The self-publishing boom of the past 15 years has been a gift to the scam community. Authors aren’t the only targets of scams, of course, but we have become easy prey. I used to say there are twice as many scammers making money off of writers as there are writers making money.

But now that the AI bots are in the picture, my estimate is way too conservative. AI generated scams have made the author-scam business explode. Maybe there are 10 times as many of them as there are of us. Or 20. Or 30. In any case, you can be pretty certain that anyone who contacts you as a writer—out of the blue—is a scammer. Other red flags will be false urgency (act by midnight tonight!) bizarre email addresses, lack of a website or online presence, and outrageous, improbable names. Here are some of the funniest scammer names I found in my inbox this week: