Ah, those clever scammers

I realize this may not be of the very broadest general interest, but —

Here is a post from Anne R Allen: Update on those Flattering AI Book Marketing Scams

Love your work! You are a genius, so I want to feature your (usually unnamed) book at my book club, which has over ~~5000, 10,000, 100,000~~, 500,000, or whatever members who will all write you glowing reviews. Just tip each one $25.

Many variations, including a brand-new one that seems to be aimed at somehow scamming authors out of money from the Anthropic lawsuit settlement.

And, in case you’re interested, these scams mostly (not quite all of them) seem to be the responsibility of a specific group of Nigerian Princes: Return of the Nigerian Prince: A New Twist on Book Marketing Scams

The most horrifying part is that the Nigerian Princes want access to your KDP account … and at least a few authors are giving them that access. The ameliorating detail here is that KDP has contacted authors in at least some cases, saying, “Someone from Nigeria is trying to change your information, do you want to change your passwords?” and Amazon may be somewhat evil, but this is decidedly non-evil, and I’m glad to hear KDP is at least somewhat on top of this.

And here: Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams

It’s the book club version I see the most. Heaps of them. The number has died down a bit, so I’m no longer seeing five to ten per day, at least not this week. I did get two today, though, and a couple yesterday. That’s why these posts are interesting to me, I expect. Since the number appears to be declining for me personally, maybe the Nigerian Princes are moving on to someone who isn’t deleting their emails as fast as they appear.

Incidentally, the names of real authors are used as a come on. Here’s one we’ll all recognize:

One poster mentions fake testimonials from real authors; I [Victoria Strauss] heard from author T. Kingfisher, who confirmed that her name was falsely used as a reference by the club scammer in the first email example above, with a fake email address that, when contacted, provided a predictably glowing and entirely bogus review.

Victoria does think that the HUGE number of spam emails made authors suspicious and got authors talking and therefore the Nigerian Princes shot themselves in the foot by going so over the top with these scams. Anne thinks that the fact that these emails are still appearing implies that some authors are falling for them. I think they’re both probably right, and I think scammers with brains will do their best to come up with something that sounds more plausible. Maybe ChatGPT will help them with that …

… and as always, the rule will be:

Very few people contact you out of the blue to offer services. It can happen — I’ve had it happen twice — but it’s really, really rare compared to scammers contacting you out of the blue. I think it might help to read some of the scam emails and get a feel for those. I hope that might help sort out the general “smells like a scammer” from “I think this is real” gestalt impression.

Please Feel Free to Share: