Authors are discovering those too-good-to-be-true emails are, sadly, too good to be true.

The latest AI scammers fish with lavish praise, before setting their hooks

A small but growing number of our authors are reporting unfortunate experiences with an AI scam that seems to have become especially rampant in the first quarter of 2026. The problem is that AI tools have become so powerful that scammers can unleash fast, inexpensive research into the lives of authors—then create a series of enticing emails lavishing praise and, eventually, offering to help—for a fee.

Since late 2025, the venerable publishing guru Jane Friedman has been tracking the spread of these scammers who specifically target authors with praise that charms writers to the point that they wind up embarrassed to admit that they were taken in by the scammers.

Julian Sancton, a Senior Features Editor for the trade publication Hollywood Reporter, wrote about the problem in March after he was targeted. He wrote in part:

Authors, with our particular stew of ego and insecurity, have long been prime targets for scammers. A few years ago, before the widespread use of chatbots, an elaborate operation based out of the Philippines allegedly bilked some 800 mostly self-published authors out of a total of $44 million, promising to turn their books into movies and charging exorbitant fees for services that never materialized. But those were more sophisticated stings. The advent of free generative AI has allowed for a shift in scam strategy, from targeted sniper attacks to a hail of machine gun fire. It has brought the cost of bullets—in this case, the time and effort it takes to find a mark, research their work, draft an email and keep a conversation going—down to essentially zero. Even if the vast majority miss their target, a single hit keeps the con going. A numbers game is easy to win when the numbers are limitless.

‘It was able to play my heart strings like a fiddle’

In March, Christy Berghoef wrote about her own painful brush with such scammers. She’s the author of the spiritual memoir Rooted, published by our colleagues at Reformed Journal Books. In a Substack column, headlined Professionally Broke, Christy described how naturally the initial emails connected with her own hopes for her writing—luring her toward making private contact with someone who presumably would have asked for money. That’s when she recognized this as a scam—and felt terrible about it..

I was at first deflated. Then embarrassed. Then furious. Then grateful that the thrill of this new possibility only lasted a day and a half and cost me zero dollars instead of lasting two months, several thousand dollars in whatever “fees” would have come down the pipeline, not to mention the emotional carnage that would have resulted my dream crashing down after believing for two whole months that I was going to finally get my words out in the world. Discovering that all these communications were likely with Artificial Intelligence was somehow even more disturbing. And it was doubly disturbing the way it was able to play my heart strings like a fiddle. 

‘It’s a strange feeling—’

Then, this week, Douglas J. Brouwer, author of The Traveler’s Path by Reformed Journal Books, also wrote a Substack column about his experience with the “bots,” which he headlined: From Heather Cox Richardson to Olivia Smith: My week as a digital literary sensation.

He wrote, in part:

It’s a strange feeling to realize that someone is using your own life story as a lure to get you to reach for your credit card. It’s a digital version of the “Grandparent Scam,” only instead of pretending my grandson is in a foreign jail, they’re pretending my book is the next New York Times bestseller. They aren’t targeting my fear; they’re targeting my desire to be noticed.

We’ll let Christy Berghoef have the final word on this column, reminding all of us why she—and our many other authors—continue to write:

Sometimes writing isn’t really about selling books. Sometimes the value is the writing itself. About noticing. About telling the truth. About lifting up joy. About story telling. About offering words that might be balm to someone else. About handing someone a small lantern in a dark moment and saying, Look, there’s still beauty here!

So I trudge on.