AI Scammers Are Now Using Book Clubs To Target Authors
Almost two months ago, I wrote about how AI-generated versions of already-published books were surfacing on Amazon. They’re essentially cloned versions of real books that were already published by authors and have some pretty noticeable AI identifiers. It’s not the most recent AI-related book news that broke, either: AI-generated books are hurting libraries now, too. And if you thought that was all, it looks like there’s a new wave of AI scams happening — and it all starts with an email from a book club participant.
Genre Grapevine’s Jason Sanford and Writer’s Beware’s Victoria Strauss (who initially broke this story) both recently shared their experiences with these scams. They each received flattering emails from fans who attend or organize book clubs and, after the sender profusely compliments the authors on their books, the sender lets them know that they want to feature their book in one of their upcoming book club meetings — both real book clubs, verifiable through social media or meet-up pages, and made-up book club names have been used. But there’s a catch. The sender asks the author to pay a “spotlight fee” for their appearance.
In every one, the author is asked to pay a fee that seems to max out at a few hundred dollars. (While the price to pay a reviewer in these scams is only about $20 to $30, as Strauss points out in her report, you have to commit to a specific number of reviewers, which can sometimes be up to 50).
That’s something that pretty much never happens in a book club, so needless to say, these two writers caught on quickly. It’s sparked several discussions on popular Reddit forums for writers who’ve encountered similar emails.
It became quite clear that the emails were at least prompted by AI, as they used a common communication pattern that programs like ChatGPT use. While the excessive flattery was one indicator, the comments made about the books were either oddly specific or pretty vague. “A closer look shows that the details about my book are both specific and generic along with saying a lot without saying much at all,” Sanford wrote on Genre Grapevine.
Sanford decided to play along and see what happens if you agree to the scam. He was told by Melissa W. Speier, the sender in his email, that the 2,000 readers in the aforementioned book club called “Supper Books” would “provide detailed, sincere reviews on platforms like Goodreads and Amazon,” and in return, he would “give each reader a small token of thanks, typically $20–$25.” Yikes.
He was then put into a Discord group for the book club with 12 “community leaders,” after being told the book club had over 2,000 members, to see the community engage and discuss books. He was told by Speier that this smaller group was specifically for a small number of group members to chat with the author before the author’s allowed to talk to the entire community. “The users were almost falling over each other to post comments praising me and asking questions, with multiple users literally posting at the same time,” he wrote.
Sanford wasn’t entirely sure whether the other users in the chat were all real people or AI chatbots, but the Discord also had several other authors in their chat who were presumably added the same way Sanford was. Like him, some of them were suspicious, even announcing in the chat that they weren’t comfortable interacting with AI. (The other users kept denying that they were AI).
Eventually Sanford “agreed” on paying for an initial $20 per 40 reader reviews, and he was removed from the Discord after being told other authors were scheduled to be joining, so each one had a limited amount of time in the chat. He received an email with a contract and invoice from user Emmanuel Ibukunoluwa Bankole via Upwork. He asked Speier if they could set up a bank transfer and was connected to a Wells Fargo bank account under a different name, but one associated with a user in the Discord.
When he told Speier he was investigating their process and had concerns this was a scam, she said she could direct him to other notable authors that they’ve worked with to learn more about the process firsthand. One of the email addresses he was told to reach out to was elenaferrantenovelist@gmail.com.
Yes, the Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous Italian author who has written international bestsellers that Sanford now allegedly had direct access to — because of course her email address would just be her first and last name with “novelist” at the end, right? Sanford reached out to her publisher Europa Editions to confirm that this wasn’t her email address and that she didn’t have any association with this group, which they did. He still emailed the fake email and, as expected, they answered with more flattery toward his book and said she did use the book club’s service herself.
Sanford was actually contacted with scam-related inquiries two more times while writing his report: One from a group looking to help him get his book out of “Amazon exile” and another scammer reaching out to him about a different book of his.
In Strauss’s account of her situation, she also discusses the origins of scams like these. While they usually come from the Philippines (republishing, marketing and impersonation scams) or Pakistan (self-publishing and ghostwriting scams), she traced back this scam to Nigeria.
Throughout Sanford’s and Strauss’s reports, they make several important distinctions as to why these particular scams are quite concerning: Usually writing scams only happen to new authors or self-published authors, which of course isn’t good, but this one takes it a step further. Traditionally published authors can now be a target too, and the scammers are using AI to do it. And they’re happening at rapid rates — Strauss wrote that she’s hearing about scams like these from other writers multiple times a day.
Is any writer safe from the throes of AI? The answer really seems like not anymore, considering everything that AI is stacking against the publishing industry. It’s making it harder for writers as it is, but scams like this can only hurt writers more — not to mention how realistic and powerful AI has already become while still being relatively new. Last week, OpenAI debuted Sora 2, the company’s new AI video generator, and it’s been received with lots of concern in regard to how realistic the videos it’s producing look.
In the article I linked from the Times, writers Mike Isaac and Eli Tan wrote: “After we spent less than a day with the app, what became clear to us was that Sora had gone beyond being an A.I.-video generation app. Instead, it is, in effect, a social network in disguise; a clone of TikTok down to its user interface, algorithmic video suggestions and ability to follow and interact with friends.”
It can produce writing (even if the quality is questionable), it can churn out almost exact copies of social media videos and it can even hurt creatives directly through scams like this one. How are we already at a place where AI slop is starting to really become hard to decipher from the real world? We’re already at a place where it’s repeatedly being used to hammer into creativity in so many different ways, and it’s disheartening to see it being used to hurt writers through the means of a book club, which is generally a pretty positive community to be a part of. It feels oddly dystopian, but it also feels essential, now more than ever, to keep supporting creative industries and originality.
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