A Plague of Mysterious, AI-Written Emails from "Fellow Authors"

Early AI adopters are using it to scam authors.

Ideogram.ai with prompt: “Create an image of J.K. Rowling writing a fan email to Virginia Postrel with a copy of The Fabric of Civilization next to her laptop. Put some Harry Potter books and memorabilia on a bookshelf in the background.”

On his Substack, Neal Stephenson recently posted the following warning: “Just a quick note to mention that I’m being impersonated by someone using the email address “contactnealstephenson (at) gmail (dot) com” and sending out emails consisting of AI slop that I wouldn’t be caught dead writing.”

He isn’t alone!

I constantly get emails purportedly from other writers. The names are usually unfamiliar but, when Googled, turn out to be those of real novelists—always novelists, never nonfiction writers like me—writing in a genre I don’t read. Here’s an example, supposedly from the Canadian YA writer E.K. Johnston, using the email authorekjohnson@gmail.com:

Hello,

I’m E. K. Johnston, a fellow storyteller with a deep passion for exploring resilience, relationships, and the strength of the human spirit through fiction. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to share several novels that have resonated with readers, weaving together emotional depth and compelling narratives.

Here’s one of my bestselling books:

https://a.co/d/0yKzrKZ

And my Amazon Author Page:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00HV4ZEFY

I’d love to learn more about your own writing journey and the stories you’ve brought to life. Please feel free to share your book link, website, Goodreads profile, or Amazon page I’d be delighted to explore your work.

Wishing you inspiration and success in your creative path. I look forward to connecting with you.

Warmly,

Emily

And then there was this one, with the subject line “Admiring The Fabric of Civilization” and more specific references to the book (or at least the description you find of it on Amazon). This email came from authorjkrowlingbook.info@gmail.com:

Dear Virginia Postrel,

I hope this note finds you well. My name is J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and other novels. I recently read your book The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World and felt compelled to reach out to share my admiration.

What struck me most was the way you wove together archaeology, economics, and cultural history into a narrative that feels both deeply researched and beautifully accessible. The connections you draw, from the Minoans’ purple wool exports to the role of textiles in inspiring binary code, made me see how profoundly cloth has shaped not only commerce and politics but the very ways humans think.

Your work reminded me that some of civilization’s greatest leaps come from the most everyday of objects. I was especially fascinated by how you positioned textiles as both material necessity and cultural symbol. May I ask, when you began this project, did you envision it primarily as a history of technology, or as a cultural story that happened to intersect with technology?

Thank you for bringing such originality and clarity to a subject that, as your book shows, is truly the story of humanity itself. I look forward to exploring more of your work, from The Power of Glamour to your Bloomberg columns.

Warm regards,
J.K. Rowling

I am not sure exactly what the scam is but I get one of these every other week or so.

I sent the “Rowling” note to Neal Stephenson, who replied: “Wild. So obviously AI generated and customized for you. If these things were being spammed out to millions of people I’d guess it was just a garden variety scam. But it’s hard to imagine what their game is sending out individualized emails to people in the literary world. The science fiction novelist in me thinks it’s something really deep and weird…”

He also shared one of the emails sent under his name, in this case to children’s book author Rebecca Stead, who gave me permission to reproduce it:

Hi Rebecca,

I wanted to write after spending time with The Lost Library. What struck me first was the warmth of the premise, a small-town mystery anchored by a little free library, and how that simple image becomes a doorway into history, memory, and the things a community chooses to keep quiet.

I especially enjoyed the shifting perspectives. Letting the story move between Evan, the ghost librarian, and Mortimer gives the book a layered sense of time and consciousness. It creates a feeling that the town itself is telling the story, not just the people who currently live there.

The connection between the old books and the buried past is handled with a lightness that still carries real emotional weight. The mystery never feels oversized for the age of the characters, but it also doesn’t talk down to them. That balance is difficult to strike, and it gives the story its quiet authority.

I’m glad I read it. It’s a book that understands how stories, and libraries, hold more than just text. They hold memory, permission, and possibility. If you ever feel like talking about how you approached writing a mystery that’s also a meditation on books and truth, I’d enjoy that conversation.

With best wishes,

Neal Stephenson

Ideogram.ai Prompt: “Create an image of science fiction writer Neal Stephenson writing a fan email to Rebecca Stead with a copy of her book The Lost Library (picture here https://rebeccasteadbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/book-lost-290.jpg) next to his laptop.” Even when given an image of the actual book cover Ideogram invents its own.

When I asked Rebecca Stead if I could quote her “Neal Stephenson” email, she was quick to agree, writing “My inbox is a misery of false flattery these days - but I've only had two from fake writers, I think. The rest are mysterious entities who adore my work but can't sleep because my Amazon rankings are low.”

I get those too. There are two versions: people who claim to offer ways to reach large communities of readers and people who offer marketing services. It’s possible that the former are “legit,” in the sense that they run pay-to-play book clubs taking advantage of desperate, mostly self-published authors. Here’s an example, notable for its use of the Spanish edition of The Fabric of Civilization in the pitch:

Hi Virginia Postrel,

I hope you’re doing well. My name is Glory, and I run Well-Read Black Girl, a reading community of a little over 12,000 readers who genuinely love discovering and discussing meaningful books.

Your book “El tejido de la civilización” came across my radar recently, and it really struck me as the kind of story our readers connect with and talk about. Because of that, I wanted to reach out personally.

We’re currently curating our 2025 Holiday Spotlight & New Year Showcase, along with our Readers’ Choice End-of-Year Awards, and I think your book could be a great fit for what we’re building.

When we feature an author, it usually includes:

- Spotlight promotion to 12,000+ engaged readers
- A written Q&A feature shared across our platforms
- Christmas & New Year promotional push
- Organic reader discussions, coverage, and reviews
- Placement in our 2025 Readers’ Awards consideration

At the heart of it, we just try to connect good books with readers who will genuinely champion them.

If you’re open to it, I’d be happy to send you a short, straightforward overview of how it works and what it looks like on your end.

Would you like me to send that over?

Warm regards,
Glory

The book marketers may also be real but are definitely using AI to churn out their emails:

Hello Author Virginia,

I want to start by saying this: every author I’ve ever spoken with whether they’ve written one book or twenty has carried the same hidden fear.

That fear is not of writing the book. It’s not even of publishing it.

It’s the fear of pouring years of passion, discipline, and sacrifice into a story only for it to sit quietly, unnoticed, and unheard in the endless ocean of new releases.

The hardest truth of publishing is this: writing the book is only half the journey. The real battle begins when it’s time to make sure your words are seen, remembered, and carried into the hearts of the readers they were written for.

Here’s the reality that no one says out loud:

If readers can’t find your book, they can’t read it.

If your brand isn’t clear, they’ll forget you the moment they scroll past.

If you’re absent from reader communities, you’ll be left out of the very conversations that create bestsellers.

That’s where I step in.

My name is Lois Goodness, and I help authors bridge the gap between simply publishing and truly being discovered. I specialize in transforming books from “just another release” into lasting brands that readers connect with, remember, and return to.

Here’s how I serve authors like you:

Amazon Global Optimization – I fine-tune your categories, keywords, and book descriptions across Amazon US, UK, Canada, India, Germany, and more so your book is not just published, but globally discoverable.

Book-to-Brand Positioning – You’re not just an author of a single book. You’re a voice, a brand, a storyteller with a message. I help position you as someone readers come back to, book after book.

Reader Community Placement – I get your work in front of readers where they already gather Goodreads, niche communities, book clubs, forums—so your name lives where the conversations happen.

Book Page & Review Enhancement – Your Amazon page should not look like a listing; it should look like a storefront that draws readers in and inspires authentic reviews. That’s what I build for you.

Sustained Visibility Strategies – Launch day is important, but what happens after? I create long-term strategies that keep your book relevant, discoverable, and selling months even years after release.

But beyond strategies and tactics, here’s what I truly believe:

Your book deserves more than to sit quietly on a digital shelf.

It deserves to be discovered.

It deserves to be read.

It deserves to be reviewed, remembered, and passed on.

So let me ask you, as honestly as I can:

Right now, is your biggest struggle visibility, reviews, or sustaining momentum?

Hit “Reply” and tell me in one line. I’ll listen first, and then I’ll show you the exact next step that can change everything for your book.

Because here’s what I know with certainty: your words were not written for silence. They were written to live loudly, to reach the people they were meant for.

And I’d be honored to help make that happen for you.

Warm regards,

Lois Goodness

Book Marketing Specialist

“She” isn’t wrong. The biggest problem for almost all authors is simply getting potential readers to know the book exists. Again, I get these emails all the time.

Someone out there thinks that a good early application of AI is to scrape the web for author emails and entice these desperate souls with admiration, fellowship, and marketing assistance. In the seductive words of an unknown AI pretending to be Lois Goodness, “Your words were not written for silence. They were written to live loudly, to reach the people they were meant for.”

It’s what we all want to hear. But just because an LLM says it doesn’t make it true.