Really? Scamming starving writers in their drafty garrets? How much could a scammer possibly make? Apparently, enough to warrant the effort as suggested by some recent headlines and warnings:
- There are scammers impersonating [literary] agents from ______. Please remember: no reputable agent will charge you money to consider or represent your work…
- There are people impersonating agents from _____. They have been requesting money in exchange for working with us. We have reported this to the FBI.
- Why Would Someone Steal Unpublished Manuscripts? Filippo Bernardini has been accused by the government of stealing over 1,000 book manuscripts.
- Someone is impersonating _____ agents. Please be aware that all official correspondence from our agency will either be sent through QueryTracker or via an email containing our only domain name XXX.
- “No That Famous Author Is Not Sending You A Private Message On Social Media.” How Scammers Who Prey On Writers Pretend To Be Famous Authors
This last item happened to me earlier this year. Someone pretending to be a well-known writer contacted me through Facebook. I could not imagine why he/she would be writing to me so, after several FB messages, and a look at this alleged author’s crappy FB page, I wrote to the real author’s real agent about the FB page and messages. Within a few hours, the fake FB page was gone.
No idea what the endgame was supposed to be. Just another reminder that of the 5+ billion people who are on the internet daily, many of them (most of them?) are deeply troubled nuts, vandals, and criminals. To me, the internet is like a public toilet; occasionally, you need it, but you don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. And you definitely want to wash your hands after.