The Lucrative World of Literary Scams

I receive an email like this every day, pretty much. They are always pretty easy to spot, but sometimes there's a few seconds where my hopes are raised, like the message I got from "eric@lareviewofbook.org" yesterday – that singular book being mine, I suppose.

Yes, these have happened before, but if you increase the scams by 10x or 100x, then it's a different, much crueller, beast.

A deep dive into a different literary world scam from Dan Olsen (aka Folding Ideas) covers the world of con artists pushing done for you audio books [0]. It's probably only accelerated since genAI and LLMs became accessible, now you don't even need to low ball audiobook talent to get it made now. I wonder how amazon has tried, if they have at all to avoid being flooded with spam.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw

Having the left half of the UI being blocked by an image that does not add anything to the article is quite the design choice.

I know a few publicists who every one here would agree are 100% legit. They've been America for a long time. They've worked in publishing. Etc. And what do they do? Charge the author, send out some press releases and get the author in front of some book clubs. And what is a book club? A bunch of faces on Zoom.

I'm not sure what's so different between the legit publicists and the scammers.

it seems obvious. request money=scam

    > "Not every author is a narcissist, but they all want to be recognized… That's exactly what these scammers are targeting. They have identified a very, very lucrative niche."...
    > 
    > Writers are waiting "for somebody to read their writing," Hoy added. She argued that is why many writers believe the praise scammers heap on them. AI makes many of the compliments sound nuanced and personalized. Elderly authors are particularly vulnerable. As Hoy explained, a significant number of people who have a book in them leave off the writing until they have retired. Something else also kicks into the picture at this life stage: a sizable retirement fund...
    > 
    > ...the voices seemed human...
    > 
    > It is happening all over the world...

Holy gracious smokes... This is such a sorrow... Please... please... dear Artists, People... please don't give up! Please just do the miracle, your professional, ingenious, the invaluably precious, ineffably magnificent Art!