By Anne R. Allen
This is an updated version of a post from 2023, but there are so many more scammers approaching us now, writers need to be hyper-vigilant.
Unfortunately, a lot of new writers often know very little about the publishing industry and how it works, and they’re usually full of hope and naïve optimism. Which makes them ideal targets for predators.
Scammers are getting more and more sophisticated. Many of them use AI. They often impersonate real agents, famous writers, film directors, or publicists. Most don’t have websites, but sometimes they spoof the website of the person they’re impersonating. This stuff can be amazingly convincing. If anybody tells you you should be able to spot “AI slop” at a glance, don’t listen to them. This is compelling, sophisticated stuff.
If you belong to a writer’s group or club where new writers congregate, spread the word. Save your friends from losing thousands of dollars — and getting their hearts broken — by sharing the following facts.
1. Famous Authors do NOT Have Time to ask Unknowns about their “Writing Journey” or Recommend Agents.
What? That wasn’t actually Oprah or Colleen Hoover or Catherine Ryan Hyde who wants to be my bestie? That’s a bogus agent she recommended? What about my writing journey? She doesn’t care about me anymore?
Um, nope. Because she’s never heard of you. This is one more impersonation scam, and the real authors are seriously annoyed by it. The scammer asks for money or sends you to a scam website and disappears. But then the real author is contacted by irate writers who believe the famous author ripped them off.
Here’s Catherine Ryan Hyde on the subject:
“I keep hearing from newer authors who say “I” contacted them on social media with some kind of offer. I just heard about a new TikTok account pretending to be me.. A few days ago I put a warning on my website home page for the first time ever, basically saying it’s not me contacting them on social media. And now for the really bad news: Will this get better or worse? I think we all know the answer”.
Help Catherine and all those other busy authors: don’t fall for this scam!
2. If you Pay Money up Front, it’s Not Traditional Publishing.
I’m still seeing new writers in FB groups who say. “Agents charge so much! I can’t afford to traditionally publish.”
Um, yes you can. Because it’s free. You don’t even have to pay to send your manuscript with a stamped, self-addressed return box via snail mail the way we did back in the 20th century. Agents work on commission. They only get paid if they sell your book.
Not that you have to traditionally publish these days. Often indie authors make more than trad-pubbed ones. So if you want to self-publish, do it. (But please don’t self-publish your very first finished title. See #5 below.)
If you need help, use BookBaby or some other self-publishing assistant that doesn’t pretend to be a publisher. Or go to Reedsy or Alli and find vetted editors and designers yourself.
But never do business with a vanity publisher that pretends to be a traditional one. They will rip you off and stomp on your dreams.
Yes, there’s such a thing as hybrid publishing, where you shoulder some of the costs of publication. However, many publishers who call themselves “hybrid” are really vanity presses in disguise, who publish anybody who can pay. New writers aren’t usually savvy enough to know the difference.
3. Book Clubs do not Charge Authors to “Feature” Their Books.
This is the biggest scam hitting authors right now. I’m sure you’ve all heard from these scammers who use AI to bamboozle you with flattery. But it’s just another scam, with AI enhancements. Some of the book clubs they claim to represent do exist, but the sender has nothing to do with the real club. It’s all a big, fat lie. Give them money and they will evaporate and so will your money.
This scam is aimed mostly at authors who have books for sale on Amazon, but I’ve heard from unpublished authors who get these too. I’ve written about these Nigerian scammers extensively on this blogpost and this one. And you can read more details at Writer Beware.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard from these “book club” representatives (often with improbable names like Mercy Herpes, Beloveth Beloveth, Brain Steven, or Sparkle Victorious–actual “names” in my inbox today.) I cringe when I see authors on social media trying to figure out which email is legit. NONE of them is legit. Not one single email solicitation. All that flattery about your book is AI. It’s all an illusion. Yes, AI is that good, unfortunately. I got one yesterday with a tongue-in-cheek greeting accusing me of keeping him up all night with my compelling mystery. Sounded 100% human. But it’s not.
Real book clubs choose books to read all by their ownselves—and buy them or get them from the library. That’s it.
4. The Scammers are NOT Gonna Put You in the Movies.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, a famous film director and / or a movie star will not contact an unknown writer.
Bigwigs in the industry will have their people call your people. If you don’t have people — like a well-known agent — they won’t do business with you. If anybody contacts you and claims to be Reese Witherspoon, Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro, or their representatives, hang up or send the email to spam. They are all nasty scammers.
And if you pay a lot of money for a screenplay of your novel, what you have is an expensive screenplay, not a movie deal.
The same is true with book trailers. Yes, you can spend a ton of money getting somebody to make a “trailer” for your book. But what are you going to do with it? Beg your FB friends to watch it? Yeah. Big whoop. Lots of money down the commode.
Scammers love to play on writers’ Hollywood dreams. They approach a writer with wild promises about how a bigwig wants to make your book into a film. But there’s the little problem of a script. So, for a (huge) fee, they’ll get somebody to write one for you. If you’re lucky, they may send you a script, but then they’ll disappear. There’s no bigwig.
Pretty much everybody in the greater LA area has a screenplay. The chances that yours will be picked up by a big studio are about 9.75 million to one.
5. Most First Novels Go Unpublished—Don’t Believe the Scammers.
Alas, it’s true. You may see lots of articles about “debut novels” that have soared to the top of the bestseller lists and are making big bux for all concerned. (Hello, The Correspondent.)
Thing is—that isn’t actually the author’s first novel. It’s the first one that got published. Big difference. They probably have at least 5 much-rejected novels in their files.
Go ahead and query a few agents with that first novel you’ve spent years on, but please don’t self-publish it. You’re bound to regret it later on. This is because you’re going to become a much better writer after you write your second novel, or your third, or…
Learning to write well takes a long time. Later on, you’ll see a lot of stuff in that first opus that needed a lot of work. I queried my first novel way too long instead of putting energy into a new one. I recently found my queries and rejections for that book in an old filing cabinet. Talk about cringe! I had to burn them all.
6. Literary Agents Don’t Contact Unknown Writers who have Not Queried Them.
Unless the writer has a self-published book that’s at the top of all the bestseller lists, this doesn’t happen. When most agents have slush piles the size of Everest, why would they?
Maybe if you pitched to the agent at a conference and gave them your card you might get a call, but it’s not common. Especially if they’re calling about a self-published book that hasn’t sold.
7. Agents are not Marketers or Book Promoters.
Agents don’t “endorse” or “nominate” a book. They represent it to publishers. There are some ignorant scammers out there who assume you’re even more ignorant than they are.
They will say a publisher / film studio / movie star is interested in your book. But it has to be “re-published” at great expense. You will have to pay major fees for “book insurance” and then they will “endorse” it to this major publisher, or “nominate” it for consideration by a film studio.
What a load of you-know-what. “Republishing” is not a thing.
Before you interact with someone who claims to be a literary agent, visit some agents’ blogs and read about what agents really do.
And even if this fake agent has a website, he’s still fake. Anybody can make a website these days.
8. Nobody in the “Big 5” wants a Failed, Self-Published Book.
Sorry. I know that’s discouraging. But big publishers only want bestsellers. That means the book that hasn’t had any sales since your mom’s book club bought ten copies two years ago is not going to sell to a major publisher. Throwing money at it is a very bad idea.
Yes, even if somebody swears the Random Penguin hisownself is jonesing for your deathless prose.
I can 100% guarantee no Penguins are involved. Go write a new book.
9. Scammers Sell Junk Marketing Packages via Vanity Presses and Unknown “Publicists.”
All those publicists who contact you via social media and email are guaranteed to be scammers. If a publicist can magically make an unknown writer into a superstar, believe me, they’d have more clients than they could handle. They wouldn’t have to spam unknown authors.
And millions of Tweets, reels on TikTok or Insta, placement at a book fair, spotlights, and interviews on unknown websites or podcasts, etc. will not sell books. Nor will absurd promises to get you interviewed by the NYT or People, or put you on a billboard in Times Square.
They may get you a $500 interview with a character actor named Lawson Crawford, that nobody will ever see.
And the scammers will empty your bank accounts.
10. These Scammers are Dangerous Criminal Organizations, not Some Guy in his Mom’s Basement with Time on his Hands.
Almost all these scams come from organized crime gangs in impoverished parts of the world, especially the Philippines, Nigeria, and Southeast Asia. The people contacting you are often abused workers forced to work long, grueling hours.
Just this week, China executed the members of a Myanmar gang that kidnapped and enslaved Chinese workers to perpetrate their scams.
Yes. The “scammers” were actually slaves. They don’t need your anger, so don’t waste your time trying to “play games” with them.
For a fascinating look at the downtrodden workers seduced into working these scams, read the novel I Do Not Come to You By Chance by Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani . It’s enlightening.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen, @annerallen.bsky.social) February 1, 2026
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What about you, scriveners? How many of these scammers have approached you? What’s the most common scam email you’re getting these days? Do your scammers have any silly names you want to share?
THE HOUR OF THE MOTH
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When Camilla Randall allows a neighboring business to hold a “Moth Hour” storytelling event in the courtyard of her beachy California bookstore, she finds an inconvenient corpse left in the audience after the event. The deceased, a storyteller famous for his appearances on NPR, turns out to have a shady past — and a lot of enemies. Unfortunately, Camilla’s boyfriend Ronzo is one of them.
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Featured image by u_wuwiwxkylg from Pixabay
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