Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. It was in early April when I first learned someone was impersonating me. I started getting emails from authors or their publishers asking if I was, in fact, inviting them to come on Forum to talk about their book—for the modest fee of $200. I was stunned. Obviously, I wasn’t. Forum never charges anyone to be on our show, and our producers engage directly with authors or publishers.
But I was shocked to learn someone was pretending to be me and sending emails using a Gmail address that could sound pretty convincing—accurately describing the themes of the author’s work and why it would be such a great fit for a discussion on Forum, even proposing topics we’d explore during the interview. The request for payment wouldn’t come in the first email, but later, in the second or third, after the writer had responded—usually with gratitude for the interest. “Just a small logistical contribution to support production and program preparation,” my impersonator would say, and eventually provide a payment link.
No one that I know of paid the scammer. But through this experience, I did learn that authors and publishers are being inundated with scams like these. Just a couple of months ago, senior writer for The New York Times, Dan Barry, wrote about being targeted by one. And last month, Julian Sancton wrote a piece for The Hollywood Reporter titled, “A New AI Scam Is Targeting Thousands of Authors. I Was One of Them.”
Julian Sancton joins me now, author of Neptune’s Fortune. Julian, welcome to Forum.
Julian Sancton: Thanks for having me.
Mina Kim: And Dan Barry is also with us. His books include the memoir Pull Me Up, and his piece, “Exposing the Scam: Hungry for Affirmation, Vulnerable to Scams—As a Writer, I Know the Feeling.” Welcome to you, Dan.
Dan Barry: Thanks for having me.
Mina Kim: So, Dan, tell me what a typical scam email you received sounded like. Because in your case, it was not from someone impersonating a radio host and inviting you onto a show.
Dan Barry: No, it wasn’t. I’ve written a few books—most of them wound up right in the remainder bin. And so I began to notice I was getting complimentary letters from all sorts of book groups and communities and literary marketers and agents and what have you, talking about books I had written, you know, 20 years ago or 10 years ago. It kind of tripped something for me. So it roused my interest, and I told an editor at The New York Times Book Review about it, and we decided to dig in a little more.
Mina Kim: So what were they offering to do for your books from, in some cases, decades ago?
Dan Barry: They were suggesting they would help spread the word—that they would resurrect my books and get them on bestseller lists and into the hands of interested and erudite readers, and basically promote sales that would lead to fame and success.
Mina Kim: And you were quickly suspicious because, as you say, you weren’t just getting one of these—you were getting several?
Dan Barry: That’s right. I’m also suspicious by nature. Initially, I think all of us would be pleased to see a note saying, “Hey, I loved your book that you wrote in 2004.” So you’re already halfway there. But the more I looked into it, I realized these were fraudulent.
When I began to receive them for this book or that book or the other book, they all began to sound the same in some way—though they were very specific in many ways as well. What’s happening is these emails are using language lifted and refined from blurbs and book jackets and reviews, so it sounds as if the correspondent has actually read the book.
Mina Kim: Right. So, Julian, talk about when you started getting these kinds of emails, because it was right when you were getting ready to release your new book, right?
Julian Sancton: That’s right. I’ve written fewer books than Dan, but the last one I wrote was five years ago, when there was nothing like this at all. So this was my introduction to it—in the run-up to the publication of Neptune’s Fortune in January.
I started receiving, at first, one every couple of days—emails just as Dan describes, with over-the-top flattery and sycophancy—promising to help me navigate the new economy of book promotion through things like BookTok, which is TikTok for the book world, or Bookstagram, which is the same idea on Instagram. They offered to help me book events or make the most of my promotional window.
There was something about it that struck my ear. At The Hollywood Reporter, one of the things I focus on is artificial intelligence—we have our AI issue coming out in the next couple of days—and I recognized the tone. That sort of slightly off, overly effusive language that AI can produce, not to mention the sycophancy it’s become very good at.
So it became pretty obvious to me that the reason scammers are able to write these extremely detailed pitch letters—and sustain long correspondences with authors who reply—is because they’re using generative AI tools that simply weren’t around five years ago. Like Dan, I decided to pursue it. Even though it was clear to me, to my great chagrin, that this flattery was insincere and they’d probably never cracked open the book, I decided to play along.
Mina Kim: Before you decided to play along, can you give our listeners some insight into how vulnerable an author can feel at that moment—just before releasing a book?
Julian Sancton: It’s the most vulnerable time in an author’s career. Everything is either possibility or incipient disaster. You’re constantly refreshing your inbox to see who’s going to review your book, whether the reviews will be good—or whether there won’t be any at all, which can feel even worse than a bad review.
And whatever slim opportunities you have to promote the book—magazine articles, radio interviews—you’re chasing those. Authors are already an anxious bunch, but even more so at this point.
So when you see your book’s title appear in your inbox, it immediately catches your attention. These emails pass through Gmail’s spam filters because they seem human and highly targeted. For many authors, they’re much more convincing than more obvious scams.
Mina Kim: And Dan, do you think this is why authors are targeted? Even the title of your piece says “hungry for affirmation,” right?
Dan Barry: Right. At the root of it, this is another version of the lonely-heart scam. There’s a recognition that you’re vulnerable—that you yearn for validation. Scam artists have always capitalized on that.
Authors, as Julian has been describing, are seeking approval. They want book sales, sure—maybe fame, maybe a movie deal—but mostly they want evidence that what they’ve done matters. These scammers are very good at preying on that. It’s almost like a wink: “You and I both know your book should be doing better,” or “You’re a literary genius who hasn’t been fully recognized.” And then they offer to help.
Mina Kim: So, Dan, neither you nor Julian took the bait, but you did hear of people who did?
Dan Barry: Oh, yes. I think most people aren’t taking the bait, but these emails are going out by the millions. It only takes a few victims to make it worthwhile.
Someone associated with the National Book Foundation told me she had been approached by someone pretending to represent the organization, offering proofreading services. She paid what was apparently a substantial fee. But the National Book Foundation does many things—it does not provide proofreading services. So yes, she was taken advantage of.
Since I wrote the article, I’ve received many letters from people who said they tested the waters—sent a few hundred dollars here and there—before realizing they’d been scammed.
Mina Kim: We’re talking with Dan Barry, senior writer at The New York Times, and Julian Sancton, senior features editor at The Hollywood Reporter. Both are authors who recently wrote about being targeted by publishing scams involving impersonation and fraudulent promotion services.
Listeners, I want to invite you into the conversation. Has anyone ever tried to scam you using impersonation? How did it affect you? Has someone you know fallen for one of these scams? And what do you do to avoid being duped?
You can email us at forum@kqed.org, find us on Discord, BlueSky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum, or call us at 866-733-6786. Again, that’s 866-733-6786.
And Barbara writes, “OMG, yes. I’m an author, and I get literally dozens of these every week.” Another listener writes, “Like most of the authors I know, I am inundated with these scams. The first email I got was so flattering, and the sender seemed very familiar with my book—but then I realized what was going on. It is just infuriating that AI companies stole our books to program their monster, and now AI is wasting our time spamming and scamming us every day.”
We’ll have more with you, listeners, and with our guests after the break. Stay with us. This is Forum. I’m Mina Kim.
