As a writer, I imagine the most rewarding thing that can happen is that your work makes such a profound connection with readers that they contact you to let you know. Which is why the (accelerating) scourge of AI scam messages targeting authors online is particularly unpleasant.
In some cases, the messages express enthusiasm and promise promotion and discussion in book groups in exchange for a fee; others purportedly come from other renowned authors, attempting to exploit any vulnerability to flattery by peers. One of the consequences, sadly, will be suspicion and cynicism, and some communication from genuine fans will inevitably be binned by accident.
What's even more grotesque, of course, is that the generative AI tools deployed for scamming purposes have been developed through digesting the writings of millions of authors who have received nothing in the way of financial compensation. That novelists are now regularly confronted with scam emails incorporating synopses of their own books brutally underlines the fact that the tools have chewed up their work and are regurgitating it for nefarious ends.
Joe Dunthorne has written about this unsettling phenomenon for the Guardian, but gone further by attempting to track down one of the scammers. The result is a disturbing insight into "scam farms", and his realisation that the person on the other end of the message is probably not a devious criminal raking in money for their own gain but "someone frightened and far from home, sitting in a sound-insulated booth with a dozen phones splayed out on their desk - while behind them their manager walks by, a taser at his hip".
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