Author Scams

Recently, I have been targeted by a number of obvious scams aimed at authors.

The first one was at least frank about seeking my money, as someone emailed me five times to say that my book William Gibson was wonderful and deserved a wider audience, and offered for payment to write a superlative entry on it for Wikipedia which was sure to boost sales. But there are two reality checks on this: first, if I really thought the book merited a Wikipedia entry, I am certainly capable of doing it myself, and doing it much better than some stranger; second, the probability that a book published in 2013, outdated because it does not address Gibson’s publications after 2012, would suddenly become popular because of a Wikipedia entry are extremely small to say the least. But the persistent man kept sending me emails, condescendingly suggesting that I may have inadvertently overlooked the marvelous opportunity he was offering me. Of course, I was ignoring it.

Other scams follow a different pattern: the author claimed to have read one of my books, praises it to the skies, and laments that it has not received sufficient attention; sometimes they simply say that they would like to explore opportunities to further promote the book, and sometimes they claim to represent book clubs with numerous members that would presumably purchase and read the book if they chose to emphasize it. I have never responded to any of these messages, because I know that the response would be to discuss how much money they want from me to bring the book to a wider audience.

Minimal online research indicates that other authors have been subjected to such scams, but as a science fiction scholar (not an obvious person to target), I wonder if I have been singled out for special attention. I once stumbled upon a website that claimed that I was one of the “wealthiest science fiction scholars,” which is simply not true. (For the record, my wife and I are financially secure and live comfortably, but we would never describe ourselves as “wealthy.”) And authors tend to be intelligent people who are unlikely to fall for such schemes – particularly since, in my case as in others, the amount I would be paying the scammer surely would far exceed the money I might earn from additional royalties. Still, I suppose there might be a few naïve and struggling authors who might consider paying someone money to promote their books, and only a few victims are required to keep a scammer in business. Yet one wonders why they are going after authors, since there are numerous reports that, aside from a few superstars, most authors today are having trouble making a living. It might simply be that authors are conspicuous online, since they almost all have websites with contact information, and their professions provide an obvious way to lure them into paying money (unlike, say, accountants, who probably earn much more money than authors but may be hard to locate and cannot credibily be approached by offers to promote their work).

But I have a broader conclusion to draw from my experiences, and those of others: that we are becoming a nation of thieves.

Repeated articles have stated that the number of people working documented jobs is plummeting, and no one knows why.  But the obvious answer is: because increasing numbers of people are turning to criminal careers, which do not show up on official statistics.

From one perspective, crime is a quite desirable occupation: it requires no degrees, no certificates, and no special experience; people do not have to complete an application, provide references, or undergo an interview; they have no boss, can set their own hours for employment, and are free to go on vacation at any time; and there are no annoying forms to fill out or income taxes to play. There are big drawbacks, of course – there is no sick leave, pension plans, or Social Security, and criminals can be arrested, convicted, and sent to prison, but this penalty can long be avoided in an age when crime is prevalent and the resources of law enforcement are limited.

Some people engage in physical crimes – breaking into homes and cars, stealing catalyctic converters, grabbing packages from people’s porches, shoplifting, stealing mail – but these are risky, since cameras are everywhere nowadays and the police will sometimes actively pursue the perpetrators. It is safer to sit at home on a computer and hack into someone’s bank account, steal some useful personal data, or search for email addresses and devise new ways to lure people into sending money to them. It is often difficult to track down and apprehend such people, particularly when they are based in foreign countries, but plenty of Americans are playing this game as well. And I am sure, at least in my case, that I was not receiving messages from working people, since it requires a considerable amount of time to research specific books by an author (because I know that they have never read them) in order to convincingly pretend to be impressed readers anxious to make more people read them. Similarly, stealing catalytic converters or raiding people’s mailboxes enough times to make a living is a full-time job.

I know of no easy solution to this problem, and it may be something that contemporary people will just have to adjust to and deal with. In my childhood, the world suffered from many dangerous and sometimes fatal diseases, but they adjusted to and dealt with the situation. Today, we have eradicated many of these diseases (despite the efforts of anti-vaxxers to bring them back), so adjusting to and dealing with an epidemic of real-life and online crime may represent today’s major challenge.