Josh Jackson Author

Yep. They tried to get me too.

Actually, still trying. Basically every day, everyone gets spammed by scammers. And there’s a new scam in town to get wise to, at least, if you’re a word nerd trying to make it in this ever-more-highly saturated book market.

With so many people trying to be writers today, and with many not good enough to actually make it, we have a need for a push, a force, to make making it happen. And that’s where AI and these scammers come in.

The message came to me via my website’s contact form. A person claiming to have read my most recent book and actually paid careful attention while doing so. Attention no casual reader would ever commit to a silly novella about a crazy homeless woman and bigfoots. They praised the book, lavished kudos and platitudes, stroked my ego oh-so-pleasurably.

Then promised me the moon. They’d put my book in the hands of hundreds of avid readers around the world who are apparently just dying to read it. All they need is this person and their organization in order to get them reading my words. I replied, agreeing it sounded lovely and I’d like that. I got excited, perked up. I told others about my impending success, and hotly anticipated the person’s reply, where they’d tell me how we get the ball rolling.

When they did, they mentioned the fee I’d have to pay.

Ah. So it’s a scam. Then I did the web search and found out I’m only one in a long line of thousands of other struggling authors who are being targeted by this swindle. Dammit! I went from overjoyed to pissed off.

And of course my sense of logic could not agree with this scammer’s claim that people wanted to read my book but just couldn’t unless I paid this organization a fee. Sorry, but the internet -and my book listings globally- are publicly available.

And I’ve already paid a fee for global distribution. My publishing service, for about $5, puts my books into eBook stores across the world. Germany, Australia, Japan, Canada, the EU, etc. And then I pay KDP to make sure they get on all the Amazons for various countries.

So why would I pay again? Red flag!

While the venerable history writer Julian Sancton (loved Madhouse!) and others have chosen to continue engaging with their scammers, just to get more info, or flip the script, I chose to simply ghost this person. Not that they haven’t continued to try and hook me. They actually keep sending me the same introductory message, as if I haven’t already received a message from that exact person and email address with the identically-worded script. Along with many others.

Until recently, though, the spams I would get offer SEO optimization, website promotion, or paid-for fake increases in subs and site traffic and views. But this new one is quite different, as they use AI agents to craft a narrative and wording that hooks many unwitting writers. As Sancton mentions in his piece, and I noted in mine, this AI stuff is always so slick and dripping with sycophanty that only the most narcissistic among us will find it appealing.

The rest of us find it slimy, sleazy, and underhanded. It’s actually sick, playing on people’s insecurity and fears of failure. Taking advantage of people’s struggle to succeed in an industry so fickle and oversaturated with terrible content. No one knows who or what to read anymore because most of it sucks and there’s just too much suck to wade through just to find something readable. Any way to cut through all that feels revelatory.

You, me, anyone, can publish whatever garbage they or their AI agent spits out and suddenly someone’s got fifty books to their name and readers think that volume of work means the author is successful.

Those of us still carefully crafting our writing, making works of art which have intrinsic worth, literary finery, and real entertainment value, are being pushed aside in favor of sheer volume. It took me six months to finish my newest book, a half-novel. Sloppers us AI to churn out a book a day or more.

So of course tons of us are clicking on the scammer links, getting excited about finally making it, and we’re even paying these people money to promote our books. When in reality we were talking to no one and gave our money to a stranger in another country.

To be sure: your agent, your publisher (and ultimately you) are who promotes books. They are to whom you pay the fee. Or an advertiser. I’ve used Blaze ads to promote my books, because that’s a legitimate place to put my dollars to get eyes on my books. Not the scammer from, yes, the IP address confirmed, Nigeria.

What’s more, book magazines, book blogs and websites promote books, and they do not charge authors a fee to do so. Well, at least, they shouldn’t. But I can’t afford an agent who has Bookpage on speed dial. And when you can’t just call Bookpage and have your book featured, only submit your book for consideration –amid “the sheer volume of submissions we receive“– you realize how hard it is to get noticed.

It’s really just blind luck anymore. Playing the algorithm lottery.

So one sees how this new AI scam targeting authors came about. An extremely difficult market to crack. A social media scene so fickle you can barely keep up on what platform to use today, let alone where and how to promote your particular book.

What I think the solution would be, is for eBook publishers to take on the role of a real book publisher– act as a filter so only decent or good stuff goes out. Real writing by real people, not AI slop. Yes, that would mean hiring a lot of human staff, since AI clearly is both very dumb and very insane. It would also mean a lot of people who think self-publishing is their path to success will have to give up on that particular route, but I’m not suggesting banning self-publishing.

In this solution I just propose that even self-published books first be read by a real person who can make sure the good stuff is promoted and the bad stuff goes to the basement. Sure, you can still visit said basement, but it’s not a featured level in the bookstore.

But think about how that could fix things. Suddenly, all this crap being churned out at light speed, with zero quality or even editing, could finally encounter a filter before its unleashing upon the word-hungry public.

Yes, that won’t happen, because look at all the crap already unleashed upon us during the last 100 years of traditional publishing. I’ve endured, as you have too, some seriously bad books. A few I simply could not finish. The most recent one took me three months to finally close the back cover. Agonizingly amateurish, nonsensical, unrealistic, and simply boring. And this book bore three whole pages of some very real kudos from the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, USA Today, the Seattle Times, and a dozen more.

So when the worst book I’ve read in the last year is revered and celebrated, then one can understand the frustration many of us endure. And why this AI scam is so tempting. It feels like a dam bursting, like after all this time, all your hard work will finally pay off. Only to find out you’ve been talking to a computer and no one cares about your book and certainly hundreds of people are not reading it.

We know our work is good, deserves to be widely read, and is most certainly being shoved aside in favor of total slop, crap, pulp, and dreck. This is so frustrating!

All I can suggest is to do what I’m doing. Just keep trying to make it legitimately. Do your best to disseminate your work at every opportunity. Give away a lot copies. One of my selling points is to tell folks the book was completely written and edited without the use of AI. It was a labor of love, art, and skill. By a human, for humans.

I offer to email my books to all sorts of people, even store clerks. I send press releases, I contact various organizations and even governments. If my book is relevant to a news story I send an email to the news org. I just don’t give up. And if there’s a place where my money can legitimately go to promote my books, then I’ll choose carefully and spend wisely. Just not to a fake person in Nigeria offering me the world, the moon, the whole universe for a fee.

It’s a tough go these days being a writer, especially a self-published writer. There’s more places for our books than ever, and more readers than ever, yet somehow this profession has become harder than ever. You’d think with such a huge audience and billions of dollars sloshing around it would be different and we’d all enjoy a measure of success.

But until we kick AI to the curb and slow the flood of garbage content, success for quality authors and good books will remain elusive.

And so our only options are give up or keep trying.

Keep trying, folks. Never give up.