Self-publish and be scammed: Jon’s tale of heartbreak highlights boom in fraudsters using AI to supercharge book swindles

Eight years of dedication were poured into the pages of Angel of Aleppo, Jon Cocks’ debut historical novel. Inspired by his wife’s grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century, it was a labour of love, distilled from thousands of hours of research and oral testimony.

The retired South Australian high school teacher’s project carried the weight of family history and historical truth. It was precisely this emotional gravity that rendered him vulnerable.

The new wave of artificial intelligence-fuelled publishing fraud that began saturating global markets last year lifts directly from the lonely hearts playbook. 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.

In six months Cocks has lost almost A$10,000.

View image in fullscreen Jon Cocks at home in Mount Barker, South Australia. Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian

It wasn’t vacuous adulation that hooked him but the political and moral significance the solicitations attributed to his work. The pitches argued that his years of emotional investment deserved a global audience befitting a historically vital narrative; that an advanced marketing campaign would deliver his message to the world.

“And here’s me stupid enough to think these people were for real,” he says. “It still makes me angry – I rant for a bit, then I calm down again. I’m 70, I don’t want to bring on an episode.”

View image in fullscreen Cocks’ wife Lilet (centre) stands behind her grandmother Anoush – the woman who inspired Angel of Aleppo

The new age of scams

Literary deception is not a new phenomenon; it existed long before the invention of the modern printing press in the 1400s – the Catholic church had been citing forged papal letters and decrees for 600 years. Enormous financial gain has been the motive behind more contemporary deceptions. The fake 1970s “authorised autobiography” of the billionaire recluse Howard Hughes netted its creator a writer’s fee of more than US$765,000 (US$5m today) and 17 months in jail.

View image in fullscreen A copy of the fake Hitler diaries for sale at a German auction house. Photograph: Michael Urban/DDP/AFP/Getty Images

It was a sum dwarfed a decade later by the fake Hitler diaries, bought for 9.3m marks (more than US$11m today) and earning a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for their creator.

But AI technology has triggered a pandemic of scams in the publishing world, where the roles of writer as perpetrator and publisher as patsy have been reversed.

While even distinguished authors are being targeted in increasingly sophisticated schemes, self-published authors are fraudsters’ primary prey. In 2023 the number of self-published books topped 2.6m, compared with 563,000 traditionally published titles.

double quotation mark Gone are the days where scams were easily identifiable by spelling errors, strange formatting, and impersonal salutations Australian Society of Authors warning

AI can trawl through tens of millions of titles, identifying low-selling authors and generating personalised solicitations at unprecedented speed.

“There have always be