Say what you want about AI, it has produced a new gold rush for scummy scammers. It has made chumps and suckers so much easier to find and fleece. The art I'm using above actually shows the old way of finding susceptible chumps. But these old style miners were, after a few years, replaced by great machines that sucked up tons of river sand to pan out the gold dust on an industrial scale. The same is happing with cons and scams today. By using AI conmen and scammers are now able to find and flood the inbox of creators with convincing, but fake emails from real people in the industry as well as schemes of their own invention. I know this for a fact, since my spam mailbox is filling up with emails from scummy scammers who likely found my email address through AI and who are now offering various scams in that pleasantly flattering AI voice. Everyone wants to help me get rich.
As I have said in the past, scamming authors/would-be-writers is about as sporting as shooting trout in a water barrow. We writers are, by nature, chumps, low hanging fruit, when it comes to being taken in by the bogus promises of conmen, scammers, and professional services we can be convinced we need. We have labored away to write a story that we think the world is entitled enjoy. But how do we tell the blissful unaware world about it? There has to be a way, a secret. Others have succeeded, after all. So how? Step in the scammers.
Scammers have always been around to step in and offer to help us achieve our dream. Vanity presses have long been a thing. However, with the invention of the internet and ebooks, scamming writers mushroomed into a growth industry. And now, with the help of AI it promises to stand on the shoulders of its past success on a truly industrial scale.
As well I know.
A I said above, my scam folder, as well as my inbox has recently seen a great influx of people interested in my work and willing to help promote it. Finding me on this scale can only be possible with the use of AI scrapping my book listing, this blog, and connecting it with my published email address from the web. Since these scams only work on a small percentage of potential victims, being able to send out thousands of them with the press of a button is a godsend. Just like those big mining rigs that replaced the miners and their pans. What is also a godsend, is using AI to write the appeal using AI to summarize and praise whatever story they are pitching to help me market, giving the illusion that they have actually read it.
Though one pitch described the process of creating the cover for Some Small Dive as using sharpies to draw the outline, and then filling in the color in Gimp. Maybe that AI wasn't so smart.
Let's take a stroll though my scam folder. To be safe, I generally do not open these emails, so I usually don't know exactly what they are trying to sell me. All of the following emails landed directly in the spam folder.
We have the "Redieans" emailing me "Re: Some Small Dive October 1"? A rather lazy effort. Hardly enticing. But then we have Hugues Pluvinage emailing me about "A German readership for The Poision-Pill Will?" Even though the Poison-Pill Will, is the third novella in a series. However, he tried a day or two later with the same pitch for Some Small Dive. Then we have "Leslie D harry"(sic) emailing me with just "Sailing into The Bright Black Sea" as the subject line.
A Lindsey Brodowski emailed me, twice, about "Media Adaptation Review/Portfolio Analysis Charles Litka's Fiction" Curious, since I write as C Litka. I will usually Google these names, and there is, indeed, a Lindsey Brodowski, a real agent who, on her Linkin account, noted that she had received a couple of messages from authors asking her if she emailed them offering publicity services. "This is a scam, please do not engage." she writes.
Robbie offers "A Goodreads Listopia idea for your latest novel." The "Ecom Vantage" emailed me about "Reader Discovery for your Speculative Fiction" Ecom Vantage has a website, but its founder, "Alex" appears on site with a photo of the back of his head. Yah, that's reassuring... David Oliver writes; "Some Small Dive: a reader-fit snapshot." What? Not curious enough to find out. While the "Book Evangelist Fel" tells me "Action required on The Aerie of a Pirate Prince." Required!
Now here is one that ended up in my inbox. It is from "Henry Cadwell" about "Film and television rights - A Summer in Amber."
Here is the text;
Dear Charles,
My name is Henry Caldwell, and I work in dramatic rights, connecting literary properties with potential film and television opportunities.
I came across A Summer in Amber and was interested in its premise of a world transformed after powerful solar storms destroy the electrical grid, leaving society without computers, television, or mobile phones.
The collapse of modern infrastructure offers a compelling foundation for a screen story. The shift in everyday life, the challenges of rebuilding communities, and the human consequences of losing familiar technology could create strong dramatic possibilities for a feature film or television series.
I am contacting you at an early stage to establish the rights position and determine whether A Summer in Amber may be available for further consideration.
May I ask whether you currently control the film and television rights to the book, or whether these rights are managed by an agent, publisher, or another representative?
If you handle these rights directly, I would be glad to share further information about the kind of screen opportunities being considered. If someone else represents the work, I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the appropriate contact.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Henry Caldwell
Films & TV Rights
This email arrived as a very authentic looking Arclen Group email, even including his photo. And there is indeed, a real Henry Caldwell at the Arclen Group agency, that matched the photo on the email. The giveaway that this is a scam is that while everything looks legit including the source, the Archlen Group.com, the email address ends "via gmail.com". This is the tell-tale of a scam, since "via gmail.com" would not be part of an authentic email sent from the Arclen Group. The funny thing is that on the same day I received a second email from "Victoria Lane" from the same company about "Film and Television Adaption Enquiry - The Poison-Pill Will". I'm apparently hot at the "Arclen Group."
Since I started writing this post three days ago, I've received similar emails from; Holly Frederick, and Laoura Beneditti, both of the Arclen Group. As I mentioned above, I'm a hot item at Arclen Group. Innovate Malkin offered an opportunity to reach more fantasy and literary readers. Olalekan Oyedunle subject line mentioned unusual appeal of an ordinary story. TE Growth Partners had an idea for a book trailer for A Summer in Amber. And yesterday, at 6:25 in the morning, David Oliverpro was up and offering me a "reader-fit" snapshot of Some Small Dive. No rest for the wicked.
While they never mention money, i.e. giving them money, in the first email, they will eventually get around to doing it. AI can be used to keep the conversation going until the subject of money for some reason is broached, without any real effort by the scammer.
The sad fact of the matter is that desperate authors are relatively easy marks for all sort of iffy would-be schemes to improve their stories and market their books. Indeed, it is said that in the indie-publishing market, money flows from writers to the host of "services" and scams that prey upon them, instead of money flowing to them from their work. Really, the real money in indie-publishing is in offering "services" to authors. Authors, not readers, are the true customers in indie-publishing. And AI has made that business even more efficient by making it easier to find and reach the marks with more convincingly.
As W C Fields said "Never give a sucker an even break." Authors should never expect an even break in publishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment