Writer Beware Shows How Personalized AI Scam Emails to Authors Are Built

How do those eerily personal scam emails get written? With generative AI, according to Writer Beware. In a post published September 25, 2026, Victoria Strauss explains that chatbots pull an author's details from the internet and turn them into flattering pitches from fake marketers, book clubs and editors. Two emails that went wrong show how the pitches are put together.

Email 1: a template with the blanks left in

The first email comes from the editor impersonation scam that Strauss calls "incredibly prolific." She says it has more than doubled the number of names on her Impersonation List over the past several months. The scammer sent it without filling in the details the chatbot was supposed to supply, so the template shows through. Its blanks were meant to hold information taken from the author's website, retailer listings and reviews, so that each author would get a pitch that looked personal.

Strauss also points to phrases she sees so often in AI-written pitches that she treats them as a giveaway:

• "I recently had the opportunity" and variations such as "I recently came across" or "I recently spent some time with"
• "I was particularly impressed by" and "What stood out most was," along with "What particularly caught my attention" and "What struck me immediately"
• "Warm regards" as the sign-off

The same email also blends the name of a real HarperCollins editor, Rakia Clark, with the publisher's name.

Email 2: the chatbot's instructions, sent by mistake

In the second example, the scammer pasted the AI's raw output into the email. It sorts the target into a category ("Warm / Cooperatively Engaged"). It explains why the reply should not include a payment link yet. It also labels the exchange as Phase 3, meaning several emails had already been sent.

Strauss says that step-by-step approach is typical of this wave of scams. The email chains can run long and move the writer slowly toward paying. Writers who send her these emails are often confused because the first messages don't mention a fee. Strauss says that is deliberate.

Who is behind it

Strauss writes that it is still unknown how the AI scams are organized or who runs them. She says the payment and other data she has collected suggests they mostly come from West Africa. She also sees some degree of central coordination, because the pitches fall into distinct types: marketing, book clubs, and impersonations of well-known authors, editors and agents.

She says she gets more reports about these scams than she has ever had about any other kind. Even so, she is hearing from fewer writers who have lost money. She credits the sheer volume of the pitches, and how recognizable they have become, with making writers more suspicious. "The scammers are still making money, though," she writes. "The emails wouldn't be flooding our inboxes if they weren't."

What authors can take from it

• Flattery that quotes your book back to you proves nothing. A chatbot can pull those details from your public pages in seconds.
• No fee in the first email isn't reassuring. According to Strauss, holding back the payment request is part of the script.
• Check the person through the company's official site, not through links, phone numbers or addresses in the email. The Publishing Times covered the editor impersonation pattern in an earlier explainer.

Sources

• Writer Beware: How Those Personalized Generative AI Scam Emails Are Built (September 25, 2026)