Indefinite Book Club Hiatus | Hacker News Reader

Indefinite Book Club Hiatus

whatever.scalzi.com

85 pointscdrnsf38 comments

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.

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.

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.

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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