Book Festival Scams, Interview Fakes: Two New AI-Driven Impersonation Scams to Avoid

Have you recently received an email invitation to be a featured guest at a book festival or conference event? Or to be interviewed on a radio show or podcast? Literary agents, publishers, and major production companies don’t typically cold-call authors. That unexpected “endorsement” from Amazon Studios, or expression of interest from a Big 5 editor, is never going to turn out to be legit. But literary events and interviewers do reach out to writers directly. Even in our current age of hyper-aggressive solicitation scams, that out-of-the-blue conference or interview invite might just be the real thing. Unfortunately, AI-driven impersonation scams have glommed onto these events in a big way. I’m getting a growing number of reports from writers who’ve received credible-seeming invitations that have turned out to be completely fake. It’s yet another area where writers must be extremely careful not to take anything at face value. Below, the scams’ M.O….and their provenance (which, if…