True Fakery: How Publishing Scams are Cheating Writers. And what you can do about it.
May 13, 2026, 1:30 pm-3:00 pm ET
ASJA, Book Publishing, Freelance Life, Freelancing, Tips, ASJA Education, JournalismIn the past 18 months, AI technology has triggered a pandemic of scams in the publishing world. According to Kelly Burke, a leading Guardian Australia investigative reporter, both mainstream and self-published authors have fallen prey to increasingly sophisticated book publishing and publicity scams leveraging AI to lure aspiring authors to part with their money.
Fake publishers that seem real, fake websites that copy mainstream publisher sites to a “T,” and fake book marketers who target authors with virtually flawless solicitations and “guarantees” of best-seller success: It’s all part of an evolving, uncontrolled scamming multiverse. As many as 2500 scam publishers were identified last year by Writers Weekly, a long-running US website for freelance writers. Scammers have bilked authors of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for meaningless services. These include vanity media placements, low-viewership interviews, phony book-to-film contracts, advertising and placement in book fairs that don’t exist, and procuring positive reviews on major retailer sites – illegal in many jurisdictions.
“The new wave of artificial intelligence-fueled publishing fraud…lifts directly from the lonely hearts playbook,” Burke writes in The Guardian. “Rogue publishing schemes – most operating out of south Asia, the Philippines and Nigeria – have become the new romance scams, substituting the promise of true love for the dream of literary recognition.” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/mar/12/ai-book-scams-publishing-fraud)
In this ASJA must-see webinar, join four of the world’s leading investigators of publishing scams, Burke among them, who will tell you how to detect and protect yourself from on-line scammers and seek legal resolution if you have been scammed.
Register here.
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Free
Public
$20
Panelists
Kelly Burke is a prominent Sydney-based journalist currently serving as the Arts Reporter for Guardian Australia. Her career in Australian media spans three decades, characterised by in-depth investigative work and reporting on culture, policy, education and social issues.
She is the winner of the 2021 national Walkley Award for arts journalism and a recipient of the Australian Council of Deans of Education Award for outstanding contribution to the field.
Founder of Cybercrime Analytics Inc., Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Chris holds a Masters of Criminal Justice with a Subconcentration in Cybercrime Investigation and Cybersecurity (Boston University). He has held a Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) designation since 2008. He is on the Advisory Board for the Center for Cybercrime Investigation & Cybersecurity (CIC), editorial review board member and Production Manager of the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime (IJCIC), Cyber Advisory Board member – University of Scranton, Community of Interest (COM) member with CyberAlberta, and editorial reviewer for the Chartered Market Technician’s (CMT) Journal of Technical Analysis (JOTA). Memberships include ASC, ACJS, and Canada’s eCrime Cyber Council (ECC).
His areas of expertise are in consulting, education, presentations, research, cyber-related expert witness testimony, and other cyber-related issues, particularly in areas related to social engineering. He is a multi-published researcher in a number of peer-reviewed international journals.
Chris is a member of The Authors Guild and has authored two books: “Cybercrime through Social Engineering – The New Global Crisis” and “How to Master an Online Degree – A Guide to Success”.
Strauss is the author of nine fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the Stone series (The Arm of the Stone and The Garden of the Stone) and the Way of Arata series (The Burning Land and The Awakened City). She has written hundreds of book reviews for magazines and ezines, including for SF Site and Fantasy magazine. Her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.
An active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, she is a co-founder, with AC Crispin, of the Committee on Writing Scams, and serves as its vice-chair. She maintains the Writer Beware website and blog, which provide information and warnings on writing related schemes, scams, and pitfalls. For this work, she received the SFWA Service Award in 2009.[6] She was also honored in 2012 with an Independent Book Blogger Award.
Kathryn Goldman is an intellectual property and internet law attorney who helps creative professionals protect their work so they can profit from it. Kathryn has assisted countless artists, writers, designers, and creative entrepreneurs with the move from early stage to startup essentials to scaling their businesses and ultimately to sale or wrap-up. Katherine practices law in Baltimore, Maryland, with the form of Goldman & Minton, P.C. Her work has been highlighted in Wired, The Huffington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and many others.
Arielle Emmett, Ph.D., is a writer, visual journalist and traveling scholar specializing in East Asia, science writing and human interest. She has been a Contributing Editor to Smithsonian Air & Space magazine and The Scientist. She served as a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in Kenya and Indonesia. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, OMNI, Saturday Review, Parents, American Journalism Review, Boston Globe, Washington Times, Caixin (Beijing), and many others. She a long-term ASJA member and recent author of The Logoharp (Leaping Tiger Press, 2024), which won the Silver medal in Science Fiction in the Nautilus Book Awards 2025. A Mandarin and French speaker, Arielle has taught journalism and visual media in Beijing, Nairobi, Indonesia, Italy, Northern Ireland, and Hong Kong.
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ASJA, Book Publishing, Freelance Life, Freelancing, Tips, ASJA Education, Journalism