There’s a good piece of advice I’ve seen shared a lot over the years, and it boils down to a very simple act: if you like a piece of art someone has made, you should tell them you appreciate it. I cannot think of a single writer, artist, or musician who doesn’t appreciate a sincere compliment, and it’s possible that said compliment can make someone’s day or week during an otherwise difficult time.

There’s one big corollary to this, however. Does it involve AI? It sure does.

It began a few days ago, when I received a very nice email purporting to be from an editor at a press behind a number of books I’ve enjoyed in recent years. This email had very nice things to say about one of my books, and expressed an interest in working with me in the future. Basically, it’s the sort of email most writers dream of getting. 

There’s an old adage about things being too good to be true that, unfortunately, applies here. The language in the email was reminiscent of the “we would like to promote your book to our reading network” scam emails that I get every couple of weeks, for one thing. The editor’s email was also slightly off: at first glance, the domain looked legitimate, but upon closer inspection, the domain name was the publisher’s name with an “s” added to the end.

Whoever was behind this impersonation had done a few things well, though, including redirecting the domain that they had bought to the actual publisher’s website. A whois search revealed that this domain had been purchased 43 days ago and was hosted by a completely different entity than the genuine article. Red flags all the way down, you might say.

Still, I was morbidly curious and wanted to see where this would all go, so I replied to the account, mentioning that I was working on a few new projects; all things I’ve mentioned on social media, and which are (presumably) already available for public consumption.

My correspondent got back in touch with me and expressed their continued interest. Did I have an agent? they asked. I replied that I did not. They then suggested that I contact someone; again, this looked legitimate until I noticed a slight irregularity in the domain name.

Specifically, the real agent being impersonated has one letter repeated three times in their domain; the address I was sent has the letter repeated twice. In this case, the people behind the scam did not quite do their due diligence well enough; the bogus domain did not redirect to a legitimate website. Poorly done, scammers; poorly done.

Someone claiming to be the agent did respond to me, asking for more details on my projects. At this point, I decided to stop; my curiosity at precisely how deep this all went was piqued, but I also had no desire to wind up in the literary equivalent of waking up in a bathtub full of ice sans kidneys. I had also, by this point, reached out to someone at the actual press to notify them that someone was impersonating one of their editors; it seemed as good a time as any to stop spending time talking with people who, presumably, were engaged in a very ornate con.

I’ll be honest: it’s disheartening. Would I like to get an actual email from an editor or agent expressing interest in my work? Yes. Is it depressing that the closest I’ve come in a long while is a con artist presumably looking to separate me from my money? Also yes. There are moments when I understand why people fall for scams like this; it’s nice to feel wanted. Writing (or any creative discipline) comes with a lot of rejection wrapped up in it. Sometimes, a kind word is worse than a cruel one when delivered under false pretenses.

Also, I now know way too much about how literary scammers operate, and I’m a little angry about it.