I think the solution here would be to write a hand-written letter.
Sure, someone can make AI write a letter with some kind of contraption holding a pen (I think StuffMadeHere did something adjacent to this). But it would likely be more obvious, plus it requires physical actions and a stamp. All things that low-effort AI spammers aren’t going to bother with.
Physical letters do not obviate scams, nor is the cost that prohibitive. I remember actual 419 scams on blue airmail all-in-one letters back in the 80s. And that was international post too.
I have an inbox, and I do not receive a lot of scam post. In fact, I don't think I received any since I lived at this address (~10 years ). We do get a few promotional leaflets every other week.
OTOH, I get hundred of spam emails every day.
The former is something which I can handle manually easily, the other is not.
If you are targetting a list of well-known authors I guess outsourcing the writing of a couple of hundred handwritten letters shouldn't be too hard. I'm sure they they can find a school class in Nigeria or Kenya who would gladly do it for a few dollars — or a struggling teacher willing to get creative with the homework assignments.
I think it is a good general principle that, for any process that is likely to be a tempting target for scammers, you should require a non-electronic step to initiate that process. Requiring a physical letter of application for a job, for example.
Uh - there are entire political lobbyist organizations that use something similar to an "autopen" to make mass letters personalized and appear to be handwritten...
Heck - I have seen some in the mail from the "sell your house for cash" companies - typically behind the friendly, "homespun" personable facade, it is a REIT (real-estate investment trust) - or something similar...
(Myself, I can tell that these are mass-generated - but I am (at least also at this point in life - who knows when I get much older) easily able to tell a scam email, phone call or txt-type message - I can typically spot the signs - but those signs are typically there to "weed-out" the people that won't fall for the scam anyways...) - but my non-cynical, non-technical, non-paranoid friends and family need assistance spotting these...)
> If you’re a scammer who uses “AI” to try to defraud actual humans, please die in a fucking fire, thanks.
Refreshingly direct and unfiltered, despite Scalzi being a well-established writer.
If you are looking for a refreshingly fun light read to brighten up your day¹, try Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye (2025), in which the moon turns into actual cheese.
1: It includes the horrific death of a Musk/Bezos-like tech-bro with more money and tech than sense. Good fun!
I've seen these. They promise a book club with a wide audience, and then you need to pay for having your book present [or some other fee].
It's to take advantage of authors who want to get their book seen and read and bought. Book clubs used to be a good mechanism for word of mouth marketing.
On that note I get the impression the whole publishing industry has an AI problem. I wrote a novel and started sending it out to agents recently. The number of agents who emphasise no-AI, or simply say that due to volume they won't reply... Then, as an aspiring author you rapidly start getting messages offering editor services, or book clubs (like this), or agent access, and it becomes clear those are AI and require payment (ie are scams) too.
My novel isn't even one of the popular self-published genres (eg romantasy.) It's literature, set in post-sea-rise northern Europe where a drowned city's remaining above-water blocks have divided into political enclaves, and one young woman's journey. It's part adventure, part political satire. Think Metro 2033 on water in Europe. Tech bros and startups, librarians and sea monsters. I think this is difficult enough to find an agent for, but AI spam does not care and will target you relentlessly.
I heard about some new agencies requiring "proof of work" which means mailing a handwritten manuscript. Sucks for the author, but that would filter out most AI spam and give real authors a better chance, right?
Slop is an issue, but you've also set yourself up in a difficult situation. The reality of the market is that publishers are interested in selling books, so they look for indications that your work might sell. If you haven't published in shorter formats (demonstrating skill in writing), you don't have an audience/social media presence, and you're offering something the majority of the customer base doesn't want (work produced with LLM assistance), that's a lot of hurdles to overcome even before you add the terrible odds in traditional submissions.
More and more of the internet of humans need to rely on recommendations of other humans. Lobste.rs and other like such that retain the tree of joined people could work for other communities as well. Kind of like return of the FTP warez scene of 90s but for the rest of us.
This isn't his first time posting about being inundated with AI spam. I suspect that, being a moderately famous writer, the level of spam he's receiving is a wee bit more than a normal person is used to. And I get a _lot_ of nonsensical AI spam myself.
AI can trivially replicate average-ish and somewhat above human writing if given a tone sample to copy. Getting to replicate the quality of writing output of a decent author, probably not without a lot of effort, but the threshold here is to sound like a plausible e-mail from a book club or similar group, not to write the Great American Novel.
The author needs to avoid a sufficient number of false positives for the time investment not to be prohibitive, and that is what he is arguing is becoming a hard problem. I have problems believing that given some of the e-mail I receive. I have no problem trusting Scalzi on this.
Or you have someone running an AI bot that does research on your target automatically. Ironically, one of regular features of spam I'm getting semi-regularly now is for "marketing" services" that provide OpenClaw instances to research and individualise messaging.
How is that relevant? The entire point of using a bot is to be able to achieve volume while including customisation and the ability to hold a conversation if you reply. There are major providers offering to do this at volume for pennies.
> Examples show no individualisation beyond the book content.
The post has no examples. Where have you found examples? And why do you presume adding hurdles will stop things for more than a day or two before the campaigns are more effective?
EDIT: If the examples you're referring to are on his post from November, consider that he didn't change anything despite those. It is logical to assume things have gotten worse since. And it's not unreasonable to think part of this is related to how at least 3 mass-email providers having launched AI bot-driven campaigns in the last couple of months, including at least one of them integrating OpenClaw - I'm sure there are many more, those are just the ones I've casually spotted.
> My suggestions would be quite effective.
Your suggestions are based on you presuming an outdated spray and pray approach that is increasingly being replaced by far more sophisticated campaigns. I'm not Scalzi, but I regularly get approaches that include far more customization than what you propose, including e.g. full-on web pages customized for my business.
> This isn't a new phenomena in the author world, it's been plagued by 'you have won 1st prize in a poetry competition' for decades.
I know. It's been decades since I got my first one. That is also a good reason to think that something has changed for Scalzi to decide this now after he's for years been above average accessible.
I don't know what to tell you. It still works. Personally, I get about 30 job applicants a day, about 2 of which are from real people, which are consistently filtered into my inbox by the subject line keyword I state clearly in the online job description. The spam content is ever improving in terms of relevance. But it's success rate of beating this filter hasn't changed at all.
AI bots are designed to pray and spray, essentially. Customizing the message doesn't change the fact. They're not designed to scan a job spec or article, look for a secret keyword and insert it into the subject line. They could do that, of course, but they don't. Not in March 2026, at least.
If the author wanted to only receive emails from real people, I would bet a lot of money that this trick would be very effective. Whether those real humans are also on the scam is a different question, but they would be humans who had taken the time to read the blog, that's for sure. which, based on the evidence presented, are not the problem.
So yeah, I don't really care if you ignore me or believe me or not, but if anyone is suffering from a similar problem, a simple request to insert a secret into the subject is very effective at proving you are human. I'd recommend giving it a try.
There are plenty of examples of AI being successfully used to emulated the email / messaging style of a specific individual already known to the target, for spear fishing attacks, and fake video and audio of family members tricking people. I think you're substantially underestimating the peak ability of AI these days
I'm not saying AI is incapable of these attacks, I'm arguing a more likely explanation exists. If he wanted to accept, say, one book club a week, I don't believe he would have too much trouble figuring out a way to safely receive applications
a lot of people , including myself, are using AI as an excuse to push thru awkward changes
he is not saying he doesn't want to do bookclubs he is saying he does not want to spend more time to do bookclubs than he previously did, it is not beyond the wit of man to efficiently pick out a genuine request, but even with efficiency time and effort required is not null.
If there is more slush and the fraudulent slush increases in quality and scope it must mean that the wit, effort and time required must also increase to deal with the problem.
Dealing with problems that do not give one a return on the investment seems not worth doing, especially when it turns out the most efficient way to deal with this particular problem is to absolutely refuse to do any book club stuff.
It's not a hard problem to solve. Post a blog post, say include this word in the subject line if you want your request to be considered, route those emails to a separate folder.
Whether there's a thousand spam or a million spam is not at all relevant.
Based on the example emails he posts, the AI bot is NOT scraping his website to individualise the messaging. It isa bulk approach based on ai summaries of the actual books
These scams are a variation of the Nigerian prince scam; they rely on volume mostly
I think the solution here would be to write a hand-written letter.
Sure, someone can make AI write a letter with some kind of contraption holding a pen (I think StuffMadeHere did something adjacent to this). But it would likely be more obvious, plus it requires physical actions and a stamp. All things that low-effort AI spammers aren’t going to bother with.
Physical letters do not obviate scams, nor is the cost that prohibitive. I remember actual 419 scams on blue airmail all-in-one letters back in the 80s. And that was international post too.
Think of it like changing your SSH port. It does nothing to prevent scams per se but you'll have to deal with only 0.00001% of them.
If you build an analogy based on what I get in my mailbox it's more like publishing your email on the internet.
They don't remove it but they do reduce it.
I have an inbox, and I do not receive a lot of scam post. In fact, I don't think I received any since I lived at this address (~10 years ). We do get a few promotional leaflets every other week.
OTOH, I get hundred of spam emails every day.
The former is something which I can handle manually easily, the other is not.
If you are targetting a list of well-known authors I guess outsourcing the writing of a couple of hundred handwritten letters shouldn't be too hard. I'm sure they they can find a school class in Nigeria or Kenya who would gladly do it for a few dollars — or a struggling teacher willing to get creative with the homework assignments.
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It doesn't have to prevent the scam completely, it just has to make harder for them to scam you than it would be to move on to scam someone else.
One of my college lecturers only had a physical address on their webpage.
Contact me: letter > envelope > stamp > post box
I think it is a good general principle that, for any process that is likely to be a tempting target for scammers, you should require a non-electronic step to initiate that process. Requiring a physical letter of application for a job, for example.
Uh - there are entire political lobbyist organizations that use something similar to an "autopen" to make mass letters personalized and appear to be handwritten...
Heck - I have seen some in the mail from the "sell your house for cash" companies - typically behind the friendly, "homespun" personable facade, it is a REIT (real-estate investment trust) - or something similar...
(Myself, I can tell that these are mass-generated - but I am (at least also at this point in life - who knows when I get much older) easily able to tell a scam email, phone call or txt-type message - I can typically spot the signs - but those signs are typically there to "weed-out" the people that won't fall for the scam anyways...) - but my non-cynical, non-technical, non-paranoid friends and family need assistance spotting these...)
Or something like European E-Deliveries.
They're "physical letters but digital," tied to a human identity and with proper proof of receipt.
> If you’re a scammer who uses “AI” to try to defraud actual humans, please die in a fucking fire, thanks.
Refreshingly direct and unfiltered, despite Scalzi being a well-established writer.
If you are looking for a refreshingly fun light read to brighten up your day¹, try Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye (2025), in which the moon turns into actual cheese.
1: It includes the horrific death of a Musk/Bezos-like tech-bro with more money and tech than sense. Good fun!
OK but why would your AI be sending out book club spam? Is it trying to get you to pay for coming to the book club?
I've seen these. They promise a book club with a wide audience, and then you need to pay for having your book present [or some other fee].
It's to take advantage of authors who want to get their book seen and read and bought. Book clubs used to be a good mechanism for word of mouth marketing.
On that note I get the impression the whole publishing industry has an AI problem. I wrote a novel and started sending it out to agents recently. The number of agents who emphasise no-AI, or simply say that due to volume they won't reply... Then, as an aspiring author you rapidly start getting messages offering editor services, or book clubs (like this), or agent access, and it becomes clear those are AI and require payment (ie are scams) too.
My novel isn't even one of the popular self-published genres (eg romantasy.) It's literature, set in post-sea-rise northern Europe where a drowned city's remaining above-water blocks have divided into political enclaves, and one young woman's journey. It's part adventure, part political satire. Think Metro 2033 on water in Europe. Tech bros and startups, librarians and sea monsters. I think this is difficult enough to find an agent for, but AI spam does not care and will target you relentlessly.
I heard about some new agencies requiring "proof of work" which means mailing a handwritten manuscript. Sucks for the author, but that would filter out most AI spam and give real authors a better chance, right?
Your book sounds really interesting! Hope you get it published
Thanks :)
Agents have always had more queries than they could handle, this is not new to the AI era.
Slop is an issue, but you've also set yourself up in a difficult situation. The reality of the market is that publishers are interested in selling books, so they look for indications that your work might sell. If you haven't published in shorter formats (demonstrating skill in writing), you don't have an audience/social media presence, and you're offering something the majority of the customer base doesn't want (work produced with LLM assistance), that's a lot of hurdles to overcome even before you add the terrible odds in traditional submissions.
More and more of the internet of humans need to rely on recommendations of other humans. Lobste.rs and other like such that retain the tree of joined people could work for other communities as well. Kind of like return of the FTP warez scene of 90s but for the rest of us.
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This isn't his first time posting about being inundated with AI spam. I suspect that, being a moderately famous writer, the level of spam he's receiving is a wee bit more than a normal person is used to. And I get a _lot_ of nonsensical AI spam myself.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/22/yes-all-those-author-...
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AI can trivially replicate average-ish and somewhat above human writing if given a tone sample to copy. Getting to replicate the quality of writing output of a decent author, probably not without a lot of effort, but the threshold here is to sound like a plausible e-mail from a book club or similar group, not to write the Great American Novel.
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The author needs to avoid a sufficient number of false positives for the time investment not to be prohibitive, and that is what he is arguing is becoming a hard problem. I have problems believing that given some of the e-mail I receive. I have no problem trusting Scalzi on this.
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Or you have someone running an AI bot that does research on your target automatically. Ironically, one of regular features of spam I'm getting semi-regularly now is for "marketing" services" that provide OpenClaw instances to research and individualise messaging.
Author states it's a volume problem. Examples show no individualisation beyond the book content. My suggestions would be quite effective.
This isn't a new phenomena in the author world, it's been plagued by 'you have won 1st prize in a poetry competition' for decades.
> Author states it's a volume problem.
How is that relevant? The entire point of using a bot is to be able to achieve volume while including customisation and the ability to hold a conversation if you reply. There are major providers offering to do this at volume for pennies.
> Examples show no individualisation beyond the book content.
The post has no examples. Where have you found examples? And why do you presume adding hurdles will stop things for more than a day or two before the campaigns are more effective?
EDIT: If the examples you're referring to are on his post from November, consider that he didn't change anything despite those. It is logical to assume things have gotten worse since. And it's not unreasonable to think part of this is related to how at least 3 mass-email providers having launched AI bot-driven campaigns in the last couple of months, including at least one of them integrating OpenClaw - I'm sure there are many more, those are just the ones I've casually spotted.
> My suggestions would be quite effective.
Your suggestions are based on you presuming an outdated spray and pray approach that is increasingly being replaced by far more sophisticated campaigns. I'm not Scalzi, but I regularly get approaches that include far more customization than what you propose, including e.g. full-on web pages customized for my business.
> This isn't a new phenomena in the author world, it's been plagued by 'you have won 1st prize in a poetry competition' for decades.
I know. It's been decades since I got my first one. That is also a good reason to think that something has changed for Scalzi to decide this now after he's for years been above average accessible.
I don't know what to tell you. It still works. Personally, I get about 30 job applicants a day, about 2 of which are from real people, which are consistently filtered into my inbox by the subject line keyword I state clearly in the online job description. The spam content is ever improving in terms of relevance. But it's success rate of beating this filter hasn't changed at all.
AI bots are designed to pray and spray, essentially. Customizing the message doesn't change the fact. They're not designed to scan a job spec or article, look for a secret keyword and insert it into the subject line. They could do that, of course, but they don't. Not in March 2026, at least.
If the author wanted to only receive emails from real people, I would bet a lot of money that this trick would be very effective. Whether those real humans are also on the scam is a different question, but they would be humans who had taken the time to read the blog, that's for sure. which, based on the evidence presented, are not the problem.
So yeah, I don't really care if you ignore me or believe me or not, but if anyone is suffering from a similar problem, a simple request to insert a secret into the subject is very effective at proving you are human. I'd recommend giving it a try.
anyway, got to go read a book!
Authors are being absolutely inundated with these. I've gotten 2-4 a day for the last couple of months, and it's really obnoxious.
A lot of folks can tell that it's AI, but some folks can't.
> Unless he is saying ai can replicate human writing?
It can definitely replicate a human-written email.
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There are plenty of examples of AI being successfully used to emulated the email / messaging style of a specific individual already known to the target, for spear fishing attacks, and fake video and audio of family members tricking people. I think you're substantially underestimating the peak ability of AI these days
I'm not saying AI is incapable of these attacks, I'm arguing a more likely explanation exists. If he wanted to accept, say, one book club a week, I don't believe he would have too much trouble figuring out a way to safely receive applications
a lot of people , including myself, are using AI as an excuse to push thru awkward changes
I think you underestimate how much mail famous people get.
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he is not saying he doesn't want to do bookclubs he is saying he does not want to spend more time to do bookclubs than he previously did, it is not beyond the wit of man to efficiently pick out a genuine request, but even with efficiency time and effort required is not null.
If there is more slush and the fraudulent slush increases in quality and scope it must mean that the wit, effort and time required must also increase to deal with the problem.
Dealing with problems that do not give one a return on the investment seems not worth doing, especially when it turns out the most efficient way to deal with this particular problem is to absolutely refuse to do any book club stuff.
It's not a hard problem to solve. Post a blog post, say include this word in the subject line if you want your request to be considered, route those emails to a separate folder.
Whether there's a thousand spam or a million spam is not at all relevant.
Based on the example emails he posts, the AI bot is NOT scraping his website to individualise the messaging. It isa bulk approach based on ai summaries of the actual books
These scams are a variation of the Nigerian prince scam; they rely on volume mostly
easy enough at scale of how many easy-enoughs per hour?
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We care about this one well known authors opinion if we're someone who sees it as a loss that he and people like him will be less available to us.
We also care about it because it's an indicator of the rise of a new societal problem of signal being even further drowned out.
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