⚠️ Illustration scams to watch out for

Ooft, this is a good one. This week we're discussing illustration scams

We've all had them land in our inboxes, we see 'em in the Good Ship community (too) regularly, and TBH you need to know what to look out for. 👀

Plus: Salty Dog is in actual bookshops and the Waterstones staff read it and couldn't stop laughing. Weyyy! 🎉

Timestamps, if you like that sort of thing:

00:00 – Why we're talking about scams (community posts, industry warnings, and everyone's inbox)
01:30 – The Mr. Takeshi email - the famous one doing the rounds right now
03:00 – Copy and paste a paragraph into Google. Reddit will know.
04:00 – The overpayment scam
04:30 – "I'm deaf, so please only email me"
05:00 – Katie's hacked email story
06:00 – Tania's mysterious hotel chain job
08:30 – Vanity publishers
10:30 – Real publishers don't advertise for illustrators on their homepage
12:00 – Rebecca Green and legitimate self-publishing (not the same thing!)
14:00 – "Dear Helen, I've written a book, please illustrate it" ...not a scam, but still a no
16:00 – AI emails from Francis. Every single daaaay. Still can't unsubscribe.
18:00 – "I'd like to buy three pieces of your artwork".
20:00 – 🎉 Salty Dog is in Waterstones! And the staff loved it!
21:30 – The terrible/brilliant fake Photoshop of Helen and Katie in the bookshop
23:00 – Could Salty Dog become a Yoto card? (We think yes, and yes we are biased)

Links mentioned:

📚 Salty Dog by Helen Stephens and Katie Chappell - find it in all good bookshops: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/salty-dog-and-pals-the-storm-other-stories

🖼️ The AOI (Association of Illustrators) — good source of scam warnings: https://theaoi.com

Byeeee for now!

x The Good Ship Illustration (Helen, Katie & Tania)

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

May 5 - SCAMS
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​[00:00:00] 

This week we're gonna talk about scams because we had some, we had some emails, didn't we, Katie, separately, obviously we did. And we see it in the, in the Good Ship community. Sometimes people will post like an email they've got and they say, is this legit?

Is it a scam? Has anybody worked with this publishing company? Or whatever. And we've seen things posted by like the, a OI have posted stuff about scams to look out for. Daniel Deto, is that his name From Ello? Yes. Yeah. He and a OI had put one out as well. [00:01:00] I'm just thinking though, there was one last night in live call that you missed.

Oh, was it? Someone asked, had we heard of a company called illustration hub plc.com? Do you remember? No, I don't remember. That was in the, in the chats. Oh. And someone said, they've just got in touch with me. So I actually looked on the site and the, all the, the text was misspelt illustration hub doc.

They'd even spel their own name wrong. And a few people in the group had said, oh, I've heard of the, you know, I've had been emailed by this supposed illustration agency. And yeah, if you look at any of the Google Chat reviews, whatever, it's not good. It's, so, yeah, there's as well as employers potentially, um, emails where people are saying, would you like a job with this fake person?

There's also slightly iffy illustration agencies popping up as well that people have made up. Are there, are there like emails that do the rounds and you would recognise, are there very specific ones that everybody's like, oh yeah, I've had that. Yeah. What was that Tiki, [00:02:00] was it Tiki? Mr. Eshi one. Yeah. Yeah.

Which comes in different forms and it always says something like, oh, hello, I am so and so working on behalf of Mr. Esi. I wanted to reach out to you to see if you'd be available for work. And the wording gets a bit funny in the middle of it sounds a bit ai. And they've coded the AI letter to pull out when it gets your email address. It also pulls out a random title of your work, which it inserts in the brackets, which they think automatically makes it looks personalised.

So yeah, quite a few people have talked about the Mr. Te Kechi scam and this, it's a famous illustrator, Japanese illustrator's name anyway, so it already sounds quite too good to be true and quite dodgy. Yeah. So that's, that's the main one recently to watch out for. But most of them you can insert a bit of the text into Google and you'll, that's the best way to check it, isn't it?

You do that, don't you? Yeah, usually like copy and paste a paragraph and the word scam or something, and then it, it'll pop up. [00:03:00] If there's anything like read, it's usually really good for people saying, I've been sent this email. And it's weird, like a lot of 'em are like weird complicated, almost like money laundering things where they're like, you need to pay a little deposit and we'll send you some back.

And they only get, it was like 50 quid or a hundred quid. Yeah. They overpay you so that you have to pay them back the excess usually through PayPal. That reminds me. Yeah, the other one that was doing that was the email that said, I'm really interested in buying some work off you or showing your work. I'd like you to contribute to this charity exhibition, but I'm deaf so you can't call me I that.

Well, basically I, that was a subtext. Yeah, I that and, and it was saying something like and if you have a problem with deaf people, it was like accusing you. Was it like, I hope you won't have prejudice against me. Exactly. Yeah. So that as soon as you read it, you're like oh, I what? I'm good person. It was a really uneven thing to add.

That was the kind of first alert, isn't it? It's like, by the way, I'm deaf, which was their way of putting in it. You can't call me. We can never have a [00:04:00] conversation over the phone. So that way you will never find out anything about this scam. Let's keep it to email. Yeah. Oh, it was so much, so disingenuous.

Yeah. And I had, so some of them, they're getting harder and harder at a spot, which is also worrying. But I had one where it was a client that I'd worked with before and they had paid me and it was a legit job that I'd done. And it was an agency that I worked for, so I working for meta, like Facebook through an agency and this guy was like, we've got another piece of work that you've been selected to apply for more information in the PDF attached.

And I was like, oh, cool. So I clicked on the PF and then it was like, click a link to see the details. And something in my mind was just like, I don't really wanna click a link. Like, why have you given me a PDF if the information isn't in the PDF? That's really weird. Yeah. So I just replied being like, hi, max, great to hear from you.

Like, can you just send me the information? Like, what you doing weirdo? I didn't say that, but in a polite way. I was just like, please, could you send the information by email? I'm not, I don't want to click any links. And he replied pretty much immediately, like an hour later being like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

My [00:05:00] email was hacked. Wow. So somebody had somehow got into his email, so it was his actual email and he was a real person. And then I'm assuming he must have clicked a link from somebody else and that is why it who knows? Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. I was just lucky that I was feeling sceptical that day.

Really? Yeah. Thank God you had time to think. 'cause I probably would've clicked the link. I'm so gullible sometimes. But I recently, I got an email for a job where I was like, I dunno if this is real or not. I couldn't do the job. So I found it easy to dismiss it in my mind. I didn't have time to do the job, put it that way.

But the, the message was from a lady who was representing a chain of hotels and wanted some maps which they would use on collaterals and something for these, for this chain of hotels. But she wouldn't tell me the chain of hotels. She would let me know that later. And also the request was for licences in perpetuity, which was more or less copyright grab.

So I was like, no, I'm not gonna do [00:06:00] that. And her email address was a Gmail. So I was like, this, I'm sure this is a scam. It's very targeted to me. And it could be that it's from a marketing company. 'cause marketing people, unlike design agencies, don't fully understand licences. So they ask for the moon and then you have to kind of educate them out to it.

Like, you know, let's do this as a five year deal, not perpetuity and copyright. So from that point of view, I was thinking, oh, maybe it's just marketing and they don't understand that they're asking for a lot, but why would you a not tell me the chain of the hotels? Is it because you think I'll bump my quote up and b, I can't find your company anywhere because you've got a Gmail and that for a start is why I won't work with you.

Then later on I looked on LinkedIn and I found a marketing, a one woman marketing company under her name and it could have been her and it could have been a real job, but all of this kind of grey area made me think this scam thing is getting out of control because I'll probably start turning down jobs now just because I'm vaguely [00:07:00] suspicious, but there was no way of calling her.

And if I did get on the phone to say, are you fake? You know, you can't have, how do you have that conversation with someone? But I think on balance I was probably right. You checked some of the text for me, didn't you Katie? I sent it to you and said, what do you think? Yeah, I think, did it come back dodgy? I can't remember.

You said I've seen, yeah, I can't remember if it did or not, but I thinks enough red flags to be like, ah, sounds dodgy. And even the right scrub thing, like the wanting full in perpetuity, like you don't wanna do that anyway. So yeah, I mean you could get into some kind of conversation with them, but hopefully if anyone hears this who's a client, please always give your a company name.

'cause I just, you can't cooperate with someone who doesn't even seem to be real. Another reason why LinkedIn is great is because you can do the detective work to find out are these people likely to be real? Would they have a real email address. You can't use a, a kind of a mask of a Gmail address [00:08:00] and expect another business to take you seriously.

Yeah. It's too risky. I mean, I've had that in the past where a client has used their personal Gmail account, email address, because they're from a really big company and they're trying to get it cheaper. That's what I felt. Yeah. That happened with Google, actually. 'cause then I got on the call, I was like, oh, you're Google.

Oh, okay. No. Damn it. I did not realise, but whoa. Yeah, it was cheeky. A little bit noy, but you live and learn. So now I just charge everyone the same. This didn't even have a signature sign off. Like no company brand, no address. That's, so, I think those are probably good things to look out for if you're being approached by someone you don't know for work.

Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes it's the other way. Like it's not a scam. It's actually a really big, exciting job. But they're pretending not to be big and exciting so that you don't overcharge. And then sometimes if it seems way too good to be true and they're like, we want to pay you instantly for this job. I want to buy artwork.

For me, that's a big, huge red flag. 'cause I don't sell prints, I don't sell artwork. I've had messages like that through Instagram. Yeah. Messages coming into Instagram saying, I want to buy your artwork. [00:09:00] But they don't. You, there's just something about it. I'm, I'm not trying to sell artwork on Instagram, so straight away it's inappropriate.

Not, that's not, yeah. Yeah. So what about if you see, like, I see things about Vanity Publishing, that's a thing, isn't it? Yeah. It's not a scam in a traditional sense of like, they're trying to steal money from you.

I think in the world of picture books, if I get an email in that's asking me to do an illustration, I still sort of suspect it straight away. And, 'cause I don't wanna do it, I just ignore them. So I don't really, I have had scam emails in, but I just delete them immediately, so I can't even remember what they're about.

But the regular one is Vanity Publishing, isn't it? Where they say, we want to publish your book, but then when you look up who they are, you need to pay for this project. And it's actually a vanity publisher, but they, they're not being forthright about it. It's not cheap is it? Isn't it like 3000 and plus?

Yeah. And then you've got to distribute the book as well, which is just a nightmare. How'd you get it in all the books? You can't get it in all the bookshops. So. Yeah, I think it's just [00:10:00] really exploitative to wannabe younger illustrator authors, especially the authors. 'cause I think maybe amongst illustrators there's a bit more chat about how these things work.

But I know that a friend of mine's brother, uh, she, she got in touch and said, oh my God, he's got a three book deal. And I was thinking, that seems really weird. 'cause he's just had this idea for children's picture books. And he looked it up, just looked up publishers who publish books and their SEO covers everything.

So even if you're looking up quite well-known publishing names, they've used those names in the sa SEOs of these vanity publishers. Um, so you end up on their site and the way they describe their services, they don't say, we will print your book. They say we are publishers. We are looking actively looking for authors or illustrators.

Which is not how the industry works. Is it Helen? No. No. If, if a publisher got in touch, they would be, we saw, we saw your work on Instagram. We saw that you were a runner up in this competition. We really love [00:11:00] your folio and we love this piece and we've got a project in mind. It wouldn't be, they'd want to speak to you and have a meeting first.

They'd speak to you directly and yeah, they'd try and arrange a zoom call or a meeting in real life. Yeah. But you, you wouldn't have publishers putting on their website. We are accepting submissions we are looking for Or the opposite. Yeah, exactly. Do not contact. They're overwhelmed and they're definitely not gonna be doing that.

So you, even literary agents won't write as a permanent welcome message on their website. We are looking for illustrators and authors. It's only occasionally they open their books and on the network it gets round. So anyone who's saying we're actively looking for illustrators and authors is a red flag in itself, isn't it?

For Vanity Publishing? It makes sense that vanity publishers are basically printers. 'cause of course they wanna print three of your books. They'll be like, yes, please. That's three orders. Well, there's that kind of print on demand thing, isn't it? Which a lot of people use and they do do quite well out of it.

Like there are great, really great stories of people who [00:12:00] did print their own book, like Rebecca Green's legendary story of how to make Friends with a ghost and that got her books later on. So, this is not about saying don't self-publish, but the vanity publishers will print thousands of the books and you pay them.

That's the no, uh, you wouldn't have a real publishing deal where you pay them to print your book. And they don't do any publicity. They don't do any distribu. If they do distribution, it's on costs on top of it. Yeah. All they're doing is providing you with boxes and boxes of your book that no one has helped design or just the thought of that.

It's a waste of paper. Even if your illustrations are beautiful without good book designer and an art director and an editor, I couldn't do it without that team. They're just so vital. I can't imagine. Yeah, you need all of that. And also then all of the books, what thousands of them arrive at your house in boxes.

Oh, thank you. Where are you gonna start walking? You have to make furniture walking into town and not, and going into a shop and saying, would you like to, oh, it'd be just awful. I can't [00:13:00] imagine You can construct sofas and armchair out of the boxes. Yeah. I live, yeah, this is my home. So if you get any of those kind of slightly suspect over enthusiastic responses or people literally crying out for illustrators and authors, check them really carefully.

And if you need to know the names of those people, you Google vanity publishers and you'll see some of the popular names yourself. But it, it's just it's saddening because the enthusiasm of creative people is being exploited. That's the really annoying bit. Yeah. And if you get, if you get something you suspect might be dodgy, ask your illustrator friends.

Put it if you're on if you're in a good shape, you could put it on our I was gonna say Facebook. We're not in Facebook anymore. Well, we are a bit, we did, we've done that big move, but we've only done it with um, find your creative voice picture book. And some of the others will follow into our new community inside our Kajabi platform.

So we won't have to use Facebook anymore. That would be great. Yeah. But get, but getting friends to look at it is good [00:14:00] 'cause they have a little bit of distance from it, especially illustrator friends and they won't be blinded by excitement and Oh my goodness, a thing. And they might have had a similar email.

Yes. Instagram's a good place to ask out for, isn't it? Yeah. And it, yeah, there's a lot of good sort of self-education on scams on Instagram. I don't really get scams or if I do, I I, they're easy for me to filter out. 'cause I don't generally, you know, if you're a picture bookmaker, you're with one or two or three publishers long term, so you're not really looking for the work.

So it's easy to kind of filter through. But the thing that I get, and this is not a scam at all, but it's just really naive, I think is in fact, I got one last week, I think I might have told you two about it. It basically said something like, dear Helen, I've written a book, please. Will you illustrate it from Andrew?

Sorry, Andrew. Yeah. Sorry Andrew. Did you tell Andrew well? Yes. If you've got at least four I didn't reply. You say 15,000 in advance and [00:15:00] Yeah. Didn't, didn't, didn't reply. I think a lot of people don't realise that publishers do the matchmaking. Yeah. They want to do the matchmaking. So if you've got some great texts, send them to the publisher and they will find the perfect illustrator.

They're good at it, it's their job. And if you arrive with an illustrator and the publisher love either the text or the illustration, they might just reject it because they don't wanna split up this happy friendship. So, yeah. I wouldn't approach illustrators. I suppose it's not a never, but definitely don't approach an illustrator just with two sentences.

I've written some stories. Do you wanna illustrate them? But we see it all the time. So much. And again, it's not a scam, but people are like, my friend has written a story and I'm gonna illustrate it. We're working together. They're gonna pay me you, they're giving me 1,500 pounds. Or, you know, something like that.

And it's, it's fine. Yeah. But we're always in the comments. There's always a pile on in the good shape anyway. People will be like, proceed with caution. Like, yeah, be [00:16:00] wary. You're gonna end up working with somebody who's not used to commissioning. It's gonna be frustrating. They might love the colour purple Tanya.

And they want you to do the whole thing in purple or it'll be so, so, so much work. And then, and how many changes are they gonna ask for? And then, is it really gonna be published after this? It's so, such a long shot for a lot of work, for a small amount of money. And if you're self-publishing, how good are they at promoting things?

Are they actually gonna sell many copies? It's, yeah. Yeah. There's, there's kind of no professionals in the room. However laudable it is to have this beautiful idea, putting two people together without any management coordination. Yes. You can only take it so far and often. Yeah. One or the other is, is the strongest part.

It could be the writing, like you say, just go straight to the publisher, then there's no need to wait. Team up, damage your friendship, have an exhausting year. And then finally send the thing only for the publishers to say, [00:17:00] actually we just like the writing, we don't need the illustration. Yeah. So this isn't a scam, but what about that thing you were telling us about, where you get that email every day that you can't unsubscribe from somebody called Francis Emails?

Me. Hello Francis. If you're listening and you definitely a robot. But hello. Every day Francis has a new collaboration opportunity for me. About, so it's a whole raft of AI companies. Like, this one's a video editing thing, this one is for, I stopped reading them 'cause they're all about ai. They're all software.

I think it's like softwares that want to collaborate with you or it's software to use. And then they want me to post about using it. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do that. And it's, again, it's not a scam because I've Googled it and people are getting paid by these random companies to make content. But I'm like, I'm just, it's so not aligned with what I wanna do.

And the rates are like, you'll get to $106. I'm like, why is it a weird number? And then they're like, we've come back with a higher offer. It's $126. They're like, so be better like me. But you can't unsubscribe. You can't, you cannot [00:18:00] unsubscribe when you haven't replied. 'cause I don't want 'em to know that I'm reading them, but it's, yeah, it's just annoying.

What about those emails? Do you get those emails Where, they say, um, we love your Instagram. Would you like to promote sportswear? Yes. Yeah. You dunno who I'm, I've started getting so random things. Somebody sent me a diffuser the other week. Oh. But they, they're like, we're gonna send you it, but there's no obligation to post.

And um, I'm glad 'cause I didn't like the smell. And then somebody sent me some like vitamins and I was like, oh, these are exciting. And then I Googled them and the vitamins are, are like loosely linked be to increasing cell growth, which may be linked to cancer. So they've been taken off the market and I was like, oh, I should have Googled this before I started taking them.. So yeah, do your research. I think the, but the main one is most artists get the, I mean we touched on this quickly, but Alice told us about it where she, she was an assistant to a couple of particularly well-known artists and they were constantly getting emails saying I'd like to buy three pieces.

And they had huge [00:19:00] budgets and so in the fine art world, the scams get quite high stakes and it's hard not to pursue them because what if they were real? But I think illustrators get a lot of them. I would like to buy three of your artworks. And that's the one where they, you do a bit of to and fro with them and they just say, oh, I've overpaid you.

So even getting into debatable purchases of your actual work. 'cause as an illustrator you could do prints, you could do original work. So, and these things look really attractive and they, they come in a lot of different forms. Again, the only thing you can do is just uh, copy and paste the text, put it into Reddit or Google and see what they say.

Yeah. And they are naughty 'cause they're preying on your excitement and need for work and money. Yeah. Absolutely. Have wits about you. I'm sure people have got loads of other, send us your scam stories. Oh yeah. Don't get scammed. Yeah. We can put warnings out wherever, at least within, within our community.

And let people know. Also, guys, this isn't anything to do with scams. It's the opposite. Salty dog is [00:20:00] out in the shops. That's a scam. They really, really did write a book. I've seen it today. And it's published by an actual publisher, not a vanity publisher. No, it's very exciting. Congratulations pals. Thank It's you.

So I'm so proud of you. We went to water Stones and it was in an actual shop. Yeah. And didn't you get a picture today from me? I got a picture. Uh, foils. Yeah. It's in foils in Chaing Cross Road. A whole table of them. Piles of them. So exciting. So exciting. It's very funny. The book is really funny. I love it.

I can't wait for mine to pop through the letterbox. 'cause when Katie, it still hasn't arrived. Oh. Pre-ordered Blackwells. It was really great. Yesterday when I went into Waterstones. Because I went in and I said, have you got Salty Dog in? Because I, I wrote that. I was sitting there gonna go, you did not get out.

Anyway, she said, it's due. She had a look on the system. She said, it's due in today. So I said, okay, before I get my train home, I'm gonna come back because I really want a photograph with it. And I knew Katie was gonna be in New Castle at some point that day as well. So I [00:21:00] thought it'd be really great.

We'll both get a photo holding the book and we'll badly Photoshop it together as if we were there together. So I went back in and there was another woman at the till and I said, oh, um, I'm just in 'cause I wondered if, um, salty Dog has arrived. And she said, oh yes, yes, it's arrived. And both of it, the woman that I spoke to first and her, they'd both been reading it together and they planned just to have a look through it, a flick through it.

But they started reading it and couldn't stop laughing and finish the whole thing. And she said, it's right up my street. It's so funny. She was reading out, she was telling me the bits that she really liked. So she said, so we've ordered a load more. We've got more coming in. So me and you, we will have to call in again and sign the rest when they arrive.

Yeah. So exciting. So that was so exciting that she'd actually picked it up and genuinely really loved it because wars, they're allowed to put the personal recommendations up so she liked it. She'll be pushing it hard. Oh yeah. They do that with a little handwritten not, don't they? I like that. And Waterstones and then, you know this, the scam that Helen pulled off after that was fake [00:22:00] Photoshopping her and Katie in Waterstones with a book.

It was so atrocious. It wasn't bad enough though. 'cause nobody was commenting on the fact it was so weird. And Tanya said, make it really obvious. 'cause I didn't know that that was a Photoshop job. So I made it as bad as I could and still people are not noticing. And I've made you really tiny. It's very, I've been faning if there being the same height as you, like, wow, that would so great.

It's, I was like, in all future photos, I want to be photoshopped to be taller than Kate. And, and I, I liked that Katie was on a slope. You were on a nice flat floor. But yeah, I could see that she was on an uphill slope, but maybe no one got that too. They have to go back, watch out for their bookshop photo scams.

If you see salty in a bookshop, would you mind sending us a photo? We'd really love to see where you see or saw it. Yeah. Tag us on that Instagram 'cause it's very, very exciting. Yeah. And please can we make an audio file of Katie reading it? So if you've bought the book, you're allowed to have a Northumbrian accent read along.

Oh, should, I didn't know what the rules are because on, so I've got a Yto [00:23:00] and I was like, how do you get your book onto a Yto card or an audio book? Is that like a publishing thing? 'cause you can just record your own Yto thing as and upload them. I think we own the rights for that. And we could probably just run it by Walker and say, do you mind if we do this?

We should try because we, we, in a publishing deal, usually you own the rights for. Theatre or what? Or you know. Yeah. Um, and I imagine it's the same for audio, but I don't know. We'd have to check the contract and ask Walker, but that would be great. 'cause I love it when you read it out loud. It's so brilliant.

Is it, you don't have audio books for children, do you? For picture books that they don't exist. You've your tool and there's, what is your, there's a Tony box as well, so Yoo's cards that you put into a little box. It's brilliant. Yeah. And then the, the Tony box is like little figurines that you put on top of a box and they play.

Oh, I think I saw that at the brand licencing fair that they had little gruffalos. Yeah, that would does the model have a recording or transmitting device in it? Yeah, it's, I think it's magnetically magnetic at the top when it plays the thing. It's really cool. Oh my god. Imagine a magnetic, [00:24:00] salty sitting on top of an audio box telling a story in Katie's voice.

That would be so great. Start manifesting now. Be dreaming dreams. Yeah. I love that. In the meantime, we should just make a video not to sell, but you should of you, of you speaking the story while I draw. Yeah. Oh yeah. It would be great, wouldn't it? Should we make that? Let's do that. We'll speak to Walker about the rules about We're allowed.

Do that. Do that. We're completely allowed to do that. Okay. It's only if we wanted to sell an audio version. I think that we'd need to speak to Walker. Yeah. Insider marketing tips. Take note. Brilliant. Okay. Alright. Goodbye. See you next week. See you next week. Yeah. Bye. Bye. [00:25:00]