The Rise of Author Scams and How to Spot Them

There is an industry that exists purely to take money from people who have made something. It is patient, well spoken and remarkably good at flattery, and over the past few years it has grown quickly. The approaches arrive by email, by direct message, occasionally by telephone, and they all share one instinct: they know that anyone who has laboured over a piece of work wants very badly to believe that somebody important has noticed it.

That is the hook. Not greed — hope.

The schemes vary, but the shapes repeat. There is the agency that loves the manuscript and requires a reading fee, an assessment fee or an editorial report from a partner company before it can proceed. There is the marketing outfit promising placement with major studios, retail chains or streaming platforms in exchange for a package that begins at a few hundred pounds and rises steeply. There is the invented literary award with an entry fee, a handsome digital badge and no discernible jury. And there is the fake event: a book fair, a festival stand, a signing table at an exhibition that either does not exist or exists without the seller having any connection to it at all.

The fake event is the cruellest, because the money leaves in stages. First the stand, then the shipping of stock, then the accommodation, then the premium listing in a programme nobody will read.

None of this is new. What has changed is polish. Artificial intelligence has made cold approaches grammatically perfect, personalised and endless. A letter that once betrayed itself in the first line now quotes the correct book title, the correct genre and a plausible sentence about the work itself. Judgement has to move from tone to evidence.

So here is the checklist I keep in mind, and pass on whenever anyone asks.

Look at the email address first. Legitimate organisations write from their own domain. A publisher, agency, festival or retailer that sends business correspondence from a free consumer address — gmail.com, aol.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com — is either not what it claims to be or is careless enough that the distinction hardly matters. Watch, too, for a domain that is nearly right: a hyphen inserted, a letter doubled, a .net where the real firm uses .co.uk.

Then look at the website behind the domain. A real contact has a real site, and the site carries staff names, a registered company number, a physical address and email addresses on the same domain. Check how old the domain is; a body claiming twenty years of experience whose website was registered three months ago is telling you something. Check whether the photographs and biographies appear elsewhere under different names.

Look at how they found you. Reputable people rarely arrive uninvited with an offer attached. If the message references your listing on a particular retail site, that usually means your details were scraped, not read.

Look at the direction of the money. In the traditional trade, money flows towards the writer. Commission is taken from earnings, not paid in advance. Any arrangement where you pay to be represented, to be considered, to be shortlisted or to be exhibited deserves a slow, cold read.

Look at the deadline. Urgency is the oldest lever there is. Places are limited, the panel meets on Friday, the discount ends tonight. Genuine opportunities survive a week of thinking.

Look at the payment method. Bank transfer to a personal account, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or a request to route funds via a third party — these are not administrative quirks. They are chosen because they cannot be reversed.

Look at the paperwork. Ask for a contract and read it slowly. Vague deliverables, no refund terms, no named individual, no jurisdiction: all warning lights. Ask for three verifiable references and then contact those references independently, using details you find yourself rather than the ones supplied to you.

Look at the claims. Guaranteed placement, guaranteed reviews, guaranteed shelf space in national chains, guaranteed film interest. Nobody in this business can guarantee any of it, and everybody serious will say so.

And look at the pressure that follows a refusal. A legitimate approach ends politely. A scheme escalates: a discount, a supervisor, a final chance.

The practical defences are unglamorous. Keep a separate address for unsolicited approaches. Verify by telephoning the organisation's published switchboard, never the number in the email. Search the company name alongside words such as complaint or refund. Pay by credit card where you must pay at all, because it carries protections a transfer does not. Talk to peers before committing, because these operations rely on isolation, and a single conversation usually ends the spell. If you are caught, report it — in the United Kingdom to Action Fraud, and to your bank the same day.

None of this requires cynicism. It requires only the same care you would apply to any other transaction involving your own money and your own name. Real opportunities will bear scrutiny happily. The others cannot survive a single well-aimed question, which is precisely why they are always in such a hurry.