Article: How AI is helping scammers target authors
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Jun 12, 2026, 2:36:40 AMJun 12
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Turning the page on fraud: How AI is helping scammers target authors
By Eric Volmers
Calgary Herald
By Eric Volmers
Calgary Herald
Published Jun 11, 2026
In late May, an author in Romania and another in Montana both received emails from someone introducing herself as Naomi K. Lewis, acquiring editor for Freehand Books.
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The emails were personalized, suggesting the sender had done some deep research into the authors’ body of work and careers. The novels were named, as were plot details and effusive, ego-boosting praise for the work. “I was struck by the intellectual boldness and cultural reach of what you have set out to articulate,” the Romanian writer was told.
A couple of days later, Lewis herself received an email purportedly from an American literary agent interested in working with her. Lewis, a Calgary writer whose 2019 memoir Tiny Lights for Travellers was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, was told: “What stood out to me immediately is the remarkable depth and longevity of your involvement in the literary world.”
Lewis, who forwarded all three emails to Postmedia, did not respond or even read the email addressed to her. All three were fake, created with the help of artificial intelligence and presumably sent out to lure vulnerable writers into some sort of long con that would eventually involve the exchange of money. Both the Romanian and Montana authors were savvy enough to forward the emails to Lewis’s actual address at Calgary’s Freehand Books, where she is legitimately the acquiring editor. Lewis informed them that they were fake. She also learned that writers had been receiving similar emails from someone claiming to be Deborah Willis, the Giller Prize-longlisted author of Girlfriend on Mars and senior editor and submissions co-ordinator for Freehand. It prompted Willis to put a warning on her Facebook page about the fraud.
“It’s super creepy,” says Lewis. “It just started a week ago, when Debbie and I started getting emails asking, ‘Did you really email me?’ It is really disappointing and sad. Obviously, it’s strange to see your own name being used in that way. At the same time, I’ve been receiving these for a few months, and they have real people’s names on them. That’s part of the scam is that you Google the person and they do really exist, an editor or an agent.”
It is the new reality for writers in the age of AI, which can help scammers craft complex pitches with details scraped from the Internet. Scams targeting writers are nothing new, but the sophistication and sheer number now have writers, editors and publishers spending an undue amount of time sorting through dozens of emails a week to determine which ones are real. The Writer’s Union of Canada posted a warning, which originated from the Australian Society of Authors, suggesting writers be on the lookout for these scams after hearing from members about a “marked uptick in cold emails claiming to be from publishing houses, book marketing and publicity services, or film production companies, offering to publish, promote, or produce an adaptation of their book for a fee.”
The tells are less obvious than before. At one time, these sorts of scams were easy to spot, full of spelling errors or strange formatting and generic greetings. But thanks to AI, these cold emails now seem creepily personal, often offering details of a book or career that make it sound legit.
Theodora Armstrong, a Vancouver-based author and former writing instructor at the University of British Columbia, recently published her debut novel, Welcome to Sunny Town, with Freehand and estimates she gets at least two suspicious emails a day. Most end up in her junk folder, but she feels obligated to look through them in case something legitimate has been sent. The suspicious emails have included one pitching her involvement, for a fee, in a New Orleans book festival, which immediately struck Armstrong as dubious.
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Another came from a “community book retreat” less than a week after Welcome to Sunny Town was released, which made the emailer’s claim that it “genuinely sparked interest among several readers in our community” seem suspicious.
“With this new book out, it’s becoming a little more difficult,” Armstrong says. “I have to read a little more closely. I find that a lot of the emails are promoting some sort of American book festival or American book club. Because my book isn’t available in the States, that for me is the first tell. But they are very sophisticated. They have obviously scraped stuff from the Internet, the book itself, but also looked at the state of my career and made suggestions: How I can do things better. They are quite personal.”
The approach may be sophisticated, but so far it has not been particularly effective, at least in Canada. John Degen, chief executive officer of the Writers’ Union of Canada, says he is constantly fielding questions from members and reviewing emails they send him, but has yet to hear of anyone among the union’s 3,000 writers who has fallen for such a scam. Still, there has been a significant increase in this sort of fraud in the past year and a half. So, while it may not be much of a danger, it is interrupting genuine business. Degen released his own novel, Seldom Seen Road, recently and was approached by a film and television company asking about the rights for the book. The query was genuine, but Degen spent an hour and a half investigating the company to ensure it was legit.
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“Our business has become a lot more complicated because we have to put up these filters now,” he says.
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Fraudsters sending emails under the names of established authors such as Lewis and Willis is not something he has seen before.
Article content
“That’s a new angle: they are spoofing genuine authors and pretending to be them and trying to make contact with other authors or up-and-coming authors and leaning on that community help aspect,” he says.
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Freehand Books is a Calgary-based literary imprint known for building strong relationships with its authors and in the broader literary community. The fact that the names of two of its editors and the company itself have been used in a scam is upsetting, says managing editor Kelsey Attard.
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“We really want to take care of our authors to treat the people who are submitting manuscripts with respect,” she says. “So many of us with and around Freehand are writers, too — not me personally, but most of the rest of us — so we know what it’s like to submit your work and be waiting for someone to send you input on it. Writers want that. They want their writing to connect with people. It’s really upsetting to know that writers are being manipulated, and it’s coming from someone claiming to be Freehand. That’s really upsetting.”
In late May, an author in Romania and another in Montana both received emails from someone introducing herself as Naomi K. Lewis, acquiring editor for Freehand Books.
Article content
The emails were personalized, suggesting the sender had done some deep research into the authors’ body of work and careers. The novels were named, as were plot details and effusive, ego-boosting praise for the work. “I was struck by the intellectual boldness and cultural reach of what you have set out to articulate,” the Romanian writer was told.
A couple of days later, Lewis herself received an email purportedly from an American literary agent interested in working with her. Lewis, a Calgary writer whose 2019 memoir Tiny Lights for Travellers was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, was told: “What stood out to me immediately is the remarkable depth and longevity of your involvement in the literary world.”
Lewis, who forwarded all three emails to Postmedia, did not respond or even read the email addressed to her. All three were fake, created with the help of artificial intelligence and presumably sent out to lure vulnerable writers into some sort of long con that would eventually involve the exchange of money. Both the Romanian and Montana authors were savvy enough to forward the emails to Lewis’s actual address at Calgary’s Freehand Books, where she is legitimately the acquiring editor. Lewis informed them that they were fake. She also learned that writers had been receiving similar emails from someone claiming to be Deborah Willis, the Giller Prize-longlisted author of Girlfriend on Mars and senior editor and submissions co-ordinator for Freehand. It prompted Willis to put a warning on her Facebook page about the fraud.
“It’s super creepy,” says Lewis. “It just started a week ago, when Debbie and I started getting emails asking, ‘Did you really email me?’ It is really disappointing and sad. Obviously, it’s strange to see your own name being used in that way. At the same time, I’ve been receiving these for a few months, and they have real people’s names on them. That’s part of the scam is that you Google the person and they do really exist, an editor or an agent.”
It is the new reality for writers in the age of AI, which can help scammers craft complex pitches with details scraped from the Internet. Scams targeting writers are nothing new, but the sophistication and sheer number now have writers, editors and publishers spending an undue amount of time sorting through dozens of emails a week to determine which ones are real. The Writer’s Union of Canada posted a warning, which originated from the Australian Society of Authors, suggesting writers be on the lookout for these scams after hearing from members about a “marked uptick in cold emails claiming to be from publishing houses, book marketing and publicity services, or film production companies, offering to publish, promote, or produce an adaptation of their book for a fee.”
The tells are less obvious than before. At one time, these sorts of scams were easy to spot, full of spelling errors or strange formatting and generic greetings. But thanks to AI, these cold emails now seem creepily personal, often offering details of a book or career that make it sound legit.
Theodora Armstrong, a Vancouver-based author and former writing instructor at the University of British Columbia, recently published her debut novel, Welcome to Sunny Town, with Freehand and estimates she gets at least two suspicious emails a day. Most end up in her junk folder, but she feels obligated to look through them in case something legitimate has been sent. The suspicious emails have included one pitching her involvement, for a fee, in a New Orleans book festival, which immediately struck Armstrong as dubious.
Article content
Another came from a “community book retreat” less than a week after Welcome to Sunny Town was released, which made the emailer’s claim that it “genuinely sparked interest among several readers in our community” seem suspicious.
“With this new book out, it’s becoming a little more difficult,” Armstrong says. “I have to read a little more closely. I find that a lot of the emails are promoting some sort of American book festival or American book club. Because my book isn’t available in the States, that for me is the first tell. But they are very sophisticated. They have obviously scraped stuff from the Internet, the book itself, but also looked at the state of my career and made suggestions: How I can do things better. They are quite personal.”
The approach may be sophisticated, but so far it has not been particularly effective, at least in Canada. John Degen, chief executive officer of the Writers’ Union of Canada, says he is constantly fielding questions from members and reviewing emails they send him, but has yet to hear of anyone among the union’s 3,000 writers who has fallen for such a scam. Still, there has been a significant increase in this sort of fraud in the past year and a half. So, while it may not be much of a danger, it is interrupting genuine business. Degen released his own novel, Seldom Seen Road, recently and was approached by a film and television company asking about the rights for the book. The query was genuine, but Degen spent an hour and a half investigating the company to ensure it was legit.
Article content
“Our business has become a lot more complicated because we have to put up these filters now,” he says.
Article content
Fraudsters sending emails under the names of established authors such as Lewis and Willis is not something he has seen before.
Article content
“That’s a new angle: they are spoofing genuine authors and pretending to be them and trying to make contact with other authors or up-and-coming authors and leaning on that community help aspect,” he says.
Article content
Article content
Freehand Books is a Calgary-based literary imprint known for building strong relationships with its authors and in the broader literary community. The fact that the names of two of its editors and the company itself have been used in a scam is upsetting, says managing editor Kelsey Attard.
Article content
“We really want to take care of our authors to treat the people who are submitting manuscripts with respect,” she says. “So many of us with and around Freehand are writers, too — not me personally, but most of the rest of us — so we know what it’s like to submit your work and be waiting for someone to send you input on it. Writers want that. They want their writing to connect with people. It’s really upsetting to know that writers are being manipulated, and it’s coming from someone claiming to be Freehand. That’s really upsetting.”
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