by Anne R. Allen
I wrote a post three weeks ago about the barrage of spam emails I’ve been getting from scammy publicists, bogus book marketers, and various other con-persons — sometimes 100 a day. I’m still getting them, but luckily a good chunk are captured by my anti-spam elves, now they know what to look for.
I thought I was getting them because I’m a fairly high profile blogger. But this week brought a bunch of new ones that mentioned nothing about appearing on this blog.
I noticed something else that was different about them. They were more detailed. Several mentioned my novels about the island of Guernsey. Others mentioned my books on the Weimar Republic. One welcomed me to the Paris show of designer eyewear, and another praised my talents as a real estate salesperson.
Thing is, I’ve never written novels about Guernsey, don’t know a thing about the Weimar Republic, and have never sold eyewear or real estate.
But you know who has? British author Anne Allen, retired history professor Dr. Ann T. Allen, Ann Allen, realtor, in Sarasota FL, Anne Allen, a realtor in WA (who needs to brush up on her people skills, according to Yelp), Ann Allen, eyecare specialist in TX, and many other strangers whose names resemble mine. (Dr. Ann T. Allen isn’t a stranger — she’s actually a cousin — but she certainly doesn’t get email at my address.)
Too Many Anne Allens
I have always known there were too many Ann(e) Allens in the world. There were five in my immediate family when I was born. My parents called me “Nancy” to dispel confusion, but at the age of three I put my little foot down and demanded my right to be an “Anne.”
In my doctor’s practice here in the little town of Los Osos, CA, there are at least three Anne Allens. One lives a block away from me. Sometimes this can lead to unfortunate mix-ups, like when they woke me at 7 AM one morning to prep for surgery I knew nothing about.
I’ve been told that Anne Allen is one of the most popular names for Gen X and Boomer women in the USA, which is why I always use my middle initial.
It’s been a minor problem for me so far, but now AI is saying, “hold my beer.”
Enter Artificial Intelligence
Now that free AI is available to all, scammers are reveling in it. AI is a huge boon to overseas scammers. Victoria Strauss warned us about this last week with her must-read post at Writer Beware “The Return of the Nigerian Prince”:
“…generative AI has become embedded in the world of overseas writing fraud. Gone are the days when English-language errors in written materials were a reliable scam marker: gen AI enables sales reps whose first language isn’t English to create flawlessly grammatical and typo-free mails.”
Gone are the days when the scammer addresses you as “My dear” and proceeds to drop an incomprehensible word salad.
The new scams that Victoria describes are exactly what has been showing up in my inbox:
“There are reader outreach specialists, and book club outreach specialists, and review outreach specialists, and book blog outreach specialists….There are book trailer creators.”
The scammer offers lavish praise and seems to have read “your book” (They always assume you’re a one-book amateur.) They’ve done their homework and use an AI recap of the book’s reviews.
See how they “love” Anne Allen’s Guernsey novels:
“Your storytelling in The Guernsey Novels is warm, evocative, and deeply human. The way you blend mystery, romance, and emotional insight against the backdrop of the sea is rare. It felt like I was not only reading a story, but returning to a place that feels both familiar and full of quiet intrigue. I was especially moved by how setting and character intertwine so naturally in your work.”
AI can churn out this stuff by the truckload. Most say basically the same thing “Hire me and I’ll get your warm, evocative book the audience it deserves.” Each one is different enough to almost seem legit. I say “almost” because when you get 100s of nearly identical emails it’s kind of a red flag.
Lots of Red Flags
In fact, there are so many red flags waving here, it’s pretty hilarious. As Victoria says,
“Many of the dozens of writers who’ve reported this scam to me said it was the praise that made them suspicious. Others said it was being bombarded with solicitations–when you get seven emails in quick succession, all complimenting you to the skies and offering essentially the same thing, it gets hard to take them seriously. The aggressiveness of this scam isn’t doing it any favors.”
She has even heard from a handful of authors who took the bait. They were all instructed to make payment via wire transfer (another red flag) to an “assistant” in Nigeria. The “assistant” is of course, the real scammer.
Once payment is made, the author finds a huge amount of traffic to their KDP account from Nigeria, and their contact details are changed to a Nigerian address and phone number. So these people aren’t just scamming the author for several thousand dollars, but also hijacking their Amazon accounts and royalties.
Victoria says, “This is an incredibly prolific scam that is aggressively targeting writers–as always, primarily self-published writers, but trad-pubbed authors too. It has spun up extremely fast: I’ve seen dozens of emails like the ones above, and I only started getting reports of them in June. Now, at the beginning of August, I’m getting multiple reports every day, in many cases from writers who say they get batches of solicitations within short periods of time.”
What Does This Have to Do with Anne Allen?
I don’t know enough about how AI works to make a definitive conclusion here, but I’d say some AI service has “hallucinated” that all Ann(e) Allens are the same person and they all can be contacted at my email address.
This is probably why I’ve been getting these emails in such quantities. I can take a quick bathroom break and find a dozen more have appeared in the three minutes I’ve been away from the screen.
This would also explain why I’m getting emails from scammers who want me to pay for eyewear booths in Paris and real estate schemes all over the US. The non-publishing scammers aren’t quite as lavish in their praise, but they’re “thrilled to welcome Your Organization to the world’s premier optics and eyewear trade fair.” Or they’re “in awe of your prolific sales record.” They offer to give me a breakdown of costs later, of course. Probably to be paid by wire transfer to Nigeria.
I’d hate to be the Anne Allen who flies to Paris only to find her money has disappeared into the ether and she has no booth at the Paris show. And who knows what they’re planning for the Anne Allens who sell real estate?
AI “Hallucinations”
According to IBM’s website, “AI hallucination is a phenomenon where, in a large language model (LLM) often a generative AI chatbot or computer vision tool, perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.”
In other words, it’s robots making mistakes, which happens more often than AI zealots like to admit. It’s one of the scarier aspects of Artificial Intelligence, since if (when?) the robots take over, they could make some whopping mistakes that could, oh, wipe out life on earth.
Being conflated with all the other Anne Allens in the Anglophone world isn’t exactly the end of life on earth. But it is annoying. And it means some people probably need to be prepared for an over-stuffed inbox. (James Smith and Maria Garcia, I’m talking to you. 😊 )
AI Isn’t Always Your Friend
So these poor Nigerian scammers have wasted a lot of time spamming my email. Just think — one of those Anne Allens might have fallen for their diabolical con, so they lost a mark. If you use AI, whether it’s for nefarious purposes or not, look out for hallucinations. Do your research, and always verify.
And when it comes to email offers from strangers, Victoria Strauss has some excellent advice: Don’t go there!
“the vast majority of scams these days start with an out-of-the-blue email, phone call, website contact, or social media message. Unasked-for solicitations or proposals should never be taken at face value. Always investigate; always research.”
And if you don’t subscribe to Writer Beware, do it now.
Now I’m off to check my email to see how many more Anne Allens I’ve become in the past 15 minutes…
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen and annerallen.bsky.social) August 8, 2025
What about you, scriveners? Has your inbox been inundated by these praise-filled emails? Have you been mistaken for somebody else by an AI bot? Have you been tempted to hire any of these publicists, trailer-makers, and marketers? Do you subscribe to Writer Beware?
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Featured image by Upklyak for Freepik
I don’t get emails but I do get a ton of X/Twitter direct messages! These people appear to be authors themselves, DM me about what I write, and then comes the sales pitch. One even got mad that I didn’t answer right away. (I tend to forget X and with all these messages, I sometimes avoid it!)
Alex–I stopped responding to those X and Bluesky DMs. Those people posing as authors in order to scam you made me so furious. One even claimed to be Liane Moriarty, of “Big Little Lies” fame, but I drove her away by asking her to guest post on this blog. 🙂 I do avoid X, because it can be so toxic, but I think we’re right to stay there anyway. But I don’t respond to the DMs unless they’re from somebody I already know.
Oh, Anne — 100+ a day — aarrrrgh. Condolences. Mine aren’t as numerous or as frequent, but they’re still annoying. Multiply that annoyance by more than 100, and I’d be pulling my hair out by the roots.
And they’re everywhere on social media.
AI needs to be trained properly (without plagiarism) and leashed.
Kathy–These people are pretty comical, really. I love hitting “report as spam and block.” But they obviously have access to a whole lot of email addresses, so they keep coming back. I think the 100s of emails come from a handful of people in a Nigerian “boiler room” where they send 1000s of these things a day. You are so right about AI. It needs to be trained better (and ethically) so there aren’t so many hallucinations, and it must be controlled. Or we’re all doomed.
AI exponentially improved the personalization, spelling, and grammar of marketing spam. Their cites of specific details in an author’s books can be incredibly convincing. They’re also getting better at slipping past spam filters.
One tipoff is the first line: “Hope this finds you well.”
Yeah, I was fine until your scam spam arrived.
Victoria is the guardian angel for writers. I’ve subscribed for years to Writer Beware.
Anne, you also sounded warnings through the years to save writers from being victimized. A big thank you!!!
Debbie–You’re right “I hope this finds you well” is the favorite new opener. It took me a while to spot it, but now I can send anything to spam with that opener without reading it. I heard on NPR this week that online scams have increased 8-fold in the last two years, and AI is one of the reasons. They especially target older people, which is probably why they went after Anne Allens. “Anne” has fallen out of favor for a baby name in the past 40 years or so.
Hi Anne — Once again you’ve reminded me of my good fortune. Because Ellen & I combined last names when we married, there are only two Perryess in the world!
CS–That was very clever for many reasons. I’m sure you didn’t consider that you were fending off scammers when you combined your names, but that’s another plus!
Great post, Anne, and I’ve been a follower of Writer Beware for years. I wonder how many other Anne Allens are receiving spam emails about your books. Probably a lot.
Debra–Thank goodness for Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware. I know she saves writers from financial ruin every day.
I’m not sure other Anne Allens are getting my spam. These people are not familiar with US names (which is why they usually use two first names for their fake personas) I think they believe there’s only one Anne Allen and she’s at my address. I have a much higher profile than most of the others.
I am so sick of these scammers, and my email spam filter isn’t catching most of them. I wish there were a way to block them that would still let legitimate ones through.
Liz–These people are definitely getting past our spam filters. This new batch of scammers are obviously really tech savvy. They use AI and other tools to seem like a different person every time they send an email, so blocking them doesn’t do much good. But you’re right that every so often there’s a real reader who has a question about one of our books.
I’ve been receiving a lot of those “Hope this finds you well” type emails. They usually identify one of my books by its title and go on to describe (in glowing terms) the excellent writing, the solid plot, the amazing characterizations, etc. in such detail that I’m pretty sure a Pulitzer prize is in my future. Then I wake up and remember what’s going on.
DiBianca is a hard name for people to spell, but it’s a great name to have as an author. I don’t believe there’s another Kay DiBianca in the world.
Kay–Yup. Those are the new scammers that Victoria calls “the return of the Nigerian Prince.” They’re great at larding on the praise, and each one is worded a little differently. But they don’t get it that if they send 10 in a row, people will smell a rat. Having a unique name helps keep down the volume, but I’m sure you get your share.
Wonderful column, Anne! I don’t even look at my author page DMs anymore. Dropped X entirely. It’s sad, and I’m sure I’m missing some readers, but…you can drive yourself mad plodding through all the muck coming in. I call it self-preservation.
Melodie–OMG the spam on our FB author pages is absurd. But an author page isn’t protected like a “friend” page, and anybody can send DMs there. And FB sends them nice little replies saying we’ll “reply as soon as possible” or something like that, which just encourages spam. I ignore them too. They’re 99% scam publicists or people who say they’ll make book trailers for you. (But obviously will take the money and run.)
I’ve received a number of these scams on X also. The glowing recap of my novels were one of the red flags. I can see how an author needing some affirmation would be sucked in by it. Having worked with AI a good bit, I recognized it was used for the recaps. So frustrating.
Rebekahlyn–I didn’t realize it, but today I’m hearing that these scammers are plaguing writers on X. Yes. AI is great at writing glowing reviews, and you need some experience to spot it. But this stuff must be working or they wouldn’t be churning out so much of it. Newbies are starved for the kind of validation the scammers provide.
Anne:
Weird, I used to get the odd one but I never get scammers trying to target me with offers to write, publish, or promote my books. Of course, my Facebook timeline is polluted with all sorts of ads for writing, publishing, and promote self-publishing my books.
Just a note regarding AI:
The “Globe and Mail” reports today:
Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-em-dash-artificial-intelligence-punctuation-authorship/
“For centuries – or at least since the era of Virginia Woolf – the em dash has carved out a proud if unruly place in English prose. But now, for the crime of being favoured by writers for its many grammatical capabilities, the punctuation is being met with punishing stares . . . it’s thriving to the degree that its sudden flood of appearances has become a telltale sign that an artificial intelligence platform such as ChatGPT may have written an e-mail, book or LinkedIn post.
This Was My Comment for All the Readers:
Ha — I have been using the em dash actively and vigorously since I first self-published my first book in 1989.
I guess that must be a “tell-tale sign” that all my books have been written by AI.
Even today I never use AI — period!
For those who will think that my use of the em dash is one of the reasons my books haven’t sold that well — think again!
According to the New York Times, Neilsen Bookscan tracked 3.2 million books and only 1 percent of the books they tracked sold more than 5,000 copies.
Here are 10 of the 20 books I have written that made the 1 percent:
“How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free” — Over 475,000 copies sold
“The Joy of Not Working” — Over 320,000 copies sold
“The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success” — 111,453 copies sold
“101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting.” — 60,133 copies sold
“The Lazy Person’s Guide to Happiness” — 82,875 copies sold
“The Joy of Not Being Married” — 13,611 copies sold
“Real Success Without a Real Job” — 11,487 copies sold
“Career Success Without a Real Job” — 5,520 copies sold
“Don’t Hurry, Be Happy” — 6,594 copies sold
“1001 Ways to Enjoy Your Retirement” — 8,727 copies sold
Ernie–Well, that’s a bummer. Thanks for letting us know. I love the em dash. It substitutes for parentheses, ellipsis, colons and semicolons, and so many annoying and archaic punctuation thingys. If I’m accused of using AI here, I guess I’ll have to blame it on my love for the em dash.
I can foresee myself facing the same situation in the nearish future. It’s bad enough that my inbox is flooded by “duplicate” emails of all the scams (telling me exactly how they got my email addresses), but the name “Judy Mohr” is common enough… with a few being medical doctors and lawyers.
The joys of the internet era.
Judy–I think you’re safe. I just saw a list of the most common surnames in the US. They are the usual Anglo-Saxon suspects (Allen is #27) and a whole lot of Hispanic names. But I didn’t see Mohr. “Judy” might make you a target, though. Like “Anne”, it was super-popular with Boomers, but now it’s off the list entirely. That means they think Judys and Annes are probably older and easier to con. (Although Boomers are getting better educated in scam-nation all the time.)
I hate to think of the number of beginning writers who are going to fall into the trap.
Liz–You’re right. These AI bots really know how to lay on the charm. A new writer who’s getting weekly rejections might see it and go “At last! Somebody gets me,” and fall right into their clutches.