How AI chatbots are turbocharging publishing scams targeting vulnerable authors
By
Julian Sancton
Summary
A personal account of how AI-powered chatbots are being used to scam authors during their vulnerable pre-publication period. The author describes receiving sophisticated, personalized scam emails that use AI to generate convincing pitches for fake book promotion services, exploiting authors' hopes and insecurities. The piece explores how generative AI has turbocharged traditional publishing scams, making them more convincing and harder to detect, while examining the broader implications for writers and the publishing industry.
Source
Key quotes
· 4 pulledWith little to do but wait for reviews and social media reactions, they vacillate between the manic hope that the fruit of their labor will imminently top the best-seller list and the dread that it will fall between the cracks of the attention economy and disappear into the void, which, after all, is the fate of most books.
One of my fellow authors ruefully calls this nerve-wracking pre-pub period 'the calm before the calm.'
It was in this harrowing lull ahead of the January release of my latest book
With their blend of ego and insecurity, writers are ideal marks for swindlers promising fortune and glory. Chatbots have turbocharged the con.
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