I’ve been hearing a lot about scammers trying to trick authors into paying for phony services lately. I haven’t run into much of that—which, oddly, made me wonder if I just wasn’t good enough of a writer to be a target—but that changed yesterday.
For the last year or so, I’ve gotten five or six weird voicemails from numbers I don’t recognize from people claiming to be interested in my pirate fantasy novel, The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End, available now through Outland Entertainment. Often these are unintelligible and the title gets garbled somehow, so they’re easy to ignore.
Yesterday, another author named Scott Colby (super nice guy!) forwarded an email sent to him about my Black Yonnix series, supposedly from an editor at one of the big five publishers. Here’s the text, so you all can see it. I’ve removed the name of the editor and the publishing company just because that seems like the right thing to do:
I hope you’re having a great week. My name is <name>, and I am an Assistant at <company>. I recently spent some time looking into your work, particularly The Black Yonnix: A Bitter End, and I was impressed by the imaginative world-building and swashbuckling adventure at the heart of the story. The combination of pirates, magic, unusual creatures, and a high-stakes quest for vengeance gives the novel a distinctive sense of fun and momentum. I was especially intrigued by Kensey’s journey from a young man driven by grief and revenge into an outlaw world where he must adapt quickly, work alongside a rowdy crew, and confront both external enemies and his own inner struggles. The broader World of Pileaus setting also creates interesting possibilities for expanding the story’s audience. I would be very interested to learn more about your current and forthcoming projects, including your Deviant Magic series and other fantasy and science fiction work, as well as whether you are represented by a literary agent. If you do have representation, I would be pleased to continue any discussion through your agent. If not, I would be happy to outline how the process typically works, should there be interest in taking the conversation further. Subject to reviewing additional material, there may be scope for a broader discussion regarding potential fit within <company’s> fantasy, science fiction, adventure, and speculative fiction publishing programs. If this is of interest, I would be delighted to hear from you.
For a brief moment, my easily flattered author brain was sort of excited. I mean, that’s a really nice message, and a pretty decent summary of my work. I might steal it for use as marketing copy. Plus, there’s the connection to my other series, Deviant Magic, which suggests this person has done their research.
Two things pulled me out of my flattered funk. For one, big publishers don’t do this; they have plenty of awesome authors looking for them. For the other, the actual sending address used a Yahoo domain rather than the publisher’s, albeit in a way where you could easily miss that detail if you were just skimming: .@yahoo.com.
Clearly, that text got crapped out by an LLM that ingested my work. The scammer probably used the same plagiarism machine to find the editor’s name and workplace too (she’s real, and really works there). It’s a good reminder that we all need to be extra-vigilant now that the assholes have access to AI tools that can very easily build this kind of hyper-targeted messaging.
I’m tempted to set up a fresh email address and respond to this message using it, just to see where the grift goes. I suspect it would eventually lead to something along the lines of “well, if you pay us a few grand so we can get started…” But I think I’m just going to delete it, and let the editor know some jerk’s impersonating her.
And at least I made a new friend in the process!
What’s new at Giant Sword Publishing?
After reading a bunch of stuff online about marketing books through a mailing list and reviewing a marketing assessment I had done previous to launching GSP a few years ago, I’ve decided to align this newsletter a little more tightly with the company.
That means making Words on the Street the official newsletter of Giant Sword Publishing, putting a signup widget right on the website, adding this section you’re reading right now, and adjusting the branding a bit. Otherwise, the format’s not changing.
I’m also going to cross-post all of these newsletters to the Giant Sword blog page, move all the old ones there too, and make sure I’m posting them to the company’s socials. Reusable content! There’s a plug-in that might help me with getting stuff onto the site, so it might not even be that hard.
Otherwise, I just got my first copy of the new paperback for A Date with Death. It looks sooooooooo good! That cover really pops in print, and the title just jumps across the room.
And I’m still tweaking the website, and having a lot more fun doing it now that I’m used to how the template works. Still figuring out the best approach on socials (probably going to set up a TikTok this weekend–pray for me). I’ve been collecting interest forms to get my work into small indie bookstores and filling them out in between sets in the gym. And I sent the cover description for book two, Shotgun, along to my design company.
I’m also still looking for ARC readers for A Date with Death! Message me if you’re interested.
Regarding the shared world fiction project I posted about last week, I think it’s going to be a fantasy setting, and post-apocalyptic like Terry Brooks’s Shannara. His work was a huge influence on my own, and I’d like to play in that kind of world.
What else?
We finally got that softball playoff in after almost a full month of rainy Sundays. Our first opponent had to forfeit, and then we lost a 7-5 nail-biter in the second round. Despite the loss, we were all super happy with how we played. I went 1-3 with a single and two hard-hit outs and played well in the outfield.
What should be the final league of the year starts this weekend, and we’ve got a big group carrying over. Should be a lot of fun.
I’m hoping for a White Sox-Brewers World Series, with Milwaukee coming out on top. Either way, I’m really excited for this next round of games. And for the Banana Bowl this Saturday!
This is day one of not having the reddit app on my phone. The time I was spending falling down that particular rabbit hole had been obscene for a while now, and I’ve got a lot to do and a lot of other, more rewarding leisure activities I should be doing more of. There have already been three or four times this morning my distracted brain reached for the phone and tried to find the app, almost as if I’m on autopilot. That’s kind of scary, and it’s really slamming home just how weird that sort of dependence is.
Til next time!
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