It’s become a daily routine. I get an email forwarded from my website to my personal email, and it’s some glowing inquiry about one of my books. It’s a book club wanting to make me their author of the month! It’s a radio station wanting to interview me about my new book. Today it was one of the editor’s from Pan McMillan Publishers wanting to talk to me about my memoir.
It’s all so flattering, and flowery, and wonderfully written and … 100% trash.
The emails are so predictable that they are sickening to the stomach. They have copied my book description, pasted it in an AI service, and asked it to write an email to this book’s author with an offer of their own which is too good to be true.
I literally had emails from people saying how much they loved reading my book – except the book hadn’t even been published yet.
And, of course, there’s just a small fee to help our book club with our community activities, they will say.
Besides the numbing AI written flowery slop, the main giveaway is ALWAYS the email address. If you hover over the addresses, they are ALWAYS .gmail – never organizational, never business. These sloppy AI bots have just plopped in the editor’s name from a publisher like “editorsoandso.panmacmillan@gmail.com” and if you’re aren’t careful, you might think it’s an actual human being who is interested in what you have to write. It is not.
Do watch out for these scams. They can be easy to fall for if you aren’t careful and if you let your ego get the best of you. Always, always check the email address. It’s a dead giveaway.
And good luck to any actual real 100% human person who really does want to discuss some of my work. They are going to have a hard time convincing me they are not an AI bot. Perhaps if they send me a plane ticket and a hotel voucher I might start to believe them.
If you are interested in a nostalgic read written by o% AI and 100% from my own mind, here’s a link to my childhood memoir just released. Thank you!
