I doubt that there will be anyone reading this article who hasn’t been targeted by a writing scam. That’s how prevalent and aggressive they are these days.

Fraudsters who prey on writers employ a variety of methods to recruit clients: advertising (especially on Facebook, which is awash in ads for scam publishing service providers), sponsored links on Google (plug “find a publisher” into Google, and the top results will be for scam or vanity publishers), social media activity (watch out for seemingly friendly DM contacts)–and, most often, direct solicitation via email and phone calls purporting to offer publishing or agenting or film adaptation services…and, increasingly, impersonating companies and professionals in those fields.

Real, reputable literary agents and publishers and film production people, by contrast, rarely reach out to writers directly. But while that’s true 99% of the time, you can’t say it never happens. And for writerly activities like conferences, or interview or lecture invites, direct contact is common. So how do you distinguish the rare genuine contact from a scam solicitation? Often, the first clue is the sender’s email address.

Here are some things to watch for. All examples are drawn from reports and complaints received by Writer Beware.

Gmail and Other Non-Professional Email Addresses

A publishing professional, a conference, a radio or TV show, or a professional organization will most likely be emailing from their own or their company’s web domain. It’s possible, of course, that a literary agent might dash off an email from their personal account. But if someone purporting to be a publishing professional emails you from a non-professional address–AOL, Protonmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and the like–it is a pretty strong caution sign.

Over the past year, also, the Gmail addresses almost universally used by the aggressive AI-driven marketing and impersonation scams from Nigeria have become a warning sign all by themselves.

Some examples of non-pro addresses where you’d normally expect a company email domain (especially common with impersonation scams):

• info.us.npr@gmail.com (impersonating NPR with fake interview offers)
• ifcfilmsproduction@gmail.com
• penamerica.event@gmail.com (impersonating the PEN America Literary Gala with fake invites)
• harpercollins.publishers@aol.com
• macmillan@gmail.com
• turininternationalbookfair@gmail.com
• therightsfactoryagency@proton.me (impersonating The Rights Factory literary agency)
• ballyscullionbookfest@gmail.com (impersonating the Ballyscullion Park Book Festival with fake invites)
• amazonstudios@gmail.com

Nigerian book marketing scammers often use two first names, or names that otherwise seem weird. Their Gmail addresses often include numbers (hard to believe there are 8 other Harper Lynn Collinses):

• Judy Chinatown <chinatowncommunityjudy@gmail.com>
• Michael A. Marvellous <michael.a.marvellous.book@gmail.com>
• Freya Gregory’s <freyagreegorys@gmail.com>
• Grace Norah <gracenorah273@gmail.com>
• Lynn Mandi <mandilynn621@gmail.com>
• Santa k.f. Seifeuuyy <santakfseifeuuyy@gmail.com>
• Harper Collinsworth <harpercollinsworthbookexpert@gmail.com>
• Harper Lynn Collins <harperlynncollins09@gmail.com>
• Beloved.Mercy.Co.Organizer PBC <mercybeloved9@gmail.com>

Also popular with Nigerian book marketing scammers: addresses that include their supposed job title:

• judith.dmoderator@gmail.com
• joshua.bookgrowthpartnerships@gmail.com
• patricialaura.marketingspeci@gmail.com
• gracehannah.authorservices@gmail.com
• leatitia.wetsonlitagent@gmail.com
• Kierrabookpromotion006@gmail.com
• chloebennettbookmarketing@gmail.com
• dominichecarinofilmscout@gmail.com

Lookalike Email Domains

Impersonation fraudsters register email domains specifically to send out scam solicitations. The fake email addresses they choose are designed to look like real ones.

It’s important, therefore, to verify any out-of-the-blue publishing-, writing-, or movie rights-related email you receive, especially where you can’t tie it to a contact or submission you yourself made. The genuine email address may be findable on the official company website, or via references to it online; if not, try searching on X (where X = the company name) + email format to see if there are results from sites like RocketReach and ContactOut, which keep track of business email formats. For example, here’s HarperCollins.

Another quick test: load the email domain to see if there’s a website associated with it. Often there will be nothing there–or you may find a placeholder like this one, which was created to impersonate an editor.

Notice also how many of the fake addresses below break up names or phrases with periods (jeff.weber, annejhawkins.literaryagent, etc.). That format is something I see a lot with impersonation scams.

• jeff.weber@thepenguinrandomhouse.com (real email: @penguinrandomhouse.com)
• ebassoff@us-wmeagency.com (real email: @wmeagency.com)
• lexie.smith@lionsgatefilmproduction.com (real email: @lionsgate.com)
• support@wgamembers.org (real email: @wga.org)
• corporate@barnesnobleinfo.com (real email: @barnesandnoble.com)
• bookssubmissions@hachettebookgroup.ink (real email: @hbgusa.com)
• dan.lazar@writershouseliterary.com (real email: @writershouse.com)
• annejhawkins.literaryagent@gmail.com (real email: @jhalit.com)
• megan.lynch@flatironbooks.com.co (real email: @flatironbooks.com)

Sneaky Switcheroos

Some especially sneaky scammers “borrow” the authentic email address, but insert one or two subtle switches: a number interpolated for a letter (Pengu1n), two letters reversed (HarpreCollins), an extra letter added or omitted (Hachett). This kind of subterfuge–famously used by manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini–is especially hard to spot.

This one adds an “s” where an “s” shouldn’t be (real domain: penguinrandomhouse.com):

This one leaves out an “s” (the website at the real domain, parkesmacdonaldproductions.com, includes a warning).

Mismatches and Discrepancies

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but scammer emails often include telltale discrepancies or mismatches between email address and email content. Here, for example, the sender uses the name Nathan Lewis, but the email address belongs to Nathan Wellis or Nathan W. Ellis.

In this example, the sender’s From line (with the double “a” in Caarolyn) didn’t match their signature at the bottom (Carolyn with one “a”).

One name in the email address, another in the body of the email.

Same problem (my emphasis):

In this one, the sender’s email address in the “From” line doesn’t match the email address in their signature.

Just Plain Weirdness

Scam email addresses–especially for the editor impersonation scam that’s become so widespread over the past months–often feature awkward mashups of personal and company names. Beyond the fact that someone from Hachette or Trellis Literary Agency is unlikely to be using a Gmail or AOL address, they also won’t be combining the publisher’s name with their own, or tacking the publisher’s name onto a personal domain. (Here, as above, note the prevalence of periods.)

• shannonkelly.hachette.uk@aol.com
• carolinamancheno.harpercollins@aol.com
• caitlino.thebookgroup@gmail.com
• natalieedwardstrellisliterary@gmail.com
• aevitas.jenmarshall.literayagent@gmail.com (note the mis-spelling of “literary”)
• brendanbpenguinrandomhouse@gmail.com
• stmartins@vicki-lame.com (this domain and the one below resolve to identical placeholder webpages)
• sourcebooks@shana-dreh.com
• saraquery.megibowlitagent@gmail.com

Additional Email Scam-Spotting Tips

Wonky email addresses are just one of many potential scam signs. Others currently popular with publishing scammers include:

Non-typical salutations. Using myself as an example: Dear Victoria Strauss, rather than the more normal Dear Victoria or Dear Ms. Strauss. Ditto for Dear Author. Or no salutation at all. (First name/last name is the one I see most often.)

Extended and apparently accurate discussions of your book’s theme and plot points, coupled with effusive praise. A genuine contact won’t necessarily not include these–but both are established scam M.O.s, and should always prompt extra caution.

Emojis. When I first started getting reports of Nigerian marketing scam emails in the summer of last year, many of them were littered with emojis (you can see an example toward the end of this post). Marketing professionals communicate professionally, which means not writing emails that look like social media posts. I’m not seeing this so often nowadays, but it is still something to watch for, and a big caution sign.

Interminable email exchanges. Nigerian marketing scammers, especially, employ a boiled-frog approach, where they ease you gently toward the actual money ask over the course of multiple, often lengthy emails, with each email re-emphasizing how great they think you are and how excellently they can help you. It’s classic emotional manipulation: the deeper you’re drawn into the interaction, the more invested you become, the more plausible the scammer’s promises start to seem, and the harder it will ultimately be (the scammer hopes) for you to say no.

Insistent nudging. Scammers want to close the deal as fast as possible, so if you don’t respond right away (especially to payment requests) they may repeatedly check back in with “just following up on my last email” or “wondering if you’ve had a chance to evaluate my offer” communications–sometimes within hours of when they last contacted you.

Fees where they aren’t normally charged.This is always a warning sign. For example, real book clubs, radio shows, and conferences don’t charge fees to invited guests.

Non-reversible payment methods. Instead of credit card transactions, scammers will often require payment by methods that are difficult or impossible to dispute or reverse: wire transfers, Upwork or Fiverr invoices, Paypal Friends and Family, apps like Zelle or CashApp.

Invoices that lack vital information like names, addresses, and phone numbers. Scammers want to avoid accountability. Never pay an invoice that doesn’t offer full disclosure of the provider, their business, and how to contact the person.

The post The First Clue to an Email Scam May Be the Address appeared first on Writer Beware.

In December 2024, the FBI arrested the CEO, VP, and an associate of PageTurner Press and Media, one of the most prolific and predatory of the many Philippine publishing scams. The government determined that over the course of six years, PageTurner–which did business in the Philippines under the name Innocentrix–defrauded nearly 900 writers of more than $48 million.

The gears of US justice grind slowly (especially these days), but in early May, PageTurner CEO Michael Cris Traya Sordilla pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one of money laundering. Although each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the government’s sentencing guidelines in Sordilla’s plea agreement suggest he will serve much less time.

The plea agreement also requires Sordilla to pay millions of dollars in restitution to his victims. Will anyone ever receive those payments, though? Today’s guest post by retired Professor of Economics Trent Bertrand takes a look at that question, using the PageTurner prosecution as a lens to examine how the prevalence of plea bargains in US criminal prosecutions often serves the needs of prosecutors and defense attorneys rather than the victims of all-too-common frauds. For Mr. Bertrand, the issue is not abstract, as you’ll see from his bio at the bottom of this post.

Can a Flawed US Legal System Discourage Fraud?

by Trent Bertrand

Scams have become so commonplace in the United States that the vast majority are never investigated or prosecuted. Though various administrations have highlighted the need to address widespread fraud, little attention has been given to a basic flaw in the US criminal legal system in either deterring fraud or bringing justice to its victims.

Most criminal prosecutions (some 96-98%) result in plea bargains rather than jury trials. It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that the trial by jury criminal justice system has been replaced by a plea bargain system. The flaw in the system results from what the economics literature calls the ‘principal agent’ problem, where the incentives for the agents empowered to implement systems or policies do not align well with the principal goals of those systems or policies. The plea bargain system is better designed to meet the goals of the agents negotiating these pleas, i.e. the prosecutors and the defense attorneys, than it is in meeting the twin goals of deterring similar crimes and bringing justice to the victims.

The key feature of the system is a combination of sentencing guidelines that fall far short of the maximum sentences for the offenses being charged. This part of the plea bargain fully meets the needs of prosecutors to obtain guilty pleas without the risks and costs of trials, and for the defense attorneys to charge high fees for protecting their clients from the threat of those statutory maximum jail sentences. Plea bargains in fraud cases also include ‘orders for restitution’ for the victims, but with little incentive for the fraudsters to pay restitution, especially if the main culprits have laundered the money abroad and have returned to their home country.

In this article, I illustrate just how flawed the system is based on the likely outcome of the prosecution under way in San Diego of four defendants in the PageTurner Press and Media scam.

Arrests, a Guilty Plea, and a Problem of Enforcement

This scam took advantage of elderly authors anxious to get their works more widely recognized. The lead conspirator, Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, operated a call center from the Philippines to bilk some 800+ mainly senior authors of about $48 million with false claims about having their works published and marketed by reputable publishers or highlighted in films and telvision series.

Against the odds, three of the conspirators were arrested in San Diego in December of 2024, with a fourth indicted a year later, in December 2025. Three of them remain in custody.

On April 16, 2026, Sordilla signed a plea bargain arranged by the prosecutor Oleksandra Johnson and the Defense Attornery Antonio Yoon [USA vs.Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, Case No. 24CR2712-JLS, Plea Agreement, Filed May 6,2026, S.D. California]. The Sordilla plea bargain includes a recommended sentence based on the Federal guidelines for sentencing established for the two offenses, wire/mail fraud and money laundering. While the statutory maximum is 40 years in prison, the recommended sentence by the negotiating parties in the Sordilla plea is 33 months in prison. The actual sentence is at the sole discretion of the presiding judge but the record shows that the judges often reduce rather than enhance the recommended sentence.

Sordilla has been in custody since he was arrested in December of 2024. If, as is customary, he is given credit for time already served, he may have at most a few months more in jail if the plea bargain sentencing recommendations are accepted by the judge.

The government also confiscated over 6 million dollars held by the firms set up by the defendants as part of their scam. Sordilla ordered his coconspirators to launder some $42 million for deposit in bank accounts in the Philippines and, as part of the plea agreement will pay the $2.7 million that he claimed to have personally received as a fine.

What is in this plea bargain for the victims? Sordilla also agreed to an order of restitution of some $48.7 million equal to the amount known to have been fraudulently extracted from the victims. This may turn out to be just another gift to lawyers who may be hired by victims to try without much prospect of success to enforce the order of restitution with both the money and the culprits already outside the United States. The result of the plea bargain could well be a get out of jail card for a main conspirator soon to be living back in the Philippines with access to the bulk of the $42 million laundered abroad.

The DOJ’s announcement of the plea bargain [US Attorney’s Office, S.D. California, “Defendant Pleads Guilty in $48 Million Nationwide Book Publishing Scam Targeting Hundreds of Seniors”, May 7, 2026} puts a rosy spin on the outcome. US Attorney Adam Gordon is quoted as saying “The defendants didn’t just steal money- they stole dreams leaving victims with empty promises and devastating losses. Today’s guilty plea delivers justice for the victims…”. Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily of the FBI San Diego Field Office is quoted as saying “Today’s guilty plea is the beginning of holding all those involved in this Hollywood dream scheme accountable for their crimes. FBI San Diego, along with our law enforcement partners, remains steadfast in our pursuit of justice of any scammers attempting to steal Americans’ hard-earned money.” Would that it were true! A jail term of three years in prison and unenforceable order of restitution is a poor excuse for justice.

What Might Better Serve PageTurner (and Other) Fraud Victims?

Is there hope that common sense justice might be salvaged from this flawed system?

As with all federal plea bargains, the judge has the final say on sentencing and the defendant does not have a right to change his guilty plea. A solution would be to sentence the defendant to a significantly longer jail sentence, with parole or supervised release in line with the present guidelines contingent on meeting reasonable levels of restitution. There is scope for doing this under the present system, but the fly in the ointment is the short sentences prescribed under the guidelines. If Sordilla is facing just a few more months in prison, there is little incentive for him to scramble to fund the restitution fund in order to gain parole a few months ahead of his scheduled release.

The judge could set aside the plea agreement sentencing recommendation and impose a much longer sentence. In the PageTurner case, Sordilla is obligated under an addendum to the plea agreement to disclose all assets he owns or has transferred to other parties since the commencement of the scam. He is reportedly a very wealthy businessman in the Philippines, owner of several enterprises and well known for his philanthropic activities. A good starting point for putting common sense back into the system would be a lengthy sentence, say 30 years instead of the statutory maximum of 40 years, with parole provided in line with the present sentencing guidelines conditional on payment of a substantial restitution, perhaps $30 million rather than the unenforceable $48.7 million he agreed to in the plea bargain.

Such a sentence would provide the missing incentive for Sordilla to come up with the restitution funds, even if this implied the same sort of ‘devastating losses’ he imposed on his victims. This decision might be appealed by Sordilla, since the plea bargain gives Sordilla the right to appeal a sentence far out of line with the sentencing guidelines or to claim ineffective counsel, the two exceptions to the ‘no appeal’ rule included in the plea agreement. But appeals can fail, and such an action by the judge could bring justice to the victims.

Relying on a courageous judge to use his or her power over sentencing to create a significant incentive for the culprit to provide restitution funds may be wishful thinking. As emphasized in this analysis, the plea bargain system is designed to meet the needs of agents often more interested in racking up a conviction while minimizing demands on prosecutorial, court and prison resources than in providing justice to the victims. If justice is to be had in the PageTurner scam, the judge would have to craft the needed tools on his or her own and deviate from the Federal sentencing guidelines, albeit for a good reason. That is why the legal system for addressing fraud is inherently flawed. Unless the present system of sentencing guidelines is reformed to provide parole or supervised release only after the order of restitution is satisfied, the present legal system will continue to fail to provide deterrence to fraud or justice for its victims.

The lack of incentives for funding restitution by the guilty fraudsters is not the only flaw in the system. The legal literature also highlights the use of the system to entice innocent parties to plead guilty with greatly reduced sentences via plea bargains rather than to face the possibility of much harsher penalties at trial [Carissa Byrne Hessick’s book, Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad Deal provides an example]. This has some similar characteristics to the flaw analyzed in this article, in that this racks up recorded convictions for prosecutors and successful mitigation of potentially harsher sentences by defense attorneys without deterring crime or bringing justice to the victims.

What would a sensible reform of the dominant plea bargain justice system for fraud look like if incentives with the goals of a commonsense justice system were not so misaligned? A starting point would be to recognize the dominance of plea bargains and specifically define the sentencing guidelines as a recommendation for parole or supervised release conditional on meeting all the conditions of the plea bargain, including satisfaction of the order of restitution. Such an outcome would not be an outlier based on a single judge refusing to see deterrence of crime and justice for victims swept aside. The revised Federal Guidelines would instead create a strong incentive for the those admitting guilt to make restitution to their victims for their crimes.

Trent Bertrand is a retired Professor of Economics who has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, Queen’s University, McGill University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Hawaii as well as participating in University Development Programs at Thammasat University in Thailand with Ford and Rockefeller Foundation support. A close friend and colleague of his at the SUNY Binghamton Department of Economics passed away with a broken spirit due to a belated realization that he had fallen victim to the PageTurner fraudsters.

The post Guest Blog Post: Can a Flawed US Legal System Discourage Fraud? A Look at the PageTurner Scam Prosecution appeared first on Writer Beware.

Recent developments in the world of copyright have been making many writers rethink their attitudes toward copyright registration and reversion of publishing rights.

Because many artificial intelligence companies used pirated books to train their large language models, there are now a growing number of copyright infringement class action lawsuits against them. While it is still undetermined whether these companies’ use of the copyrighted material was fair use or not, it has become clear that the use of copyrighted material from pirate libraries is a no-no, especially when the method involves torrenting, which means the companies participated in redistributing the materials.

The first of these lawsuits, Anthropic v. Bartz, just held the final Fairness Hearing on a class action settlement and, although there were some minor factors which delayed Judge Martinez-Olguin’s approval, it looks as if the class action settlement will be approved and 1.5 billion dollars will eventually be paid out to claimants who met the definition of the class.

Needless to say, this will be an unprecedented class action settlement involving copyright. As currently calculated, claimants for each copyrighted work that was pirated by Anthropic will share $3,100. If the work was self-published or the work’s rights had reverted to the author, they will receive the entire amount. It’s safe to say this is the first time the average writer will benefit from their copyright registration in any substantial way.

But not every writer benefited, for a number of reasons; the primary reason was that the book had to have had its copyright registered with the US Copyright Office. The definition of the class for the Anthropic class action was:

• have been downloaded by Anthropic from LibGen or PiLiMi;
• have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN);
• have been registered with the United States Copyright Office within five years of the work’s first publication; and
• have been registered before being downloaded by Anthropic, or within three months of the work’s first publication.

Of the estimated seven million works that were pirated by Anthropic, less than 500,000 works were part of the class. As of the May 14 settlement hearing, the number of works claimed was 447,576. That’s about 7% of the pirated works.

The requirement that a work have an ISBN or ASIN is essentially unfair because it only recognizes individual books, but at least it doesn’t discriminate against self-published works. There is nothing in US Copyright Law that distinguishes between “books” and other literary works that may have a registered copyright. The requirement is only to make identifying works and verifying author and publisher easier for the settlement administrators. As I say, though, most books do have one or the other, even if the ASIN is connected to long out of print book being sold used. Presumably some book authors have managed to avoid Amazon entirely, but they must be a small number.

Another similar class action lawsuit, Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. was filed on May 5 by a bunch of publishers and Scott Turow as the only named author. It restricts the class even further. The proposed class definition is:

All legal or beneficial owners of registered copyrights, in whole or in part, for any book possessing an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or journal article possessing a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), that Meta, without such owner’s authorization, (1) reproduced by downloading during torrenting and/or copying of web scrapes; or (2) distributed during torrenting; or (3) reproduced in connection with the development and/or training of a Llama Model. For purposes of this definition, copyrighted works are limited to those registered with the United States Copyright Office (a) within five years of the work’s publication and before being reproduced or distributed by Meta, or (b) within three months of publication.

The main difference from the Anthropic class is the limitation to only books that have ISBNs. ASINs don’t count, cutting out a large majority of self and indie published works, even if they do have registered copyrights. You can understand, I suppose, why the plaintiff publishers want the class restricted to the books that they published, but it’s even more grossly unfair to ebooks that were published without ISBNs because ISBNs are only important for physical book distribution. It’s hard to justify limiting a class action this way when, for all practical purposes, the fairer Anthropic settlement’s class definition worked (fingers crossed).

So will there now be a rush by indie authors to purchase ISBNs? It makes sense if, for example, you claimed a book without an ISBN in the Anthropic settlement, since there’s a good chance it will turn up again in the Turow class. Like with copyright registration and rights reversion, the effort and outlay start to look worthwhile. Large copyright class actions and settlements change everything.

Postscript. The fundamental problem is that there is no comprehensive registry for published works.

The post Has the Anthropic Settlement Changed Everything? appeared first on Writer Beware.

Have you recently received an email invitation to be a featured guest at a book festival or conference event? Or to be interviewed on a radio show or podcast?

Literary agents, publishers, and major production companies don’t typically cold-call authors. That unexpected “endorsement” from Amazon Studios, or expression of interest from a Big 5 editor, is never going to turn out to be legit. But literary events and interviewers do reach out to writers directly. Even in our current age of hyper-aggressive solicitation scams, that out-of-the-blue conference or interview invite might just be the real thing.

Unfortunately, AI-driven impersonation scams have glommed onto these events in a big way. I’m getting a growing number of reports from writers who’ve received credible-seeming invitations that have turned out to be completely fake. It’s yet another area where writers must be extremely careful not to take anything at face value.

Below, the scams’ M.O….and their provenance (which, if you’re a regular reader, won’t surprise you).

Book Festival and Conference Impersonations

Here’s the solicitation one writer received from, supposedly, the Ballyscullion Park Book Festival.

The writer was flattered. But…given that they were in the USA and the Ballyscullion festival is in Northern Ireland, how would attendance work, exactly? Not to worry, “Rosalind Mulholland” explained: “We do offer a trusted representative option, where your work is presented on your behalf, your book is displayed, and readers are engaged with just as intentionally, so you can still benefit from the festival without the stress of travel.”

With the writer reassured, “Rosalind” got to the point. (Note the first line of the email below: this kind of faux-empathetic engagement is a very common opener for AI-generated responses to authors’ concerns or questions. The use of “thoughtful”, also, is an AI tell: I see it constantly in the AI scam emails authors share with me.)

Dismayed, the author wrote back that they couldn’t afford that kind of money. Once again, “Rosalind” had a solution: a “Mini Special Placement” for just $175 (scammers are often willing to reduce the price for authors who object). The author was also asked for several items to “properly represent” their book at the festival, including a “book mockup” and a book trailer: items the scammer was betting that the author didn’t have on hand and thus could potentially be charged to produce. The initial fee demand is often just an opener, which is why scammers are so willing to reduce it: it tells the scammer whether the writer is willing to pay, and therefore may be willing to pay more.

Here’s the payment info the scammer sent–wire transfer, which scammers are fond of because it can’t generally be disputed or reversed.

Again, if you’ve been reading here for a while, this will look familiar: a third-party payee, a Nigerian name, and one of the Nigerian scammers’ two favorite banks (the other is Wells Fargo). I’m guessing this email wasn’t AI-produced, but dashed off by the scammer themself: notice how their previously flawless English slips a little.

I’ve seen similar solicitations impersonating the Turin International Book Fair, the LA Times Festival of Books, the Pike’s Peak Writers Conference, the Nantucket Book Festival, and the PEN America Literary Gala, all with similarly bogus Gmail addresses: turininternationalbookfair@gmail.com, eventinfo.latimes.gmail.com, authors.ppwc.net@gmail.com, andreaassistantorganizer@gmail.com, karen.mehiel.penamerica.event@gmail.com. Doubtless there are many more.

Radio Show Impersonations

The M.O. here is basically the same: a flattering email invitation from a radio show or station the writer will easily be able to confirm is real. In this case, LBC Radio:

On further correspondence, the writer discovered that there was a “standard participation fee” for the interview. “This,” the scammer explained, “covers production, placement, and promotion across our audience network to ensure your feature receives strong visibility and engagement.” It’s typical scammer gaslighting, intended to soothe any suspicion of pay-to-play: you’re not paying for the interview, just for promotion of the interview! It’s in your best interest!

The writer, who had quickly identified the scam, requested payment information. And just as you’d expect:

The payment demands for this scam differ; several have a tiered fee structure, like the one in the email below. Notice the gaslighting about fees, and also the classic AI smarmy response to author caveats in the first line (the author had flatly refused to pay for anything).

I’ve also seen solicitations from Magic UK Radio, 2GB Sydney Radio, Newsradio WTAM 1100 in Cleveland OH, GB News Radio in the UK, the BBC, iHeart Radio, various shows on NPR, the Waterstones podcast, Mutiny Radio, Monacle Radio, and WYPR in Baltimore MD–all from bogus Gmail addresses like the ones above. Canada’s CBC has also been impersonated by this scam.

What to Look For

Since, as noted above, interviews and conference/festival appearances are an area where unexpected emails are common, how to distinguish the flood of scams from contacts that are real? Look for the indicators below.

• A Gmail, or occasionally an AOL, email address where you’d normally expect the contact to come from a company or event email domain. Visit the event or radio show website to see if you can verify what the real email address is.
• A non-typical salutation. Using myself as an example: Dear Victoria Strauss, rather than Dear Victoria or Dear Ms. Strauss. Or Dear Author. Or no salutation at all. First name/last name is the one I see most often; that’s what both of the solicitations above used.
• An extended discussion of your book’s theme or plot points, and/or effusive praise (as in the radio show solicitation above). A genuine invite won’t necessarily not include these–but both are established AI scam M.O.s, and should always prompt extra caution.
• Fees where they aren’t normally charged. Neither radio shows nor book festivals require payment from invited guests. But a scammer will always wind up asking for money–even if it takes several email exchanges for that to become apparent.
• Be wary of these payment methods, which are commonly used by scammers because unlike credit card transactions, they are difficult or impossible to reverse: wire transfers, Upwork or Fiverr invoices, Paypal Friends and Family. Lately I’m also seeing payment requests via a platform called Coachli; there’s nothing fraudulent about the platform itself, as far as I know, but it is a platform specifically tailored to Nigerian and African service and content providers, and I’ve documented several Nigerian scams that have used it.

The post Book Festival Scams, Interview Fakes: Two New AI-Driven Impersonation Scams to Avoid appeared first on Writer Beware.

The deadline to file a claim in the $1.5 billion Bartz v. Anthropic copyright settlement passed at midnight on March 30, 2026. Now that all claims have been filed, I’m taking a look at where things stand and what’s yet to come.

If you need a refresh, my backgrounder on the settlement and the class action lawsuit that spawned it is here.

The Fairness Hearing is currently scheduled for May 14…

…though it could be further delayed. It’s already been pushed back once.

The hearing is a final step in the process of approving or rejecting the settlement. The court considers objections, opt-outs, attorneys’ fees, and the fairness of the settlement as a whole. Per the judge’s order, class members who’ve filed objections can speak at the hearing via Zoom (there’s a Zoom link in the order). I’ve heard from a couple of people who were hoping to attend in person; I don’t know what the status of that is.

Payouts to class members will be issued only after the judge has granted final approval, and any appeals of the settlement have been resolved. There’s currently no timeline for that; you can ignore the August 10 estimate in settlement FAQ #35, which was optimistic even last September when the FAQ was created. So don’t expect to get a check (or checks: payments may be issued in installments) anytime soon. On the plus side, the settlement fund, into which Anthropic is paying in installments, will be earning interest, so any delays will increase individual payments.

Disputes between rightsholders will be resolved by a court-appointed Special Master.

Class participation has been robust

The pirate datasets that Anthropic used for training comprised around seven million works. Because the settlement’s definition of the class excluded foreign works and works without a US copyright registration–with such works representing the vast majority of the pirated works–the estimated number of works eligible to be incuded in the settlement was only 500,000. The finalized list of eligible works wound up slightly smaller, at 482,460. (Settlement FAQs #51 and #52 explain how the list was compiled.)

According to the motion for final approval,

The Class’s participation in the Settlement has been outstanding. As of March 19, there are 99,450
claims for 264,809 Works, representing 54% of the Works List. By contrast, there are 350 opt-outs (less than 0.5% of the Works List) and 41 objections (only 32 of which are from Class Members).

If you’re wondering why participation of just over 54% qualifies as outstanding, participation in class action settlements is typically extremely low–below 10%, according to some estimates. Average payouts are correspondingly small. The Anthropic settlement, by contrast, guarantees a payout of at least $3,000 per eligible work–and unlike many other class actions, the settlement fund is non-reversionary, which means that any leftover funds will be distributed to class members, potentially making the payout even higher. Though many authors will have to split their payout with their publishers, the unusually large payout, along with major publicity about the settlement and extensive outreach by authors’ groups and others, has incentivized response.

The number of claims will certainly have risen in the two weeks between the filing of the motion and the March 30 deadline. Will they come close to the full number of eligible works? My bet is no, but stay tuned.

Lawyers’ fees have been reduced

Class counsel initially requested a fee of 20% of the settlement fund ($300 million plus several million in expenses), with a quarter of that amount going to the several additional law firms brought on to handle administration of the settlement. The original judge in the case (Judge Alsup, who retired at the end of December 2025), was extremely blunt in his opposition to this request, especially regarding payment to the proliferating law firms.

In a filing on March 20, class counsel capitulated, cutting their request nearly in half:

Plaintiffs move for (1) 12.5 percent of the $1.5+ billion Settlement Fund in attorneys’ fees
to Class Counsel; (2) reimbursement of $2,779,950.26 in litigation expenses incurred by Class
Counsel; (3) a cost reserve of $18,220,000 for future expenses, including payment to the Settlement
Administrator; and (4) service awards of $50,000 to each Class Representative.

Average lawyers’ fees in this type of class action typically range between 25%-35%.

Macmillan’s promise re: failure to register copyright

An unpleasant corollary of the Anthropic settlement has been writers’ discovery that their publishers may not have registered their copyrights as required by their contracts, making those works ineligible for the settlement even though they were part of the pirated datasets used by Anthropic. Alone among such publishers AFAIK, Macmillan has promised to address this lapse. From Publishers Lunch:

On that front, at least, there is some good news for Macmillan authors. The company shares with PL that it has been communicating to authors and agents who have inquired about unregistered copyrights, acknowledging, “From what we currently understand, this was largely our mistake and we take full responsibility. If your work was excluded from the settlement for this reason, we will make you whole by paying you what you otherwise would have been paid under the settlement.”

I’ve seen confirmation of this promise in a recent agency email.

It’s more complicated than just making payments for unregistered books, however. Macmillan will have to figure out whether the works were among the seven million included in the datasets. As far as I know, only one of the two datasets used by Anthropic (LibGen) is publicly available.

Anthropic wants to consolidate cases

Several authors who opted out of the settlement subsequently filed infringement lawsuits against Anthropic and several other AI companies. The lawsuits were filed as a group, but not as a class, with the plaintiffs seeking individualized awards of statutory damages to be determined by a jury.

In a March 25 filing, Anthropic gave notice that it has moved to sever these lawsuits’ claims against it from the claims against the other companies and, if severance is granted, that it will move to consolidate the claims with Bartz. While consolidation would presumably limit those authors’ restitution to the amount guaranteed by the settlement, which is considerably less than the up to $150,000 per work in statutory damages the authors are seeking, that’s less than pocket change to Anthropic, so I’d guess that it mostly doesn’t want to have to deal with the legal hassle of these individual suits. (The new judge in the case, Judge Martinez-Olguin, has indicated that she’s unlikely to grant Anthropic’s request.)

One objection to the settlement could make a significant difference…if the court agrees

In addition to claims and opt-outs, there have been objections to the settlement. As noted above, as of March 19 the number of objections stood at 41, 32 of which were from class members.

The motion summarizes these, starting on page 25, including those filed under seal (the court has ordered that these be unsealed, but as of this writing, most aren’t yet available on the docket). They include objections to the amount of the settlement (either that the total amount is inadequate or that the per-work award isn’t sufficient), objections to the amount of attorneys’ fees, objections to the court-approved notice sent to class members and/or the way it was distributed, objections from writers who missed the opt-out deadline and are seeking an exception, miscellaneous objections including one arguing that books that serve a “more important function” should recieve a higher payout than “fiction and humor” books (!), objections to the inclusion of publishers in the award distribution, and objections seeking to expand the class definition by including foreign and non-copyright registered works.

Regarding the latter two issues, one objection is especially interesting. Filed by law professor Lea Bishop, this objection takes issue not only with publishers’ inclusion in the distribution plan and the sharply-limited class definition that locks thousands of pirated works out of the settlement, but with class representation, alleging that class counsel and publishers coordinated to enable publishers to insert themselves as payees (in a post on the Authors Cuild’s discussion forum, the AG has disputed this characterization). The entire objection is worth reading, but here’s the basic argument:

Excluding publishers would obviously raise the payouts to authors. But including foreign and unregistered works would vastly expand the scope of the settlement, adding tens of thousands if not millions of works. If you’re thinking that would in turn reduce payouts, the terms of the settlement ensure otherwise (see page 13):

Finally, $1.5 billion (plus accrued interest) is the minimum size of the Settlement Fund….If the Works List ultimately exceeds 500,000 works, then Anthropic will pay an additional $3,000 per work that Anthropic adds to the Works List above 500,000 works.

This would be the exact nightmare Anthropic agreed to the settlement to prevent.

For that and other reasons, I’m thinking it’s a long shot. Ms. Bishop has asked to speak and present at the Fairness Hearing, but the judge has denied her request because she “is not a member of the class and therefore lacks standing to object to the settlement.”

Once again–stay tuned!

The post Anthropic Copyright Settlement: April Update appeared first on Writer Beware.

I’ve recently gotten a slew of reports of emails purporting to be from editors at Big 5 and other large publishers, in which the supposed editor expresses interest in the writer’s work and asks whether they have a literary agent.

I’ve posted a number of examples below. Apologies for so many images, but I wanted you to see, beyond the gen AI personalization and praise, how similar they are–including the identical phrases I’ve highlighted in red (I’ve redacted the authors’ details, along with information specific to their books).

I’ve seen additional emails–with the same highlighted phrases–using the names of Gabriella Mongelli of Hachette, Sarah Peed of PRH, Jesse Richards of Workman Publishing, Masie Cochran of Tin House, and Megan Tingley of Little, Brown. No doubt there are others. (UPDATE: Adding Brendan Deneen of Blackstone Publishing, Rosa Schierenberg of Viking Fiction, Viengsamai Fetters of Kensington, Liese Meyer and Asya Muchnick of Little, Brown, Jennifer Brehl of HarperCollins, Anna Michels of Sourcebooks, Laurie Johnson of Severn House, and Daphne Durham, Maddie Caldwell, and Megan Wenerstrong, all of PRH.) (ANOTHER UPDATE: I’m no longer adding names here, thanks to the extreme prevalence of this scam (see yet another update at the bottom of this post–though I am adding them to Writer Beware’s Impersonation List.)

As you will probably have gathered, this is a referral scam–actually a double referral scam, as you’ll see below. It appears to be yet another variant of the prolific AI-driven scams from Nigeria.

Referral 1: A Fake Literary Agent

I heard from three writers who responded to the initial solicitation, and exchanged several emails with the supposed editor before the scammer got to the point: recommending “one of our company’s private and reliable literary agents”. (Note: literary agents do not work for publishers. That would be the opposite of their actual function: to advocate on behalf of authors).

• “Rosemary Brosnan” recommended Leslie James, Literary Agent (lesliejames.agent@gmail.com).
• “Alessandra Balzer” recommended Wreth Maine, Literary Agent (wrethmaine@gmail.com).
• “Gabriella Mongelli” recommended James Mustelier, Literary Agent (jamesmustelier.literaryagent@gmail.com).

The first two “agent” names are fictional; a websearch on them turns up nothing. James Mustelier, however, is a real agent with The Bent Agency, whose identity has been appropriated by the scammer. (UPDATE: “Megan Tingley” is referring to Sara Megibow, Literary Agent, at a really extravagantly fake email address: saraquery.megibowlitagent@gmail.com. Like James Mustelier Sara Megibow is a real agent with the Megibow Literary Agency.)

The three authors bowed out at the agent referral stage, and didn’t take the scam any farther. But I like to see where things go, and I’m always up for a challenge…so I contacted Leslie James myself, pretending to have been referred by “Rosemary”. Leslie replied warmly within a few hours (fast responses are a hallmark of this type of scam; they don’t want to waste any time getting your money, which is also why they keep nudging you if you don’t respond right away).

Here is my query (the attached manuscript is a trunk ms. donated by a friend of Writer Beware for use in such situations; it has no similarity to my plot summary).

You’ll notice that I’ve taken no trouble to conceal my identity–using my real name, email address (which I’ve redacted), and signature, which includes two links to Writer Beware. Along with the patently ridiculous query, this is an AI test: if these exchanges were monitored in any meaningful way, the scammer might cut off contact at this point.

At any rate, Leslie did identify a problem with my query–though not that my bloated fantasy novel ripped off the plot of a popular TV show. “After going through the query letter,” she wrote, “I noticed that it does not currently meet the standard format we would typically need for a strong submission to a major publisher such as HarperCollins.” (No kidding). “If you don’t mind, I can connect you with a professional consultant who has experience helping authors refine their query letters and prepare their manuscripts for submission.” Once my query was fixed, Leslie promised, “we can move forward with the submission process”.

This is at least a little clever: the referral to the “professional” isn’t a kissoff, but is framed as an intermediate step toward a reward down the road. It’s a tried and true referral technique, used by, among others, the myriad of fake literary agencies that referred writers to fraudulent editing service Edit Ink.

Referral 2: A Fake Book Doctor

The recommended professional consultant: Allie Oosta, Book Curator Doctor. This too appears to be an impersonation (there’s a LinkedIn for an Allie Oosta who’s an executive with Amazon Fashion); Fake Allie also is associated with the tipped reviewer scam.

I emailed Fake Allie. She responded within the hour, inviting me to send my query, which I did. Here’s her response, which again took less than an hour to get to me. As with Leslie, neither my excessive word count nor my improbable plot summary are a problem.

I could definitely afford it, I responded (so kind of her to ask!). Could she send me information for a bank transfer? (Note: never pay with bank or wire transfer! Unlike credit card charges, such payments can’t be reversed. I ask for this only because I’m collecting information and have no intention of paying.) She promptly provided it.

Once I get scammers to hand over their bank account info, I’m done with them. Being ignored makes them sad, however, and Allie emailed several times over the next few days to ask, plaintively, why I was ignoring her.

I also contacted “agent” Wreth Maine. His or her response was a bit different from Allie’s.

Hmmm. Maybe a human is monitoring things after all?

Spotting the Scam

Judging by the number of reports I’m getting, and the growing number of editor names involved, this is currently a very active scam.

Structurally, it’s similar to the Famous Author scam; an initial friendly solicitation, followed by a referral to a literary agent, who in turn refers to an editor or marketer who charges a fee. The only difference is that the initial contact comes from a scammer impersonating an editor, rather than a well-known author. In this circular process, the same scammer (or the same group of scammers) inhabits every persona, and writers are handed from one to the next, always arriving at a point where they have to pay.

If you see the emails all together, as in the screenshots at the top of this post, it’s obvious that they are using the same template, although personalized to the recipient. One email on its own, however, might seem at least somewhat plausible. But though it’s hard to conclusively say “never” in publishing, it is extremely unlikely that an editor at a major publishing house will contact you out of the blue, let alone invest so many paragraphs in summarizing and praising your work: these are busy people, and in any case, editors expect writers to come to them, not the other way around. Especially nowadays, with scams–in particular impersonation scams–being so prevalent, any emails like the ones above really can be dismissed outright as fraudulent. At the very least, they should be treated with extreme skepticism. And the moment money is mentioned, you should bail.

There’s also the matter of the email addresses. A genuine contact from an editor from Macmillan or Bloomsbury or HarperCollins would come from a company email address, not a Gmail or AOL address or a weird mashup like the fake addresses for Rosemary Brosnan and Alessandra Balzer, in which the recipient is “harpercollins” and the domain is the editor’s name. Those domains actually are registered, by the way; it’s common practice for scammers to register fake domain names in order to be able to email from them. This scammer seems to be fond of Squarespace.

There are even “coming soon” placeholder pages. Again, though, in terms of plausibility: how concidental is it that editor Alessandra Balzer would have registered her personal domain name just three days before contacting you? (The Alessandra Balzer example at the top of this post arrived on March 16.)

Finally, if you’re still in doubt, you can contact the publisher and ask. Most publishers are now extremely aware of the impersonation scam problem; all the majors have fraud alert pages (here’s HarperCollins’s), and are very willing to respond to questions.

And of course, you can contact me.

On payment, a few scam tips (other than the fact that there should never be a fee or purchase requirement associated with traditional publication or literary agent representation):

• As noted above, never pay for a publishing-related service via bank or wire transfer, because such payments can’t be reversed.
• When offering or demanding bank transfer, Nigerian scammers favor Wells Fargo and Lead Bank (I’ve collected dozens of examples).
• Be suspicious if you’re asked to pay via PayPal using the friends and family option. Scammers like this for the same reason they like bank transfer: these payments can’t be disputed.
• When I first started tracking Nigerian scams, many demanded payment to third parties via Upwork or Fiverr profiles. This seems to be less common now, but is still a caution sign.
• I’m seeing more payment requests routed through a platform called Coachli. There’s nothing fraudulent about the platform itself, as far as I know, but it is a platform specifically tailored to Nigerian and African service and content providers, and I’ve documented several Nigerian scams that have used it.
• If a provider invoices you from a payment platform like Payoneer, be extremely suspicious if the invoice lacks important information like a provider name and a description of services, or if the service description doesn’t match the service you want to buy. These are all problems I’ve seen with invoices from scammers.

UPDATE 6/30/26: In the weeks since I wrote this post, this scam has become incredibly widespread. I’ve gotten more than 175 reports of it. Exposure, on this blog and elsewhere, hasn’t incentivized the scammers to slow down: I’m currently getting two to three reports every day, which I’m certain is just a fraction of the true volume. Most writers who contact me have either spotted the scam or are asking for confirmation, but I’ve also heard from several writers who lost money to the editing scheme that’s the goal of the scam.

I’m adding publishers’, editors’, and agents’ names to my Impersonation List as I receive reports.

Initially, the scam focused entirely on major publishing houses and their imprints. Now, though, I’m increasingly getting reports of impersonated editors from smaller publishers, such as Dundurn Press, Black Lawrence Press, and Severn House.

The post Watch Out For This Scam Impersonating Editors at Major Publishing Houses appeared first on Writer Beware.