I am now notable enough to have received my first AI-generated scam spam… slam. I got it a few months ago sent to my personal email. I even got it also sent to my author website email.
It begins with a recap of the premise of Story X from Collection Y (as if I needed a reminder about my own story) which coincidentally makes use of all the words in its scant blurb, then goes on to ask me generic yet uncanny questions about how I made this or that writing decision. Also, the email apparently came from a guy who is a Real Writer— look, here’s his Amazon link!— with dozens of books published who just really, really wants to know my thought process for one story. The hook has not been cast quite yet about marketing services or whatever bullshit they want to reel me in with if I engaged, which I shan’t.
Oh, and neither the story nor its collection have sold a copy yet. He must have gotten the manuscript from some sort of wild scheme like in The Devil Wears Prada where Andy gets Miranda’s kids the new Harry Potter book early.
Indie authors beware! LLMs are making this sort of thing increasingly common. Indie authors are isolated, emotional people who crave recognition and so they are vulnerable to anything that seems like a quick path to conventional success. Know this about yourself and don’t allow it to be exploited!
Actually, the author that the scammer was pretending to be seems pretty cool. Maybe I’ll check out one of his books.