You may know that I am thrilled to be writing a non-fiction book. I’m planning to update you about it soon.

Right now, the important thing to know is that I’m only half done researching and writing my book. It is NOT published.

However, yesterday I received my first author scam from someone claiming my book came across their desk. In the immortal words of Navin Johnson and shared with his high level of enthusiasm and excitement:

I’m somebody now! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity…that makes people.
Things are going to start happening to me now!

I’ve written extensively about scams targeting audiobook narrators. I thought it would be helpful for me to post the message and show the ways I knew it was from a crook.

 

Message Text

Here’s the picture of the sender’s email address and subject.

The email contained the following text. I won’t enable the links, but I enlarged the signature box so you could read it.

Hello,

I hope you are having a good week.

My name is Philip from the Author Credibility Society. I am reaching out because your book came across our desk recently, and we wanted to get in touch regarding your work as a writer.

We are currently putting together the upcoming lineup for our independent broadcast interview series, Behind the Letter, Brush and Ink, which airs in partnership with a radio network. We would love to have you join us as a guest to talk about your book.

The session is fully recorded before it airs and is structured as a casual conversation about your book, what inspired you to write it, and what you want readers to get out of it. This keeps things simple and flexible for your schedule since it is not a live broadcast.

To explain how we run the series, we manage this through a co production studio setup. Standard development funding helps organize our engineering, recording, and programming operations, which allows our technical team to professionally edit and polish your segment to premium broadcast standards. This ensures you retain the completed, broadcast ready master files to use for your own media outreach.

Our main platform has several examples of past guest conversations that you can listen to directly https://www.authorcredibility.com/

Best regards,

Philip F.R

Author Credibility Society
https://www.authorcredibility.com

Red Flags

Aside from the fact that my book is not published, this email screams of an AI-generated mess(age) for so many reasons:

1. As an audiobook narrator, producer, and publisher, I study the publishing industry. I’ve never heard of this organization. Note to sender: If you’re hoping that including the word “credibility” in your site name will make you seem credible to your intended victims, think again! It’s really a stupid and ridiculous name for what this site purports to be.
2. The salutation is not personal.
3. How did my non-published book come across anyone’s desk, much less “our” desk? Do all the employees of this organization huddle together over a single desk?
4. What does the F. R mean after Philip’s name in the closing, and why was he in such a hurry that he couldn’t type the period after the R? If it stands for “Fond Regards,” that’s not exactly a professional way to communicate with a stranger and is especially inappropriate for a man to send to a woman he doesn’t know.
5. The email address in the header is from Philip, who couldn’t be bothered to capitalize his last name, but in the signature box, it’s SteveAuthorCredibility@gmail.com. Are Philip and Steve the same person? Why doesn’t this prestigious organization use its own domain name and instead sends their reps out in the world with only an easily-obtained Gmail address? Oh, right, I forgot — a Gmail address is totally on brand for a fraudster.
6. Speaking of the sig box, what does the M mean before the second phone number? What does the A next to the web site stand for? Wouldn’t it be W for Web? Why is the web site MISSPELLED as Authorcredility?
7. This phrase in the text tells me all I need to know — the sender is hoping to lure me in on some fabulous opportunity, gain my trust, and take my money:

we manage this through a co production studio setup. Standard development funding 

Additional Investigation

I did a Google image search on Philip-Steve’s picture. Lo and behold, it is the LinkedIn profile picture for Tim Santiago. His account seems to be inactive, so he probably doesn’t know that Philip-Steve stole his image.

Google matched the phone number to the site. The 584 area code is used in Manitoba, Canada.

The subject line implied the broadcast would occur on Capital City FM. I found references to such a broadcast in Pierre, SD and Africa. I don’t think either would be particularly in my target market.

Since this scammer took the time to instruct his/her AI generator of choice to build out a web site for their so-called society, I wasted my time to look at it. Note that I did NOT click any links in the message. I typed the URL in Google.

Wow! It’s a Premier Literary Community! I was surprised that such a highfalutin organization couldn’t afford some sort of logo. Of course, they first need to put a space between the words in the organization name before they think about images. Their minuscule thumbnail image reads “The Author Credibility” on 3 lines. I guess they forgot it’s a Society!

On the home page, I saw some real authors’ names and real titles of their award-winning books. However, those books did not include the real cover art or blurbs as those would be copyright infringements (not that I think the scammer cares about that.)

I was promised in the email that I could listen to past conversations on the site. I didn’t find any. I also didn’t find the interview series “Behind the Letter, Brush and Ink” on Google. It’s just as well. This title would be more representative of an artist or calligrapher than a writer.

Most of the book categories on the top menu have no entries. While the Journal looks like it has entries, they are instead non-clickable images like the one below placed on the page to make you think it’s a legit blog. Even the Read Article “button” is merely a picture!

I love this profile for their featured author Jason Whitfield! A man is pictured, but the text describes this author as a woman: known for HER luminous prose…SHE writes from a cabin in Vermont (my emphasis). Perhaps Jason is in transition, or, more likely, it’s another piece of AI-generated crap that the owner hopes you won’t examine too closely.

Google found his picture associated with Fiverr, but it wasn’t even displayed on the linked page. Would a premier literary organization post an AI-generated composite? Maybe this 3-time National Book Award finalist (incredibly impressive!) is a recluse who fears technology and thinks the computer will steal his soul if his real picture were displayed.

I could continue with this game of revealing this scam organization, email, and sender. However, as I mentioned at the beginning, I still need to finish writing my book!

I hope this analysis helps you better evaluate messages that land in your in-box.