alt Hacker NewsNot new at all, just probably scaled up by AI. Scams like this targeting authors have been around for ages: vanity publishing, fake agents, fake publicity, etc.
Similar scams target would-be actors, musicians, models, etc. Scams targeting models often lead into sex trafficking but sometimes they're just payola scams like this.
There's even some targeting startup entrepreneurs, usually in the form of dodgy "virtual incubators" or people who claim to be able to get you in front of investors or get you publicity.
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These guys make the old-school vanity publishers look like paragons of virtue. At least with them, you'd end up a with a garage full of unsold books that you'd paid too much for. Even the Amazon sharecropping system is better. But yes, scammers have preyed on writers for as long as there have been writers. Today's technology allows it to be international and industrial in scale.
Yeah I get like 20 "a family office is looking at your company" emails a day.