Authors Guild logs years of AI-powered scams targeting writers

The Authors Guild keeps a running page of scam alerts reported to it, with dated entries from November 2021 to November 2026, among them reports of AI-enhanced scam emails targeting authors. On October 17, 2025, the Guild said it had added a requirement that anyone messaging authors through Guild member contact forms verify they are using a real email address, after members reported a rise in AI-enhanced scam emails. A similar wave of scam messages impersonating bestselling authors, with AI-generated details about recipients' own work, had been reported through member contact forms and Sitebuilder websites as of August 22, 2025.

Earlier cases on the log include a May 23, 2024 report of a Facebook page impersonating a bestselling author under a "verified fan club" page, where one author reported paying $499 for a foreword supposedly written by that author. In August 2023, the Guild reported that author Jane Friedman had spoken out about AI-generated books being sold on Amazon under her byline, with titles appearing in Amazon search results and automatically added to her Goodreads profile; the Guild said such titles are not always removable via copyright takedown since they may not constitute copyright violations, and noted it has an escalation relationship with Amazon for unresolved member complaints.

Correction, 9 November 2026: an earlier version of this story, including its summary and its first sentence, misstated the period covered by the Guild’s scam alert log. The log’s dated entries run from November 2021 to November 2026. The specific entries described in this story, from 2023, 2024 and 2025, are unchanged. The summary and the first sentence of the text have been corrected.