Is it a scam?

[bravebombadier]

Received this forwarded message yesterday from a Mary Kate (maryacte12@gmail.com):-

Let me give you a bit of background on what we are trying to do...We are trying to create a better version of Literotica/Lush stories where writers are paid fairly...

1) Thus, we'd like to pay you for generic sexy stories. What is your typical price? I wanted you to write a short story about a girl getting lost in Paris
2) Would you be interested in an erotic short story competition (<10,000 words)? The most viewed story will get $7000 to the writer.
3) Just curious - do you have a fan base on Literotica? Do you know most of your followers?
4) Would it be possible for us to buy all of your old stories on Literotica and put them on our site, too? You will get more viewers, and you own 100% of the rights to your story (similar to Literotica)

Anyone else had similar contact? Sounds like a potential scam to me.

 

[Hal9000_]

It looks like free advertising, to me.

 

[SpeareChucker]

If you have to ask, the answer is yes.


Probably this alt and the gmail account are the same person...

 

[ElectricBlue]

Anyone else had similar contact? Sounds like a potential scam to me.

Yes. I've asked a bunch of questions and got some answers. At this point I'm not sure that it is a scam, in that they're (whoever "they" are) the ones offering to buy stories, not asking for money, and not sending links to anywhere.

It's too early to say - it might be nothing at all, it might be someone trying to start something genuine up. But my bullshit filter is running, as always

 

[Bramblethorn]

Received this forwarded message yesterday from a Mary Kate ([email redacted as against forum rules - B]):-

Let me give you a bit of background on what we are trying to do...We are trying to create a better version of Literotica/Lush stories where writers are paid fairly...

1) Thus, we'd like to pay you for generic sexy stories. What is your typical price? I wanted you to write a short story about a girl getting lost in Paris
2) Would you be interested in an erotic short story competition (<10,000 words)? The most viewed story will get $7000 to the writer.
3) Just curious - do you have a fan base on Literotica? Do you know most of your followers?
4) Would it be possible for us to buy all of your old stories on Literotica and put them on our site, too? You will get more viewers, and you own 100% of the rights to your story (similar to Literotica)

Anyone else had similar contact? Sounds like a potential scam to me.

I haven't heard from them, but some thoughts:

- Google search finds no hits at all for the email address you posted.
- Author is probably not a native English speaker.
- It seems odd for them to be asking you for your typical price. Are they really planning to negotiate rates individually with each author? I would expect a site publishing many authors to have a standard rate. (Though maybe they're trying to figure out what their standard rate should be?)
- If the "most viewed author" contest is genuine, it's going to be won by whoever brings the biggest bot to push up the view counts, not by genuine views. But they could just enter one of their own stories under a fake name, declare that it won, and not have to pay the $7k to anybody.
- No mention of how they are planning to raise the money to pay for any of this.

It could be a scam, most likely with the object of getting your bank details or your real ID to blackmail you. (If they were just planning to use your stories and not pay you for them, there's no reason they'd need to email you at all - plenty of people already steal stories from here.)

If it's not a scam... that still doesn't mean that they're competent to do what they're trying to do. At the very least, I would want to know a lot more about their business model and previous experience before I gave them anything.

 

[bravebombadier]

Exactly

I haven't heard from them, but some thoughts:

- Google search finds no hits at all for the email address you posted.
- Author is probably not a native English speaker.
- It seems odd for them to be asking you for your typical price. Are they really planning to negotiate rates individually with each author? I would expect a site publishing many authors to have a standard rate. (Though maybe they're trying to figure out what their standard rate should be?)
- If the "most viewed author" contest is genuine, it's going to be won by whoever brings the biggest bot to push up the view counts, not by genuine views. But they could just enter one of their own stories under a fake name, declare that it won, and not have to pay the $7k to anybody.
- No mention of how they are planning to raise the money to pay for any of this.

It could be a scam, most likely with the object of getting your bank details or your real ID to blackmail you. (If they were just planning to use your stories and not pay you for them, there's no reason they'd need to email you at all - plenty of people already steal stories from here.)

If it's not a scam... that still doesn't mean that they're competent to do what they're trying to do. At the very least, I would want to know a lot more about their business model and previous experience before I gave them anything.

You have covered most of my thoughts (ie Google etc) and added a few more. One to keep away from I think.

 

[ChasingAnna]

Almost certainly a scam. Probably a variation on lottery scams where you will have to pay something before the totally real prize can be released for real. Really!

One key tell is if they were really ready to part with $7k for an author, they would have already parted with $5 to at least register a proper domain to send email from. For example, let's say that was my business model. Pay people too much for stories and hope I made enough selling ads not to go broke. I even pick out a site! Storylottery.com! Hey! That's available right now for less than $10! I can register it, set up an email redirect (or for $2 more a full POP account) and send out emails from kate@storylottery.com. If this was real, they would already have a domain registered, and it would be free to trivially cheap to set up a proper email on it. Thus, there is no site registered, and the whole thing is fake.

Tanstaafl

 

[bravebombadier]

Almost certainly a scam. Probably a variation on lottery scams where you will have to pay something before the totally real prize can be released for real. Really!

One key tell is if they were really ready to part with $7k for an author, they would have already parted with $5 to at least register a proper domain to send email from. For example, let's say that was my business model. Pay people too much for stories and hope I made enough selling ads not to go broke. I even pick out a site! Storylottery.com! Hey! That's available right now for less than $10! I can register it, set up an email redirect (or for $2 more a full POP account) and send out emails from kate@storylottery.com. If this was real, they would already have a domain registered, and it would be free to trivially cheap to set up a proper email on it. Thus, there is no site registered, and the whole thing is fake.

Tanstaafl

Very well put, thanks.

 

[RejectReality]

Same email address and general message was spammed to a bunch of people ( including me ) on Lush as well.

If they actually had money to spend and any sort of plan in place, they'd already have a web presence established, and the email would have been a domain email.

Scam/Pyramid Scheme/Email Harvester.

 

[SyptemberSmyth]

I received the exact same email yesterday

The original email was sent as story feedback and just stated “Hi! Love your work Can I commission a piece or more? Would love to chat about ideas ” I was skeptical since usually when I receive feedback messages they mention a particular story. I responded with: “What type of story are you looking for?” I was curious what their response would be since I’ve currently only written stories in a specific niche and would assume if they wanted me to write them a personal story it would be within that niche. They responded with the exact same email from the exact same address posted in the OP’s comment.

 

[KeithD]

Prize money of $7,000 fingers this as a scam. They have no idea of the industry price lines.

 

[SimonDoom]

I got a message, too, and wondered about this. It sounds fishy, and no concrete information was provided to back anything up.

 

[Hypoxia]

I've received no spam. Nobody wants me. Boo hoo.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I've received no spam. Nobody wants me. Boo hoo.

Same here. I'm too niche even in the niche of porn writers.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Same message trail for me.

Has anybody taken them up in their offer?

 

[KeithD]

Did I mention that, with the money offered, this is absolutely a scam?

 

[yukonnights]

I've received no spam. Nobody wants me. Boo hoo.

Same here. I'm too niche even in the niche of porn writers.

You think you're flying under the radar...I've never received even one 'dick pic' or invite to 'naughty stuff'...much less an offer to get rich quick And, I even use mouthwash every time before coming here

 

[Professor_Chaos]

Glad I stumbled on this thread. Received feedback from this email as well and I was debating on responding to them. I took it as a compliment until commission was mentioned. I personally don't think I've written enough yet for people to be offering me money.

 

[YDB95]

The original email was sent as story feedback and just stated “Hi! Love your work Can I commission a piece or more? Would love to chat about ideas ” I was skeptical since usually when I receive feedback messages they mention a particular story. I responded with: “What type of story are you looking for?” I was curious what their response would be since I’ve currently only written stories in a specific niche and would assume if they wanted me to write them a personal story it would be within that niche. They responded with the exact same email from the exact same address posted in the OP’s comment.

Same here, with the same result. Glad to hear I'm not the only "victim", as it were!

 

[LexxRuthless]

I just changed my settings and was able to backtrack enough to find this. It was not up when I got my own e-mail from that same address. I did get a response that wasn't spam, requesting a romantic older man / younger woman story set in France. However, I asked a bunch of questions and that was the last I heard from her / them.

 

[PenelopeWood]

Email Scam

I received this email as well through a PM on the forums. There are no links to my stories and I use on an alt on the forums, therefore one wouldn’t have known my works.
Smells Fishy to me.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I suppose one problem for writers here is this - we ALL (or at least MOSTLY all) have hundreds of thousands of views and maybe a lot of individual readers and followers... That alone is worth a stack of money from ad revenue if we could monetize these views but we can't.

So it's not 'economically' un-feasible to PAY someone seven grand with those numerical dynamics if you go by the model of some kind of 'open' site that permits ad revenue and 'monetization.'

At the same time though, the folk who have started and manage and host THIS site right here must have already been down that road and gone through all of that mental contortion stuff and ended up with the position that most commercial advertisers do NOT WANT to use an 'erotic literary' site to market their consumer stuff, and/or there are too many government rules and regulations.

So. Yeah. No solution yet as far as I can see.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I suppose one problem for writers here is this - we ALL (or at least MOSTLY all) have hundreds of thousands of views and maybe a lot of individual readers and followers... That alone is worth a stack of money from ad revenue if we could monetize these views but we can't.

So it's not 'economically' un-feasible to PAY someone seven grand with those numerical dynamics if you go by the model of some kind of 'open' site that permits ad revenue and 'monetization.'

At the same time though, the folk who have started and manage and host THIS site right here must have already been down that road and gone through all of that mental contortion stuff and ended up with the position that most commercial advertisers do NOT WANT to use an 'erotic literary' site to market their consumer stuff, and/or there are too many government rules and regulations.

So. Yeah. No solution yet as far as I can see.

Well I did sell a few stories to a website selling sex toys but they closed down, alas. It was fun because part of the brief was to write the stuff they sold into the stories. I didn’t get sample tho. Sob!

 

[RejectReality]

That amount of prize money is absolutely ridiculous. I thought the same thing about another ( now defunct ) site several years back that was offering a contest with a $750 prize, as well as a small royalty based upon views.

The site had a decent number of views and some unique features, so I posted just for another source of eyes on my work. Much to my surprise, I won that contest, and got the check. I was one of the few who ended up getting the small royalties, though, because that prize check boosted me above the minimum bar for payout. Only a few others made the minimum on views alone.

Their goals were pie-in-the-sky, and framed in much the same way as this spam ( making a better version of Lit ) but they did follow through.

Probably exactly why the site is now defunct, though. Unsustainable.

Note that these folks had a fully functioning website before they started trying to recruit authors. That's the big difference between this new spam and the one I'm talking about.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

My money is on a attempt to get you to send them stories that will be republished on Amazon for their own profit. Because if you are stealing just about everything is profit. They will hide behind the "agreement" they claimed you made to publish. A friend of mine had to spend a tedious amount of time getting her romance work pulled down from Amazon after falling for a similar ploy.