Writer Beware

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Army of Bots: Deeper Into the Vortex of Nigerian Book Marketing Scams

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OCT 20, 2025December 29, 202576 COMMENTS

I've published a couple of posts now about the tidal wave of AI-driven book marketing scams from Nigeria that has swept over the writing world in the past year or so.

A hallmark of these scams has been how abruptly they appeared and how fast they have become ubiquitous. But proliferation isn't the only way in which Nigerian scams are speedy. They are also morphing and adapting extremely quickly, likely in reaction to the responses they're getting from the writers they target.

This post takes a look at the adaptations I'm seeing now.

Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement: An Update for Authors

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SEP 26, 2025November 18, 202525 COMMENTS

A year ago, a group of authors filed suit against AI company Anthropic over its creation of an enormous library of digitized books to train its Claude LLMs, arguing that because Anthropic did not seek authors’ permission for the creation of the library or for AI training on the included works (claiming, as most AI companies do, that this constituted fair use), Anthropic's actions constituted copyright infringment. (You can see the original complaint here.)

In addition to purchasing and scanning physical books, Anthropic also downloaded millions of books and other works illegally uploaded to pirate sites. This past June, the judge in the case, Judge William Alsup, determined that while Anthropic’s digitzation of physical books, and its use of these for AI training, did indeed qualify as fair use, its downloading of pirated copies did not.

Accordingly, Judge Alsup certified a class of LibGen & PiLiMi Pirated Books authors (LibGen is pirate site Library Genesis; PiLiMi is pirate site Pirate Library Mirror), consisting of "all beneficial or legal copyright owners" whose work both possesses an ISBN or ASIN, and was registered with the US Copyright Office within 5 years of publication and before being downloaded by Anthropic (August 10, 2022).

BOOK MARKETING SCAMS

Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams

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SEP 19, 2025November 4, 2025122 COMMENTS

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a rising and extremely prolific marketing scam that I've been able to trace back to operators in Nigeria.

Using highly personalized (AI-generated) email solicitations that make it seem the sender (always with a Gmail address, always presenting as a marketing or PR expert) has really read the book, the scammer offers marketing services of various kinds, usually for a not-exorbitant fee of a few hundred dollars. If the author bites, they're referred to a Nigerian "assistant" or "payment processor" on Upwork or Fiverr for payment. The scammer then demands access to the author's KDP account.

I've since discovered two new and distinct iterations of this scam--both of which, like the first one, have appeared abruptly and spun up very fast.

Protecting Intellectual Property: What Writers Need to Know About Copyright

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SEP 12, 2025September 12, 202518 COMMENTS

I was reminded of that this week, thanks to an email from an author who discovered that several of their books were included in one of the databases of pirated works used by the AI company Anthropic for AI training. The author wanted to know whether they were eligible to be part of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to pay to compensate writers for its misuse of their intellectual property. (You can read more about the lawsuit, and the settlement, here.)

One of the criteria for eligibility, set by the court, is that copyrights to the pirated works must have been properly registered with the US Copyright Office before Anthropic downloaded the databases. And indeed, the author’s books were all registered in a timely manner…but not with the Copyright Office. Instead, the author used a website called Copyrighted.com, which offers a kind of faux registration using timestamps and its own certificates.

If Your Publisher Promised to Register Your Copyright, Check Your Registration Now

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AUG 29, 2025September 26, 202531 COMMENTS

A couple of years ago, while searching the US Copyright Office's public copyright registration database on behalf of an author wanting to know if their copyright had been registered as required by their book contract, I decided on a whim to check my own copyright registrations.

I hadn't felt any need to do so before. While smaller publishers generally leave it to authors to register their copyrights, for larger houses it's standard for the publisher to register on authors' behalf, at the publisher's expense. Most of my contracts have been with imprints of big publishers. No reason to doubt they'd followed through, right?

But when I looked at my registration record, I realized that one book was missing: my YA historical, Passion Blue, published in 2012 by Skyscape, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Skyscape hadn't registered copyright for this book, even though the contract stipulated that they should; and now, several years beyond the five-year post-publication window in which registration provides evidentiary benefits, it was too late to do anything about it.

PUBLISHER COMPLAINTS

Author Complaints, Conflicts of Interest at Fortis Publishing

AUG 22, 2025August 22, 202522 COMMENTS

Last year, I began to receive complaints from authors with UK-based Fortis Publishing.

Issues cited included poorly proofed and/or formatted books (missing images or chapters, for example); little or no marketing; delayed or missing sales reports and royalty payments; poor communication and failure to respond to emails and questions, editing fees, possible fictitious staff members, authors' names attached without permission to book blurbs they didn't write, and extra-contractual changes to royalty reporting schedules, despite the contract's stipulation that modifications must be made in writing and signed by both parties.

Writers also reported substantial conflicts of interest (more on that below).