After almost ten years of trying to promote my books on my own, all of a sudden I start getting emails from various sources wanting to host online interviews about them. Oh, the emails are so nice and have interesting descriptions of the Spirit Missions books. Turns out they are AI generated. They include offers to host an interview and even create a “more cinematic” trailer for the books.
The one contact I did respond to didn’t like my book trailer for Sudden Mission and wanted to create a new, more “cinematic” one. Granted, I’m no great movie maker. My trailers were made back in 2015 or so using the tools I had available (See Books). Still, I don’t think they were to bad.
Anyway, I did agree to an online interview, sent up copies of my trailer, photo, and front book cover. Then we scheduled the interview. The interview was a Zoom, audio only, session. The host was a lady with a very heavy accent. I had some problems understanding her questions at times. But it did last about 30-40 minutes.
Homework
Okay. Honestly, I did do some homework on the host web site and all. Yes, BookSpeakFM (dot) org is a real web site. However, it is registered via Hostinger Operations UAB out of Lithuania. That ramped up my suspicions. There is nothing in the Whois records that indicates where BookSpeakFM (dot) org is actually located. I suspect Nigeria.
Also, the original contact was from someone with a “gmail” address. Yeah, that is usually a dead giveaway that someone may be a scammer. Sorry, Google, but I just have no respect for you or your operations. I’ve been in Information Technology and IT Security–as well as around some of your offices–for too long.
So, a few days after the “interview,” I got an audio file of it. The file was only about 5 minutes long. Just a tiny smidgen of the original interview. Then there were some award certificates I supposedly earned. However, the certificate had someone else’s photo and neither had any information about the source of the awards. I did mention the issues to the original contact. The certificates were edited. But the interview was not fixed.
Outcome
In any case, I did get a pretty decent “cinematic” version of my book trailer. I put it up on Rumble. It has helped, somewhat, with attention to Sudden Mission. The video did get almost 500 view in the two weeks since it went up.
The certificate is now something to see, with some source info, my photo, and front book cover. Kind of interesting and somewhat over the top. The other item is something like a major award thing. Of course, these items and the “cinematic” video are all AI generated.
I did pay something for these. Fortunately, it wasn’t a huge price and it does have some value for promotion. Still, the interview has not shown up on Book Speak FM yet, and it probably never will.
Reference
Of course, after I initially responded to the contact, I started getting more contacts from different sources about the other books in Spirit Missions. All had “gmail” accounts. So now I just mark them as spam and delete them. For more information on these scams, you can check out an article by Victoria Strauss on Writer Beware.
Keep Writing!
