THE ART OF THE SCAM

Social media and Al have made attempts to scam writers that much easier. The co-founder of Writer Beware details how to stay out of harm's way.

- BY JENNIFER CHEN

The same day I spoke with Victoria Strauss, author and co-founder of the Writer Beware blog, about writing scams, I attended a book event with Victoria Aveyard in conversation with debut author I. V. Marie. When the topic of signing with an agent came up, Aveyard mentioned that when her literary agent reached out to her, her father accompanied her to the in-person meeting to make sure it wasn't a scam. It wasn't, but her father was wary. And he had every right to be concerned.

With the rise of social media and artificial intelligence, scammers are targeting writers and authors at a higher rate. Strauss first started writing about scams in the late '90s when she first joined writers' groups. “I encountered all these awful stories about people being ripped off by fee-charging agents, vanity publishers, or scam editing companies,” shares Strauss. She began following the trail of these made-up services around the same time that she joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). “The organization wanted somebody to put together warnings about writing on their website. I volunteered and later I met with Ann Crispin, then-vice president at SFWA, and she wanted to put together a writing scams committee. We joined forces, and that's how Writer Beware started up. We hoped we would put ourselves out of business just by putting out all the warnings that we could, but that hasn't happened, sadly.”

Typical targets in the past were self-published authors or writers who work with small presses. “Every writer needs a lot of marketing help,” says Strauss, “but smaller presses have less budget and ability to promote. If you self-publish, it's all up to you. It creates a big open door for scammers and people who offer shady services.” But more and more scammers are seeking victims in traditional publishing, too.