The other category is "I can legit do something for you as an author but you have to pay me loads of money that you shouldn't have to pay under normal circumstances." I will get to that one in a minute.
Over the weekend while at a book signing event, I received another of the first category of scams. It was pretty obvious from the subject line: Podcast & Radio Opportunities for "My Name Is Resolute: A Novel by the Author of Sarah's Quilt " This Quarter Nancy E. Dunne, Writer
What? I haven't written anything with a title even close to that, and normally I would just delete it (bye bye, AI!) but my curiosity got the better of me. After all, who of us hasn't sent an email to the wrong recipient? No? Just me? Cool, cool.
So I read on as my email program previews the first bits of it and the first paragraph contained this line: "Hello Nancy E. Dunne, Writer
I don’t reach out often like this, butcHers To Keep genuinely "My Name Is Resolute: A Novel by the Author of Sarah's Quilt"
What?
So I'm sorry, Ava Holmes, Author & Media Outreach Consultant, Podcast & FM Radio Interview Placement, Helping authors connect with engaged listeners beyond social media, but maybe next time use a better AI to type your clearly mass-sent email? Yeesh.
Now, on to the other type that requires a lot of money...usually I can see these coming a mile away, but for the most recent one I was genuinely taken in and it hurt my feelings a little bit, if I'm honest, to realize what was happening with that email.
The subject line looked like something I would have written (which should have been a clue, I guess): Rift — One of the best books I’ve read in a looong time. Now, I'm sure for authors with huge followings these emails come all the time. Not for me. I'm lucky if I have three readers that might react to one of my books like this (and I know which three by name), so I started off thinking this had to be a scam.
Was it written by AI? No idea. The email read like it came from a real person who was able to pass my normal Is This AI tests as though she had read the book. She went on to describe the service she provides--book trailers--and even sent me a mock up sample of a script and an audio of said script. Her signature even included how much she loved my storytelling. Oof.
Listening to that audio left me in tears, I will admit. At a book event last summer I met a young man who has a podcast focused on supporting indie authors by performing an audio selection of their books--I wrote about that here and it can still be found by searching The Wandering Tavern wherever you get your podcasts. It was real. My words, read by someone else. So this hit me right in those feels again.
However, I kept enough of my wits about me to ask a very important question (after I found out the price for such a production, which was out of my budget and clued me in that something was up here): how much AI is used to produce these trailers because I am against using AI voices instead of real human voice actors. She assured me that even though the snippet she'd sent me was an AI voice, that was a choice the author could make. If you preferred a human voice actor instead, that could be arranged.
Finally, I asked if the project could be put on hold because I wasn't able to afford the price she quoted. SURE, she said, but then went on to offer me discounts on doing both Rift and Storm and using voice actors and OHHHHHH but she loved the books so much she was already coming up with ideas for compelling trailers in her head and SOOOO excited to get to work on them.
No. I just didn't answer any of those things and said no, I couldn't do that right now, but thank you for sending the scripts and the audio file and have a good day. No response. Here's where the hurt feelings come in--I wanted it to be real. I wanted her to write back and say she understood or hoped that there would be a third Arcstone book or something. Crickets. Of course, because it wasn't real.
Indie published and self published authors, stay frosty when you open emails. The AI is getting better. The "promoters" are becoming smarter. But at the end of the day, the only people that will promote our work is us...and those three readers of mine. I wish I had a happy ending involving massive real engagement or a movie/TV option, but I don't. The former is a work in progress and the latter would be a scam anyway.
Back to work on the WIP.
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