believed it had acquired the private diaries of Adolf Hitler and published extensive excerpts. Respectable historians and other newspapers accepted the veracity of the diaries, only to be humiliated when the diaries turned out to be fake.

Today’s AI promotion scams aimed at authors attempt to exploit their human vulnerabilities. “All you need,” writes Dan Barry of the New York Times, “are a few insecure writers who dream of financial reward, literary acclaim and Hollywood interest.”

But, as countless sad stories of authors who have been bilked of thousands of dollars repeatedly show, this quest for fame and fortune can be very expensive.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. His most recent book is The Dollar-A-Year Men: How the Best Business Brains in Canada Helped to Win the Second World War.