Illustration of a person sitting at a desk writing, with a speech bubble coming from a cellphone on the table that reads, "Dear (NAME), we adore your book SO much and we know others would adore it just as much if only they knew about it and we would love to help get the word out! Plus we think your book (TITLE HERE) would make a fantastic animated movie and heck, maybe even a multi-season series, it would be THAT GOOD." Copyright Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

For those who want to skip straight to the tips, see:

How I was initially fished in

The first time I received one of these emails, I was flattered. A book club has picked one of my books as their featured book! But when I wrote back to find out more, it turns out they wanted me to pay them for the privilege. Another time I got fished in: a book marketer loved one books, explained in detail what was so great about the book, the appeal it could have for more readers, that they could help me come up with a plan to help me to widen my audience. They dropped in enough tantalizing specifics to make me think that they were not only genuine fans of me and my work, but had done a lot of research. I ended up declining this first marketer because it wasn't the right time for me, but thanked her for taking so much interest in my books, said I'd reach out when I felt I needed book marketing help. Instead of just leaving things as if, she pushed even more, saying there were still things I could do etc etc. That irritated me, and I asked her to take me off her mailing list.

When I started realizing I was being scammed

THEN I started getting more and more similar emails, from different marketers, as well as different book clubs. Similar flattering approaches, over-the-top praise, similar phrasing. And that's when I realized that these emails were being AI-generated.

I felt embarrassed because I did believe these emails had been written by people who genuinely liked my books. I also felt disappointed and somewhat demoralized because, like many other mid-list book creators in the industry are finding, it's been an especially tough year.

Then a "film producer" asked to turn my books into animated movies

Just before I was about to publish this post, I received another email...this time it came (supposedly) from a film producer who wants to turn my books into an animated feature film. The email address it came from was a big giveaway, since it included "...filmproducer@gmail.com." What real-life film producer would actually choose an email address that had "filmproducer" in it? An authentic email address would also come from the company's own domain.

I looked up the person's name and she IS a real-life film producer at a real-life film company, but this person is known for doing independent live-action films, not animation.

In case it helps others, I am pasting the email below.

Hi Debbie,

My name is (name of real-life producer here), a film producer at Crybaby Films. I recently read about your vibrant work as both an author and illustrator, particularly your original picture books Where Are My Books? and Sam & Eva, as well as your collaborations like I'm Bored, and was deeply drawn to your inventive, playful storytelling and charming expressiveness.

We envision adapting Where Are My Books? or Sam & Eva into a dynamic animated children's feature film or animated series with a tone similar to Harold and the Purple Crayon or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and I’m reaching out to check the film/TV rights availability for your authored titles.

To keep this simple and avoid back-and-forth, could you let me know:

Are the film/TV rights currently available?

If yes, do you handle these directly?

If the rights are open, I will follow up via email with our initial producer deck and proposed adaptation terms for your team to review.

Thank you for your time and for creating such delightful stories.

Best,

(name)

Producer | Crybaby Films

I went online, found a legitimate email address on the actual Crybaby website, let them know about the email. I let my agent know, in case her other clients were receiving similar emails. I also contacted Writer Beware.

Shortly after, Crybaby Films added a warning message to the top of their website:

Warning: Crybaby Films warning text reading: "We are currently experiencing identity theft. If you have received an email from Rachel Dargavel or anyone else at Crybaby Films, please ignore and delete it immediately. Do not reply or click any links." Below the warning is the Crybaby Films logo and an image of children.

I continue to get scam emails, mainly from book marketers, but I ignore them now. There may be legitimate book marketers reaching out to me, but I'm not looking for book marketing help at present and don't want to waste more time in researching and responding to scam emails.

Some of you may be tempted to confront or "unmask" a scammer by playing along, but it might be safer to just report, block, and move on. One author started investigating and found that many of these scammer operations are run by violent crime syndicates using human trafficking and forced labor. Appealing to law enforcement doesn't help if the criminals have already corrupted those in charge. See:

Like many authors, I’m bombarded by scam fan mail. I wasn’t prepared for what would happen when I wrote back
The novelist receives passionate AI-written emails almost every day – but when he decided to take up one sender’s offer to find him new readers, the story took a darker turn
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/nov/01/like-many-authors-im-bombarded-by-scam-fan-mail-i-wasnt-prepared-for-what-would-happen-when-i-wrote-back

Another unfortunate side effect of these AI-generated scam emails: I'm sure I'm not the only author who is now more cautious about fan email. I used to try responding to each one, but now I only do after doing some research to see if it's legit...and that takes time and energy, both of which are in limited supply in my life these days.

What about the rest of you? Have you received scam emails like the above? How do you handle it?

If you haven't already, I strongly recommend bookmarking the Writer Beware website, where you can find updates about the latest literary scams. Thanks to the for sponsoring that useful resource!

And thanks to for all her hard work! Please do follow Victoria on Bluesky and let her know how much you appreciate her efforts.

Note: Thanks to for the reference image I used for my quickie sketch, which I used as a creative warm-up! Drawn via Procreate on my iPad.

Illustration of a person sitting at a desk writing, with a line art sketch and a reference photo inset showing a model working at a desk, along with handwritten notes including "Thanks to TrueRef.io for the reference image!", model info for Kat (@bunnyfacekat), and "I love that TrueRef supports human models this way!". Copyright Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

Find out more about Debbie at DebbieOhi.com, or browse her social blogs.