Episode 52 - 4 Industry Professionals Discuss Scams, Author Egos, and AI

This week, we have two guests onboard, and the conversation takes many turns, with PLENTY OF LAUGHS!

 Stacey Smekofske and Troy Lambert are popular and respected writing and publishing professionals who also host the "Pros Talking Prose" podcast. Stacey and Troy join Angela and Brian to discuss how even intelligent and seasoned authors and writers can still wind up getting scammed by the very sophisticated overseas publishing crime cartel.  

However, the guard rails came down, and we wound up getting into many other subjects, including the very contentious topic of authors using Artificial Intelligence (AI), our experiences with various types authors (there’s some juicy stuff there!), and other interesting and bizarre experiences we’ve all had while working as professionals in the literary industry. 

In this episode, you'll also hear what Stacey and Troy discuss what differentiates a good book from a GREAT book, and SO MUCH MORE! 

 This episode is a TWO-PARTER since the conversation went into overtime. Part Two will be posted next week. 

There's a lot of knowledge (and laughter – Stacey and Troy are A HOOT!) shared in this episode, so you won't want to miss a minute!

Learn more at https://www.WritersWeekly.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome to the Writers Weekly Podcast, a forum geared toward the writing enthusiast and those who want to make money from their writing. I'm Brian Whitman, the editor. And I'll be your host, President. There you'll find not only thousands of articles about professional writing. You can also find current paying markets and job listings to help you boost your writing career and even your bottom line. But for now, let's get on to this episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast. Hello, hello again, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Widden, managing editor of WritersWeekly.com. And with me, as usual, is Angela Hoy, president, CEO, owner of Booklocker.com and the original creator of Writersweekly.com.

SPEAKER_05 1:22

Hi, Angie. I'm excited today.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

I'm excited today because we have we're good, we got a four-way going today. Right. Uh we're we uh for the first time we've got two guests on with us. I've uh so today we have uh Stacy uh Smokovsky. Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, you said it correctly. Wow, I was gonna say forget it. Don't even worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

We're readers here, we're literate here.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Um, Stacy owns print to pro and she's got all kinds of services that she offers to writers and authors. Now I'll give her a chance to go through her uh bio in a second second here. And then I've got Troy Lambert, known as the plot dude. Uh he's a prolific author of over 35 novels, and he teaches a lot of stuff. And both of them, I'm gonna let them introduce themselves. Stacy, why don't you go first?

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Oh, great. Okay. Well, uh yeah, like like Brian said, I'm uh owner of Print to Pro. I was started my editing business as Edits by Stacy, which is still in effect, but um Print to Pro was kind of like where I decided to expand and go into more an education kind of like arm of the publishing industry and more service related to the whole publishing experience. So I work with authors from draft all the way through, you know, beyond the book. And my focus is mostly on helping authors really achieve that author business, that authorpreneur thing, um, making that work. So um it's not just about um editing anymore for me. It's more about just making sure that authors can get into this business and stay and not get burned out, understand what they're getting into and helping them along that journey. So that's my that's my focus and my goal. But yeah, editing, of course, and writing is part of that. But it's I kind of get more into the nitty-gritty and the author journey themselves with their own personal businesses.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

And authors need somebody like you because burnout is very common. Authors they they get confused about what they're supposed to do next, and then they just say, I'm just gonna write another book.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, yeah. And well, that's where everybody finds joy, right? Like this is like our this is why we're creatives, right? We all love to write and we all love to tell our stories, but when you get into that nitty-gritty business stuff, it gets really kind of annoying. And authors, that's they're not happy there. So it's it's it's a lot more, I guess, manageable when you have somebody like me in the background going, don't worry, I'll handle it, or we'll take care of it together, I'll show you how to do it so that you don't have to, you don't have to go down that rabbit hole. I already did it for you. And yeah, you're like a coach.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Once you write and publish, yeah, I hate that word, but yeah, I know, I know. Once you write and publish that book, I mean, if you're taking it seriously, that's just the beginning. Then you have all this other stuff, marketing and getting out there and everything. ISBNs, copyright, yeah, all right. I think a lot of authors just jump into it not understanding how much there really is behind the scenes. It's not just write the book, put it out there, and now you're kicking back and collecting your royalties. Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Yeah, and it's kind of scary out there too, because like what we're gonna talk about today, it's just there's a lot of people out there that love to take advantage of authors and their and their and their dreams and aspirations. So I love to kind of intervene and go, uh-uh, don't go that way. Um that's my thing.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Troy, tell us all about yourself. Okay, keep it funny, keep it, keep it below five minutes, or keep it in five minutes. Yeah, keep it under five.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Under five minutes. Yeah, we've all seen your bio. I yeah, I know, but I hate talking about myself. People are like, introduce yourself. And I'm like, I write stuff, I edit stuff, I tell people how to write, and that's you know, um, but yeah, so Stacy and I partnered up about a year ago, like officially, we've been friends for a long time, but we started working together, and one of the reasons is like I know the business side of things, but that's not where I find my joy in doing it. I find my joy in helping people make the best product possible. I'm like, before you start marketing or anything else, you've got to have a good book. It doesn't have to be a great book, but it has to be a good book because just I mean, obviously, if everybody produced great books, then every book would be great, and we'd have another standard above great, which is what the great great books were or whatever that that means. But anyway, so so I work with people more at the a lot of times at the developmental level of like, okay, I have this idea and I've written this huge messy draft, and it's a 180,000-word horror novel, and maybe we need to cut that down a bit. And if you think that's a joke, it's not entirely a joke. Um, so I've I've seen all the different things. So I try to get people from that messy first draft or from the idea to a first draft. And so I actually have a course that I've built that the only purpose of it is for you to figure out how to finish your first draft. That's the there's no formula, there's no nothing like that. Like that the the course is to say this is a choose your own adventure, but the goal is finish your draft because we can't do much with it until it's done. Until it's in red, and then when it's done, we can shape it. So that's what I do. I'm known as the plot dude because plot, I love plot structure, but I think people apply it at the wrong place, but that's a whole different topic. But I it it belongs in revision, not in drafting. People that try to draft by a formula and drive me nuts. Um, but anyway, but so but I've literally studied story structure like as deeply as you can go and probably beyond what is wise. So um, most people shouldn't do that. But then I've done that hard work for you. So you say, Well, I don't know what is going on with this novel. I say, Well, I do. Let's figure it out together.

SPEAKER_05 7:12

So we will put links to both of y'all's services and websites underneath this episode at writersweekly.com slash podcast episode 52.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

This is 52. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Um and uh y'all y'all hear Troy's voice. Uh he's he's also an audio book. Uh he's also an audiobook uh recruit uh narrator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Um he's got that perfect voice.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

So uh yeah, and it took some convincing to tell him to do that, but yeah, because I remember having those conversations. I'm like, dude, dude, you gotta you gotta read the book. You gotta read the books. He's like, what? I'm like, your voice, it's sultry, it's just just there.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

And I I love I love both y'all's uh uh office space there. We're we're we're literally down here in our basement with a green screen behind me. Not a problem. Y'all y'all have some great great setups there. I love that.

SPEAKER_05 8:08

Well, if we recorded in front of our bookshelves, the dogs would be all over us.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Oh well, that's the thing is we have to come down here or the dogs would yeah, it just this is the only quiet spot in the house. Oh my gosh. Well, um we haven't heard mine yet. So, folks, today we're gonna be uh we we we brought these two other experts in with us because today we're gonna be talking about scammers again, but what we wanted to do was come at it from another angle, and that angle is from other people in the business. Everybody's heard me and Angie's you know take on all this, and we we we talk about how prolific and and crazy the uh uh the scam situation is out there, how many are out there. But just in case you didn't want to believe me and Angie, we brought these other two professionals who who have been in the business for years and years and years, years, they know the landscape. We wanted to see if they're seeing the stuff that we're seeing and and what kind of you know things they're dealing with with the authors that they work with. So um, I I don't even really have a title for this, other than you know, let's talk scammers. Scam awareness. Yeah, let's go. We'll come up with a title during the editing process. Um, real quick, home office though, for uh guys, we always do uh about uh five, ten minutes of a home office thing. Let's do it on the home, but uh this won't be five minutes. Uh Angie and I recently um uh celebrated on uh July 26th our uh 11th anniversary of first setting eyes on each other.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah, congratulations, you two. You're you're nearly out of the newly fed, newlywed phase. Barely. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

We're still on the honeymoon thing. Uh you know, we've been we've we've been married six years.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

Um and uh we celebrate our anniversary each year, and then we call call it A and B Day, A G and Brandon Day. That's right. And it's the anniversary of the day that we met.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Little did we know that our lives would become so intertwined and so complicated, crazy, so romantic, complication and intertwining. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Yeah, you didn't have any death threats before you met me, right? Yeah, no kidding. Gosh, I didn't I didn't think I'd spend the rest of my life as a bodyguard.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

So that's a husband's role.

SPEAKER_03 10:29

Yeah, I I I embrace it, no problem. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so um so yeah, let's just start in general, both of y'all. So so all the thing, you know, you work with authors, you've been you've been doing this for for years. Um what what are you guys seeing in terms of the saturation of these scam operations within the publishing industry?

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Troy, do you want to go first on this? I could I can elaborate once you because you had an experience just this morning.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

So I got two this morning. Um, like I mean, and they vary in their how do I want to say that the severity of the scam?

SPEAKER_03 11:10

I'm gonna say entirely like some of them are hurt. Are you talking about you've received two offers or you have two authors authors who are being tempted to do that?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

I've received two, and I got an email just before this from another author who received one that was similar to the one that I received. And I mean, I don't know if I want to call some of them scam light, where like they're just gonna they're gonna take a little bit of your money for something that doesn't accomplish anything, doesn't do anything for you as an author. Um, but and it's become super common because now they've just become better at it, and part of that is because of AI. So AI can make it seem like they've read your book, and you know, so you're like, oh, they really have read my book, they really are interested in putting it in front of their book club of 30,000 people, and all I have to do is pay them, and it I can see how new authors this is an instant appeal. Wait, 30,000 readers are going to read my book as a book, yeah, and I only have to pay 30 dollars or 30 dollars? Well, I mean, if I send out enough emails, which you know, with again with AI is easy, and I send them to enough authors and fast enough and all that kind of stuff, um, I can make money at that. So there's there's the scam light, and then there's the big ones that are like, We're Hollywood producers and we're interested in making your book into a movie, and they're gonna try to take you for you know eighty thousand dollars or whatever was one of the ones that one of the authors that I was talking to. She, a guy literally sent her a proposal for eighty-seven thousand dollars to produce a script. Oh my gosh, like all he said was we're gonna produce the script and we'll get it in front of Netflix people. And when I was so I was looking at the offer because she was like, Yeah, he talked all this big game, and I'm like, but look at what he's actually telling you he's gonna deliver. He's gonna deliver a script created from your book, and he says he will put it in front of those people, they have to make the decision, but he'll put it in front of them. I'm like, so he's gonna send it to a few people after he creates it, and it's eighty-seven thousand dollars because she was ready, like, I'm gonna go take out a loan. I mean, I'm gonna take out a loan. And we've seen people take out loans, like Stacey and I've seen people take out loans. I've seen people sell their cars, I've seen people take out a second mortgage on their house to pursue this thing that this is a sure thing, it's gonna happen. Look, I looked this guy up, he's real, and I'm like, it sure looks like he's real until you try to call the number on the well, and I want to talk I want to talk about that because even that's getting a little bit sketchy. Um yeah, but at least it's not uh what was one of them was like michael bay at gmail.com. Oh, yeah, that was fun.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

You know, stuff like that. Well, that's one of the things we always point out to people is why why if this person's such a professional, why are they coming from a Gmail account?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, Gmail, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 14:20

What authors don't understand is and we've talked about this before, is that person's never gonna write a script for your book. They're never gonna print gonna present it to anybody. It's it's a fake it's somebody in Pakistan, Nigeria, or the Philippines or China, and once they get your money, you're gonna never gonna hear from them again.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 14:39

You had talked about uh I think eighty thousand somebody spent. The worst one we heard about was um a gentleman scammed by a company in the Philippines, and it was he spent over a million dollars thinking he was gonna get a movie.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. That just makes my heart hurt.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

You could have made the movie. Yeah, I know with an Indian film company.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Oh that's insane. Well, in terms of saturation, I would say that saturation meaning like more and more. I mean, it is it used to be, yeah. I used to tell my authors when they would publish, I'd be congratulations, you're a published author. Tomorrow you're gonna get about 50 emails. That's right. That's exactly right. Um and it is totally true. Um, but and that still goes on, but now the it feels like the scams are a little bit more intense. Um, like Troy said, they're you know, intensity level is a little bit higher. They're a little bit more believable because of AI. And they're willing to go a, they're willing to do a longer, more um, I guess a long game. Um, what's really interesting uh in saturation is they're not just they're not just meeting people through the phone and through the email. They're actually going forward and doing Zoom calls, they're doing, um, they're meeting you at the conferences, um, and they are scams. Um, for a good example, one one of my clients, um, she uh she's been around a while, published several books. She's not a new newbie at this business, I wouldn't say, but she was contacted by a company that said that they were um they were an agent and they'd heard about a uh manuscript that she was working on. Interesting because um she hadn't even shown it to me yet. Um they had told her that they would love to see the first 50 pages. She sent them to the first 50 pages. They went back and forth, had several Zoom calls. Um, she said that she would like to see the next five chapters. Um, those next five chapters were then submitted to her. And then she turned around and she um had another four or five Zoom calls. This went on for about a month. And finally at the end of the month, they said, okay, all it's gonna cost you is about $10,000 to get this edited. And she's like, Edit it. I have an editor. Like it was just, it was really, really interesting. It just came out of nowhere, but it was long, it was a long, long thing. The contact information was in fact the contact information for a legitimate agent. Um, and I went in and I, you know, because she asked me what the early on, like, Stace, can you check this lady out? And I said, sure, yeah. And I look looked her up and I was like, oh, she's a she's a legitimate agent. She's got a she's got a website, she's with this, with this agency, she's got a long good reputation. Little did we know, they had they had cloned her page.

SPEAKER_05 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

And they had they had cloned her page, and she didn't even know that. I mean, at that time, I think the agent was trying to combat it, but they had literally cloned her page, and so it was actually taking over her real page, which she has a real page, but she had to later like have web designers or somebody come in and fix it so that they could quit clone, you know, they could her page would show up above this other one. It was crazy, it was a crazy, intensely like sophisticated scam. And um, I wondered if they're doing this with this author who I bless her heart, I love her. She's just she's not like a New York Times bestseller or anything. Like, but you know, holy cow, she was they were working really hard on that woman's heartstrings, and it it was a long scam. It lasted a long time.

SPEAKER_05 18:21

And they can with AI now, uh one of our authors was offered like five movie deals. And he had a Zoom meeting for one, and he said he realized it was a scam because it was a guy who looked like he was an Indian his mouth wasn't moving on the Zoom call. But the very next one he he caught he contacted me, he said, This one's real. I had a Zoom meeting with a Fox Media executive. It looked exactly like the real guy, and his mouth was moving. And he so that's what made him think it was real. But they can use AI to clone anybody's face, they can steal their voice, and it and and just in a matter of months, the technology sped up that much.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

The deep fakes are really sophisticated right now.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

This this reminds me. Um I I now remember what the what the the the uh more direct focus of this this podcast was supposed to be was uh this is how how uh even experienced authors and and and generally very intelligent people are still falling for scams. Yeah. Um it's not just your new brand new. I just started my did my first book. This is these are people that have several books out.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Yeah, and have been scammed before and and and fought off other scams. Like some of my clients literally they've been scammed before and they are already very cynical. So um, this this author in particular, she's super cynical.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, it's interesting though, but I think what part what happened with this is that the scammers figured out, like we all know anyway, that many of those new authors who are so hopeful in Starry don't have money.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So they're literally going, Oh, this person is actually selling books, this person already has an author business, this person is actually making money at this, so maybe they actually have money that we can scam them out of. Yeah, I mean, I got one that was super sophisticated, had I mean, the address was in LA, it looked like a film studio, all that kind of stuff. But then I just looked up the building. Like, let's go find out who actually has an office in that building. And then call them and say, Hey man, did you move your office? Because apparently you're not, or hey, is it man, it's hot in LA today. How's it going? They're like, and they're always confused for a minute because they're not in LA, so they don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_05 20:50

You can also call any business in that building and say, Hey, is there a business in your building called such and such? And 100% of the time they'll say no.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

Yeah, exactly. Stacy, you had you had mentioned um these scammers actually approaching people at conventions. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because we have not heard of that yet. Somebody actually in person showing up and trying to people. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

These are these are the these are the ones that are the more um they're more service provider focused, but they they're doing things, and I maybe they're not legitimately scammy, but they're very slimy. I'm gonna call it that way, where they're they're charging more for services that are not, you know, for example, uh, we'll sell you your ISBNs for, you know, this price when your ISBNs. Yeah, when in fact you're getting and and they're they're marking them up and they're giving you ISBNs that are under their their um you know imprint name instead of uh or they're charging, you know, fifty thousand dollars to publish a book that would have charged, you know, that you could have done for three, you know, like it's just it's that kind of thing. I feel like it's very ballsy for you to go into a professional set setting like a conference and sit next to other indie professionals that are like myself and try to sell services for that cost when I'm sitting next to you and the table next to you and looking at the author going, Don't do that. Don't do that.

SPEAKER_05 22:18

Good for you. Like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Like, don't you know, like that's ridiculous. Why would you do that? So I mean, it's just I don't know, it's very ballsy. And and I've I've I've had it um happen a couple of times. Like I've been to a couple conferences where I've seen people where there's and you know, like Troy and I have been around the block a few times. We go to conferences quite often, we don't see them around repeat, you know, they don't they're not there on the if they do come back, they rebrand. They rebranded.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I've had it one time where I saw a guy. I mean, he was just he was slimy, he was offering things like book covers and formatting and stuff like that at ridiculous prices. Ridiculous. And so I was like, I was telling authors, no, just don't don't pay attention to that guy at all. And then at another conference, he was back, but it was a different company, it was a different brand name. It was a different excuse me, he had rebranded, you know, however, he had rebranded everything, his his cards, his banners, everything. Because I mean, if you're if you're scamming people for that much money, you can afford to rebrand.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

You only need to get a couple people. There's one company out there work.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

There's one company out there right now that's paying a lot of money in in um advertising, and I see them in my feed a lot in Ingram Spark, uh, or not Ingram Spark in Instagram. And um, I'll be scrolling and this guy'll show up and it chaps my butt every time I see him because I'm like, he's telling people the wrong information and he's getting his voice out there, like he is paying a lot of money. And while it might be, he might be a legitimate company. When you go down the rabbit hole and you actually see how many times he's changed his company name, how many times he's rebranded, how many times he's like been accused of mal, you know, not really malpractice, but he's been, you know, thrown out there for, you know, bad business practices. Um, it's just, it's, it's, it feels scammy. It feels scammy. It feels very um, and and it's so easy to to do in this business because it's not regulated like it is in other countries. Um, in the United States, it's kind of um, we're a little bit editors. You can be an editor and not have to have a certification, you don't have to have a license in a lot of states. So it's just, it's just interesting um because um you, you know, it people can easily get caught up in this idea of like, well, there's so much to do, and I don't know what to do, and I just need somebody to kind of stand next to me and tell me what to do or do it for me. And those people that are doing it for you, um, a lot of times they're overcharging. And so that's the thing that gets really uh in my craw because um it's it's it's not that much money to to do this business. To do the to publish a book, it doesn't really cost that much. It's like three to five thousand dollars depending on the level of you know intensity you want to go on as far as editing and all that stuff. But you know, um, it's not fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. And that's when people can get really caught up in a, I don't know, it's just a really tough, tough business to kind of combat some of those people that have been out there for a very, very long time and and change their names over and over and over again. And they sound so convincing. One of the things that I was like, we were talking, Troy and I were talking about is confidence really sells, right? Like it's one of the things we mentioned in one of our podcasts is like it if they sound confident, they sound sure of themselves, then people are like they they buy into it. Like, um, and one of the things that Troy and I are always talking about is like our level of going, well, we really don't know everything.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

So like our confidence, our confidence is like, well, you know, I don't know, you know, and we like to how many times in a conversation where people ask me a question, I go, Well, here's my favorite and least favorite answer. Yeah, it depends. And then you have the guy that comes in and goes, No, if you follow my formula, yeah, and we were just talking yesterday about how really outside of math, formulas are crap. I mean, they just especially this is a this is an industry of chaos. There's there's a lot of chaos, there is a lot of luck involved in success. Like you can have moderate success by following a good business model, doing the right edits, having a good product, you know, all that kind of stuff, putting it out there, doing your advertising. But to have monumental Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter success, there's a certain amount of luck that's involved in that. And but when you're inside the success, you can't see the luck. You think it's a formula, right? And so, but the other thing is that it's much easier to sell people a magic bullet and a formula than to tell them on the fact that, yeah, come alongside with me and we're gonna do a bunch of hard work together. And they're like, hard work, hard work, that doesn't sound like fun. This guy from Bangladesh says he can do it for me in 17 seconds, and I'm like, And that's that's where the scammers thrive, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Is like in that idea that there's an easy button formula because I mean, obviously, there has to be, right? This business has been around for hundreds of years, and so there has to be an easy formula, just somebody's keeping it secret. And so what happens, and I think this is how they're selling it on the experienced authors, is even those experienced authors are constantly looking for that magic formula, they're constantly looking for that easy button, and it's really, really easy, especially with AI, to say, Oh, well, you know what? AI figured it out, and I've got it all, I've got the I've got the solution to this marketing issue. I've got the solution to you know selling books.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

And uh solution to writing your book, yeah. The solution to writing your book, writing their book with AI, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Well, yeah, when did when did writing become about efficiency?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Like this is an efficiency game, so we can produce more. Yeah, I don't remember starting out as a young writer and going, man, I wish I could write more efficiently and produce more faster. That wasn't like my reason for for doing this. And then when we're when we're talking about the volume, I would say the volume over the last couple years has gone up, probably like somewhere around 300%. Like from every now and then you get a you know, the poor prince in Nigeria who's trying to give away money, which is the worst job in the world you could have right now if you're legitimately a Nigerian prince and trying to give away money. Good luck, my friend. I've got the I've got the numbers on that.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

I've got the numbers on that. I looked that up before here to tell you guys what the kind of like the overall increase is kind of what it was. Yeah, I did some homework. Oh um, but Angela, you were gonna ask a question. What did you remember what that was?

SPEAKER_05 29:00

Um, can you explain to the listeners the how these scammers are using AI to trick the authors into thinking they actually read their book?

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Oh gosh, it's so easy. You guys can use any you can use any AI right now to throw throw a manuscript in and just tell it to give you a summary, or you know, you you can prompt AI to read a book and then you know, even just I mean, you know what's crazy is especially when you're doing uh when you're giving your book away um as a you know as a PDF or something to like reviewers, be very careful what you're doing. Don't give out PDFs anymore.

SPEAKER_05 29:40

Um they can use they can use AI without having read your book or even having a copy of it, oh, and still make it look like they read your book, and still make it look like you read the book. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

They can do it from your description on Amazon. In fact, I'll tell you, I had a really sophisticated one the other day that was actually like it was pretty cool, so it seemed. So I get an e um actually, it was I think it was a LinkedIn message or an email from a guy, and he's like, Hey, we've taken your book, Stray Ally, and we've created the first part of it as an audiobook.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Exciting.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

And if you like it, we'll do this much money to produce the rest. And it was multicast, multi-voice, stuff like that. And I said, Man, that's pretty good. That sounds like spoken multicast. Is that what you're using to produce this? And oddly, I didn't hear back from him after that. But like they're taking AI, and he basically took the look inside that he could see at Amazon, copied that, put it in AI, produced it as an as a multicast audiobook, and said, Hey, if you like this fantastic audiobook we've made of your book, you can have the rest. We'll produce the rest with any changes in characters and stuff that you want for this much money.

SPEAKER_05 31:02

Wow, it was they're doing something similar with book trailers. They have to a free book trailer.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

My friend got taken by that. Yeah. Oh, it was so I was like, Jim, stop. Stop. Like, this is I'm like, because first, oh, the first trailer that this gal gave him was terrible. Like it was absolutely awful. It was like, I'm like, it's odd, it's almost like she didn't even read your book. I'm like, and he goes, No, well, maybe she'll get it right, and it wasn't that much money. He's like, It's not that much money.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

And I'm like, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yeah, it is to her in her country, you're paying her a month's wages, and she's not doing anything, and it's not good, it's not only that, it's you can't use it, it's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

They're doing it 10 10 authors a month, guys. That doesn't sound like a lot. It's like you could do that with 10, you know, you could scam 10 authors and make an annual income. Like it's just crazy. It like the the numbers when they when they when they grow exponentially, it's just it doesn't seem like it's oh well it's only $20, or it's only $10. It it that's a lot of money when you've got 50 authors doing the same thing you're doing. Um, so one of the things I was gonna show you or tell you guys about is like the number the numbers that I'm seeing on this. So in in the overall scope of scams has increased. It's not just in our industry, it's actually over. Oh, yeah, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. So I mean, I get bombarded probably about I I need to do something major. I need to like join join one of those like aura groups or whatever where they can purge my number, but basically, um, because it's it's insane what I'm getting. But they say that over the last three years, it's grown kind of, I mean, you can say anywhere from 80 to 100%, but statistically it's about 75% scams overall. And um, in 2022, there were 8.8 billion dollars of reported scams in the in the country of people being taken, 8.8 billion dollars of fraud losses. But in 2025, it's over 16 billion dollars. So it is double. In the writing world, in 2025, um, the reports were that that there were getting um that authors were getting multiple email scams a week. And there was um the really weird one, and Angela, you guys, you guys probably know about this one was Page Turner and Media.

SPEAKER_05 33:40

Um there's in jail right now.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

Yeah, so 900 writers were taken with more than 48 million dollars in losses. Like that is insane. That is insane, and that, you know, like I mean it it's just publishing scams, you can honestly say, like reporting through Ally, the um, the uh the guild, the writers guild, and others, they're they're reporting between uh, you know, like 50 to 75 percent increase in the amount of times that they're contacted. And what's crazy about that is when you know, five, 10 years ago, you were getting you were getting bombarded then. So the fact that we're you know that it's increased that much, it's just it's over over the top.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

No, I'm getting the other thing that happens is as soon as you release a new book as an author, even if you're experienced, as soon as you release a new book, that number just ratchets up. Yeah, they're like, surely you want to put this new book in front of as many people as possible. I'm like, Yeah, you betcha. No, it's you to do that. No. Um, you know, and but it it, I mean, it's just on the author's side and on the business side, like I get both. Yeah, I get both. It drives me, like, there's times when I'll get two or three a day, and I'm like, you have to be kidding me. Like, how in the world? Like it, but it's just you know, and do you want to invest in this and then scam job offers? Oh, yeah. Well, this I mean, on that on LinkedIn, and they'll they target writers a lot for like do you want to, you know, write, do this job, and it's only this many hours. And I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

You know, you know what's crazy is they're getting bolder and bolder too. They're impersonating legitimate companies, and you know, I know.

SPEAKER_05 35:37

We there is a company, foreign company, I think it's in Pakistan, that keeps putting up uh Facebook pages using our name and our logo, Writers Weekly. And what they're doing is they're saying, I got I got an email from a guy this week, they were gonna pay him forty six hundred and thirty-four dollars to write an article. And he wrote to me because he's smart, unlike some other people, and said, Is this really you? I said, No, please send me the link to Facebook. Facebook already took it down. I've got an employee working every single day taking down in person Facebook places that are impersonating us. And how the scam works is they tell you, this is so great. They'll pay you that you do the work, they say we'll pay you, but you first need to pay um capital gains tax to us, not to the IRS. Yeah, scammer capital gains. Capital gains tax or some other bizarre fee, some tax or whatever. And then they'll send you the money. Of course, they're never sending you the money, and you've already done the work for free. So we started getting angry emails from people saying, Well, I don't want to pay that money. I sent you the money, where's my money? I'm like, Yeah, wasn't us, wasn't us. Should have done your research.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Oh my gosh, it's you know how discouraging that is for small business owners. I mean, Trey and I are not in any way, shape, or form like massive, but it was like as we're working on scaling, I'm like, gosh, I'm gonna have to employ people to just track people down that are trying to impersonate and screw with my clients. That's dumb. Like, I mean, that's so dumb.

SPEAKER_03 37:05

We didn't hire anybody extra, we just dumped it on somebody else's plate that already had enough to do. Right. And now they're having to do this. And that's it. I just wanted to um um attorney James Walsh uh sent me this the other day. Um, now some of these numbers may contradict some of your numbers, Stacey, but that's only because it's probably it's it's another source.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

But yeah, just sources, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:27

This is uh Consumer Federation of America, and it says uh just the headline: Americans lost an estimated $148 billion to online scams and crimes in 2025, and that was up nearly 26% from 2024, and they're aver it's averaging uh $1,09 per household average. Of course, you know, not every household is getting scammed, but uh I mean this is this is just how how big, and that was 2025. I think it's gotten even worse this year.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

I think so what where what's that source? What's your source that you got that from?

SPEAKER_02 38:01

He uh this was because the one I got was from the FTC.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Okay, this is Consumer Federation of America. So this is this is a private group. Cool, but you okay.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

Well, that just shows widespread. But again, that's a drop in the bucket.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

People don't report being scammed because they're embarrassed. You're exactly right. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Well, that's part of it too, is I think authors are embarrassed sometimes by the fact that oh man, I got scammed, so I'm not gonna tell anybody. So, which enables the scammer to keep going. Right. Oh, yeah, please. Yeah, you know, hey, we've all been there where we've done something that was like you know, less than brilliant. Okay, so tell us it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

We all got the underwear people, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

We all got the toilet paper sticking out of our underwear sometimes. It's happens, just let your friend tell you that it's there.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Talk about it on the shoe. Oh, I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

The underwear is better. Um, no, but like I love Stacy Sincy here.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Yeah, you and Angie are a lot alike. Yeah, Angie tones it down a lot when we get on microphone, but uh, she's I have a problem.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

You know, that editor thing, I have no filter.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Like, one of the thinkings on our podcast is that Troy is carefully censored. Yeah. Um because Stacy's daughter is pretty good at like at least.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

She's not carefully censored. We'll say we'll say censored, but not carefully censored.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Moderately censored. Yeah, moderately censored.

SPEAKER_05 39:32

I I wanted to go back to rebranding real quick. Go ahead and say they they create a website, they get a bunch of complaints, they stop using that website, they create another website, different colors, different logos, same book covers, same everything. Also, if you go to Facebook and you click on their profile and then click on the big font of their name at the top, and then click on transparency, you can see if they're using the same Facebook profile, you can see all the different names they've used.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. Um, and I don't know if the Wayback Machine would be able to do that too, but you might be able to like find like somebody's name and then like Google it and or put it in the Wayback Machine and see how many um alterations or versions of that name that they have used.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

Speaking of Wayback when when they're impersonating real companies, they're also impersonating old legitimate publishers that have since gone out of business.

SPEAKER_04 40:27

That have gone out of business.

SPEAKER_05 40:29

So they they pluck up the domain, and then you're like, I recognize that name. And then if you go to the Wayback Machine, you can see for how many years that website was not working. What all of a sudden, 10 years later, it's back in business.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Yeah, yeah. It's funny how many, how many times. Um, I mean, like that was kind of the joke yesterday. I was telling Troy, I was like, I can't believe we opened a small press when small presses are going out of business. It's insane. Um, like staring into the abyss and just going, just diving in.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

What businesses are failing right now? Let's start one of those.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Um, that's that's fun. Um, but yeah, it's crazy to me how many times. So I used to be contacted maybe once or twice a year from clients that said, Oh my gosh, my publisher went out of business and I need to, I need to republish this. This year, this year alone, as of August 1st, I had been contacted by 10. So that is even going up in in terms of like frequency. It's just kind of amazing to me how much this business shifts. It does turn on a dime. I think people need to understand that. And so that I tell everybody when you get into this business, first of all, first and foremost, you have to become a cynic. You just have to. Um, because and just don't trust anything, keep that eyebrow perched high on that forehead. Um, and just keep on looking at everybody like you can't believe a word that's coming out of their mouth. Because even my own, even mine, you know, I'll tell people if you don't believe me, do some digging. Like, because sometimes I'm just spouting some crap out of my mouth because I don't know what I'm talking about, you know. But like just double check me. If you think that you think I'm wrong, go ahead. I dare you. Well, I don't dare you. I just go double check me. Sometimes you can do the homework before I can, but um, but just understand and know that publishing scams are very prevalent and they're gonna come after you. And like one of the questions I get most often, Angela, actually, I think we you and I might have talked about this before when you were on our podcast, is how do how do authors even get contacted? How do they even know I'm out there? I'll tell you how they know. One, you're publishing a book. And when you publish a book, you have to purchase um identifiers. Even when you get the free ones, folks, your name is linked to those public numbers, those numbers that register that book, and that is a public registry number. And then I have authors that say, Well, how do I not do that? How do I not be involved with that? You don't. Do you want to publish a book? You're a public figure.

SPEAKER_03 43:03

Like it's just you can't publish a book secretly, it's not the point.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

I mean, you can you can you can have a nom diplume and you can try to protect yourself as much as possible, but you still have a business to run. And that is very much a public situation, right? So there are ways to protect yourself, there are ways to kind of screen, but you guys, I mean, you guys understand this. There, there are precautions that you take, there are ways that you can kind of shield yourself and your assets from those scammers, but but it's very much going to be part of your life.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

It's a digital world, it's a digital world, and anybody who's ambitious enough to dig can find out almost who anybody is now.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

Yeah, like so not you're willing to take five minutes out of your day and do that research.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

Yeah, there's a website that we we never lame name publicly, but you can go on there and you can okay, so scammers. Can go on Amazon, sort the books by most recent, find the author's name, get online. Most of the authors have a social media presence. Most of the authors have a website if they're professional author and or even amateur author. And they go to this specific website that we never name, they can find your name, your address, your phone number, your all your family members' names, their phone numbers, um, all kinds of where you've lived, ever every address you've had for the past 25 years, and your email addresses. And what we tell people, we keep repeating, spammers are scammers. Yeah. Legitimate companies are not spamming authors, whether through email or through social media, looking for business. They've already got plenty of business. Also, you talked about all the presses going out of business and publishing services companies too. They are being victimized by the scammers.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Exactly. Exactly. And like I said, I'm getting I'm getting victimized like crazy. I'm getting, well, I'm not victimized. I'm not, I'm being approached daily. I mean alone, I'm getting like at least six. I would probably I'm gonna count. I'm gonna start counting. Um now I'm like, now I'm curious, but I I can say today already I've had three. So I can say safely, probably about six a day, that I get approached and say, hey, you know that $65,000 you wanted as a business loan? I can grant that for you. I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't even get insane, right? Like, yeah. And and I didn't approach anybody about a business loan. So it's just it's insane to me. Like it's it's like so. I I am telling authors all the time, look, you're just gonna be approached. Your job is to just know when it's a scam and when it's not.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

And I'm gonna just say it is, I'm gonna say it is before I say 99% of the time, a film agency did not, somebody at that film agency did not read your book and say among all the other reading that they do. Because I tell people, well, look, if I read your book for my pleasure, you should be very happy about that. I read and write all day as part of my job. So if I choose to read your book at night as my pleasure read before I go to sleep, you should be very happy about that. But I even if I do like your book, I'm not going to contact you and say, Hey, let's work together. No, I'm going to bed, my friend, because I'm tired and I have plenty of books to read. I have authors that send me their books and say, Can you just read this for me? And I'm like, No, you're just reading it. I can't. Yeah, I can't. So no one at Netflix is just reading your book at night and goes, you know what? This would make a great movie.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

The only way they're doing that is if Oprah called them and told them to do it. I I'll say this. Um, one of the things that um I think would be really great for people to understand is the difference between scammers and and legitimate professionals, is understanding how to vet legitimate professionals. Um, when you know how to like hire and fire people for your own business, you do a better job at understanding and recognizing the scams as well. I have a um thing on my website, it's free. You can just go on to myprinttopro.com and on the tools and resources page, I have a how to vet your editor on there. Those questions are legit for anybody that you would probably hire in this industry, you know, checking out their references, checking out their it just do the homework. Protect yourself by giving yourself the the courtesy and the respect to reach out and do a little bit of homework. More people research it feels like a recipe and spend more time looking for a good recipe on, you know, egg foo young than they do sometimes on their own business. And it's it's it's that's just come on, guys. Like let's come on, son. Like, let's be a little bit responsible about our own, about our about our what we love, which is our writing, right? So that's my advice is just to always just learn how to hire and fire real professionals, and then you'll know that when the people are reaching out to you and they're going, oh, I can do this and this and this, you could be like, Oh, for pol you know, Pete's sake, no. Um, because you know that how hard it is to hire a legitimate one.

SPEAKER_03 48:22

Are you guys okay going over an hour? No, I'm fine. Okay. All right. Just want just want to make sure I'm not keeping you from anything that you got.

SPEAKER_05 48:30

I wanted to mention that um one of probably our most popular page on our website right now is 11 ways to figure out if it's a publishing scammer. And we'll put a link to that underneath this episode at writersweekly.com slash podcast episode 52. And it it says you probably only need to read number one to figure it out, and that's related to the fake book covers on their website that they've stolen from other publishers. Yeah, yeah, just look for them on Amazon and you can see the date. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

I had one on Facebook that was like it it was this some kind of marketing thing, right? You know, and I was like, Oh, that looks interesting. And I saw I went down a rabbit hole. I'm like, let me look at their website. Oh, their website looks pretty good. Look at these author testimonial names. Maybe I should look up those names on Amazon or Google.

SPEAKER_04 49:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Well, and and one guy, like, I strung him along for a while on purpose to just see how far he would go. And so he sent me the names of these clients that they have, and the client has no ebook on Amazon, they have a paperback, and the ranking is seven million whatever something. So nobody's ever bought it. There's no reviews, nobody's ever, and so I'm like, Oh, you helped this guy. Well, obviously, you did a fantastic job because he's not doing anything. I mean, I don't think that they thought I would actually go look, but like the the Facebook one had you know all these reviews. Five stars totally changed my book sales, and I go and look, and I'm like, this person does not exist, they're not on Google, they're not on Amazon, they're not anywhere. So I email them, of course, because I'm me, and I'm like, hey, I just noticed maybe you misspelled this person's name on your website. You know, I'm being like nice, like I'm trying to be helpful. You maybe misspelled their name because they're not anywhere.

SPEAKER_05 50:24

There was always fun.

SPEAKER_03 50:25

Go go look at these publishing websites and see how many covers they have on there with a title and no no author name on it. Oh, that's that's typical.

SPEAKER_05 50:34

The the testimonials, there was a couple weeks ago. I was so people contact me at Writers Weekly all day every day asking is this a scammer? Is that a scammer? And I do it for free. They just have to click on the contact contact us button. So I went to this website and they had two testimonials, and the author's names were John Smith and Jane Doe. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_03 50:53

No, didn't even make a good one. I'm so lazy. Come on, son. Hey everybody, it's Brian, your host here. So this interview wound up going a lot longer than we expected it to, so we're gonna cut it into two parts. This is the end of part one. And the original idea of this episode was to simply talk about uh how intelligent authors and even experienced authors can still get scammed uh with the sophistication of the scams that are out there. However, we did end up veering into several other aspects of just general publishing knowledge, which is okay because it's not very often you get to have three dedicated experts in the publishing and writing industry all coming together uh to discuss these things. So there's a lot to learn from Angela, uh Troy, and Stacy. You know, e even if you go with some of the big bigger publishing companies, um chances are you're gonna be talking to customer service representatives that are basically on the phone going off a script. Uh again, to be able to listen to to three people who deal individually one-on-one with authors all day, every day. They've been doing this for a living. Um, you get some really good insights uh that could help you with your own writing and and public or uh writing business. So we ask that you uh come back next week and we'll listen to part two uh of this interview with Stacy and Troy. So we'll see you again next week on the Writers Weekly Podcast.