Not Simon & Schuster: Deconstructing an Impersonation Scam

For writers chasing a traditional publishing contract, an email from Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster inviting submission might seem like a dream come true.

Just one problem: major publishers like S&S, which acquire mainly via reputable literary agents and expect manuscripts to come to them rather than the other way around, don’t email random authors out of the blue. Also, impersonation scams are extremely common these days, with fraudsters posing as publishers, literary agents, film production companies, even editors (see my previous post on this subject). Any publishing- or movie rights-related email or phone call that you can’t tie directly to a submission or a contact you yourself made is highly likely to be a scam–and with generative AI infesting every aspect of the writing scam industry, the scams can be quite elaborate and authentic-seeming.

Given the amount of time I spend writing and warning about such things, it’s always funny (well, kind of) when an impersonation scammer tries to target me.

The Bait

A few weeks ago, this landed in my Inbox.

Beyond the two warning signs mentioned above, the email address is a huge red flag. A Big 5 publisher (or, in fact, any other publisher) would be emailing from their own web domain–not a Gmail address. (Gmail addresses are also a feature of a certain type of scam from overseas.) Nor does a publisher like S&S need to tout the benefits it provides as if it were competing for authors (which it very much doesn’t have to do).

I decided to have some fun.

“Tell me more!” I wrote back, in the guise of a first-time author. Within hours, I received an invitation to submit, along with a fairly standard list of information to include. (Another marker of fakeness: the response arrived at 2:22 am my time on February 11, but the timestamp in the header indicated that the scammer sent it at 8:22 am, also on February 11. Since both I and S&S are on the East Coast of the USA, there shouldn’t have been any time difference at all. That discrepancy, with the scammer six hours ahead, was evident throughout our email exchange.)

Here’s what I sent, attaching three chapters of an unmarketable trunk novel donated by a friend of Writer Beware for use in just such circumstances. As you can see, I didn’t try to make it convincing–nor did I delete my signature, which includes not just my personal website, but both of the sites I run for Writer Beware.

This is the kind of query that publishers (or agents) tend to immediately delete. But S&S loved it! Within hours I received–oh joy!–a publishing offer, plus an extremely elaborate “publishing plan” covering all the many things S&S intended to do for me and my terrible book: editing, production timelines, marketing and sales strategy, author platform development, series and movie potential, and much more. And the cherry on top of this very fake sundae: a $500,000 advance, guaranteed to make any newbie author’s head explode.

The snippet below represents less than a quarter of the email, but it should give you a sense of the level of detail. This kind of ornate confabulation costs the scammer nothing, since it’s all done with prompts and chatbots.

The Switch

Naturally, newbie writer Victoria Strauss was thrilled. “This is so amazing! Sign me up!” I wrote back. At which point the “switch” part of the bait-and-switch kicked in (note the ongoing time difference, with the scammer six hours ahead: this arrived at 6:54 pm my time, on February 11).

Wait, what? Novice novelist Victoria Strauss was confused. Why would she have to pay? Wasn’t it true that traditional publishers never required authors to pay for anything? What was going on?

There followed a lengthy back-and-forth, with me asking innocent questions and the scammer trying to convince me that asking me to “invest” $200 to $500 in my literary future was actually a totally normal thing that S&S would do. Throughout these interchanges, they nudged me whenever I took a few hours to respond: how are you doing today? What do you think? Can we move forward with this now? This kind of pressure, along with claims of limited time or limited openings, is a common scammer tactic: they want to hurry you up so you don’t have time for careful thought.

Eventually they abandoned the traditional publishing pretense and admitted that what they were really trying to sell me was self-publishing–apparently expecting me to forget the elaborate trad pub plans and gigantic advance they’d initially promised. (Notice that the scammer is no longer signing off as “The Editorial & Acquisitions Team”, but with a probably fictitious name.)

The prices, which it took them another couple of emails to cough up, ranged from a fairly standard self-publishing starter package for $1,500 to an “elite bestseller package” padded with ripoff nonsense like “full author branding strategy” and “ongoing post-launch performance tracking” for $15,000. Yet another switch, since a few emails back they’d told me I’d be paying $500 at most.

The Reveal

I could have gone back and forth with Zahara/fake S&S much longer than I did (one of the hallmarks of AI-driven writing scams is the scammers’ willingness to engage in near-endless email dialog in order to keep the potential victim on the hook), but I have, you know, a life, and anyway it was no longer interesting.

So I asked, as I always do when I lead scammers on, for payment information, specifically requesting wire transfer instructions, since that forces them to hand over banking information. (Note: you should NEVER do this. Unlike credit card payments, wire transfers can’t be reversed…which is why scammers like them.)

Requiring payment to a third-party, often described as a “financial manager”, is typical of AI-driven scams from Nigeria, which, per the many wire transfer instructions I’ve collected from scammers over the past months, favor accounts with Wells Fargo and to a lesser extent, Kansas City-based Lead Bank.

Additionally, the name on the account is Nigerian; and remember the six-hour time difference? Nigeria is six hours ahead of the US East Coast, where I am. An additional indicator: the +0100 that follows the timestamp in the emails above. It identifies timezones that include West Africa, and is a useful, though not infallible, way to tell where a scammer is really located (since most scammers from overseas have fake US, UK, or Canadian business addresses).

Remember I mentioned the nudging? Fake S&S “followed up” three times in the two days after they sent the payment information (AI scammers often keep pushing for a tedious amount of time, even if you refuse their offers or tell them in no uncertain terms to buzz off). Their final message:

Which Google Translate says means “It’s a disaster”, but the wider internet suggests is a harsh Yoruba insult. So maybe they figured it out?

At any rate, it was time to terminate this small adventure. So I blocked them.

Generative AI is Making Scams Worse

I had fun trolling the S&S impersonator by pretending to be a clueless newbie author. But such scams are no joke. They are aggressive, prevalent, and the use of generative AI can make them extremely polished and convincing–not just impersonation scams like this one, but the highly personalized approaches that are flooding writers’ Inboxes, with lavish details and glowing praise designed to make you believe that the scammer has really read your book.

The goal, always, is to trick writers into handing over money. Though the scammer may not say so initially, that’s the destination they will inevitably arrive at. Any demand for money where upfront payment isn’t standard–which includes not just traditional publishers and literary agents, but Goodreads Litopia lists, self-publishing on KDP and IngramSpark, book club invitations, reading challenges, magazine features, print and radio interviews, and more–is a warning sign.

Hopefully this post has suggested some useful tricks and tools you can use to recognize and investigate the scams that land in your Inbox.