What if a literary agent cold-called you?
Rhymes With Camera || OUTSIDE IN || MAY 18, 2026
May 18, 2026 CONTENTS
• “What if a literary agent cold-called you?”
• “Podcasts that shed light on 21st century scams”
• Have you been Pwned?*
• COMING THIS SEPTEMBER!
• “Shady literary biz: resources for protection, advocacy & justice”
• Message RWC
• Associations I support
• Declaration: Your Support is a Revolutionary Act
• More about Rhymes With Camera
• Contact
• Declaration: 100% Human Made
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What if a literary agent cold-called you?
DEAR ALVIN BUDDING: GO AWAY
A fellow named Alvin Budding keeps calling me. He keeps leaving me messages. And emails. And in every single one, he tells me that:
Harper Collins is now open to submissions.
Harper Collins wants my poetry.
My work and online presence make me a good candidate for representation.
He’s ready to offer the big break I’ve always wanted.
He seems to have forgotten that we had a phone conversation over a month ago.
I called him (that first time) at his San Bernadino number… (279) 399-3550 x116 …after he left me a message telling me all these wonderful, glorious things.
O, joy! O, happy day!
I was finally going to land me an agent!
Except that’s not at all what I was thinking.
Before I called him back, I looked up Alvin Budding online and traced him to an agency? publishing house? hybrid? Who even knows?
It was this company: Conquest Literary Agency, and a quick scroll showed a very polished website that promised the moon.
So polished, in fact, that I’m pretty sure all those agent head shots are genAI.
Reverse lookup also found nothing to connect his name to the number in my smartphone except for a couple of medical sites.
No way was this guy the real thing, but I called him back anyway because that’s what I do anymore as a 60-year-old woman tired of bullshit.
So many red flags, people.
🚩Alvin Budding didn’t remember just calling me in the last half hour.
🚩When I asked him which Harper Collins imprint was interested in publishing poetry, Alvin Budding couldn’t name a single one.
🚩I asked if he was an agent, and if so, which agency. He answered that he was independent and doesn’t belong to an agency. Wait, what? Alvin Budding works for Conquest, according to the web…
🚩Alvin Budding is not terribly well spoken. He spoke fast, but there was absolutely no substance to his elocution. He probably doesn’t even know what elocution means.
🚩When I asked Alvin Budding what genres he represents, he said all of them, and then he was slightly more specific: poetry. “But don’t send me religious work,” he said. If Alvin Budding had truly done his homework, he would have known that the last thing I write is religious work.
🚩Sight unseen, Alvin Budding promised me 15-20% terms on any work I sent him.
🚩When I told Alvin Budding I owned all the rights to my work, he literally said, “well, if you work with me, that will change,” like signing off all my rights was a good thing! [It’s not.]
🚩When I asked Alvin Budding how he found me, he said the Internet. When I asked him which books caught his attention, he couldn’t cite a single title of mine.
🚩I asked Alvin Budding if someone had referred him to my work and he was evasive in his answer, neither admitting nor denying he had heard about my work from a third party.
🚩Alvin Budding promised to email me his portfolio and his offer right away, and it didn’t happen for a few weeks.
🚩Harper Collins recently published this alert on their website, which sounds suspiciously like what Alvin Budding is doing. Check out the list below for potential fraudulent publishers that might have reached out to you in the past.
But perhaps the most telling red flag of all is the knowledge I already have from just being alive and paying attention:
LITERARY AGENTS DO NOT COLD CALL POTENTIAL AUTHORS.
Literary agents use referrals from within their circles to find authors when they’re not sifting through the slush pile of requests coming from querying authors. They do not have time to make cold calls to writers unless they’re already publishing books with lots of buzz or they’re celebrities or influencers with huge followings.
I’m tempted to give you a history of literary scams and shams but honestly, at this point, you should know by now that there will always be people waiting to sell you a false opportunity, whether it’s a fake book deal, a paid-for slot in an imaginary book club, or a live promotion on a radio show (with a down payment, of course).
That said, I’m blown away by the numbers of posts in my Nextdoor app by neighbors who do not realize that those parking ticket violation emails are fake, or that the warrant for their arrest three states over is a sham, or that the third-party service calling to help you renew your car tabs is actually dialing in from Russia.
Instead, I’ve listed some amazing resources at the end of this newsletter that you can trust to help you discern whether an offer is fraudulent (“Shady literary biz: resources for protection, advocacy & justice”).
Ahead of that, you’ll also find a curated list of podcasts exposing contemporary scams of all kinds (“Podcasts that shed light on 21st century scams”). If you’re smart, you’ll listen, be disgusted (over and over again) so that when that swindler drops you an email or reaches out to you through a cold call, you’ll know to recognize them as the wolf in sheep’s clothing they are and send them packing.
HEY YOU, I KNOW YOU’RE SMART. BUT SO ARE THEY.
Since the dawn of both email and social media, we have shown ourselves collectively to lack basic media literacy. Check your media literacy here.
Oopsie, you shouldn’t have done that.
Online quizzes are a super easy way to grab your basic information and sell it on the dark web.
Every time you give someone your name and email address, you run the risk of exposing yourself to data miners.
Part of the problem is that ordinary people think they are immune to scams. Yet, there are lots of people falling for them—and they’re not gullible, desperate, or broken people, but wise, stable, and educated.
In fact, all of us are the targets of a widespread and aggressive cyber-penetration movement happening right now.
This involves many different ways to siphon your resources, whether that’s money, identity, or your personal information: hacking, phishing, malware, identity theft, financial fraud, spoofing, cryptojacking, data mining, ransomware, and more.
LISTEN TO ME
That cold-calling agent who just loves your work
and wants to make you a deal? They function
just like these other cybercriminals, using AI
and info purchased from the dark web to exploit you.
SAVE YOURSELVES
Understanding how scams work globally in 2026 will ensure you see them for who or what they are, whether they’re interested in your manuscript, your bank account, or your social security number.
As the scouts always say, BE PREPARED.
You may not recognize them right away, even when doing some due diligence.
Their online presence may be as simple as a convincing website like the Conquest agency front.
Or they might operate as an elaborate fraud farm in a remote part of the world… one where workers (sometimes at gunpoint) sit in the dark, in front of walls of devices and mass-dial numbers, seeking a new mark—maybe you—whenever a person answers their phone.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to Scam Factory if you don’t believe me.
What I’m talking about here is not just your silly spam email calling you “Dear” and promising you $3 billion in windfall from a Nigerian prince. This is something far more sophisticated.
You need to know that not only does it happen, but they will find you.
Again, don’t believe me? Check “Have you been Pwned?*” below. Someone out there has your information, whether you know it or not.
Stay safe out there, kids.
Podcasts that shed light on 21st century scams
It’s become such a hot topic among writers, editors, agents, and publishers that you can hardly “throw a rock” into the audio space and not hit at least one podcast featuring an episode discussing current literary scams and what to do about them.
Here are some I can recommend:
🔗The Best of Book Marketing Podcast || Nov 28, 2025 || Lainey Cameron & Paulette Stout || “Scams, Scams, and more!”
🔗Easy Prey Podcast || July 23, 2025 || CGP Holdings || “Author Scams Exposed with Victoria Strauss”
🔗Scamfluencers || Aug 29, 2022 || Wondery* || “The Book Bandit”
🔗Writers Weekly Podcast || Apr 2, 2025 || WritersWeekly.com || “ ‘In Just $299’ – Publishing SCAMS You Need To Avoid!! Part 2”
🔗Writers With Wrinkles || Feb 2, 2026 || Beth McMullen and Lisa Schmid || “You’re Not a Real Author Until You Get Scam Emails”
🔗The Written Word Pod || Dec 15, 2025 || Written Word Media || “How to Avoid Scams: What Authors Need to Know”
In addition, I’ve listed below links to podcasts that explore a wide range of scam artistry conducted across the globe. The more you know means the more you can refine and sharpen your bullshit meter and play the smart skeptic when these predators inevitably reach you through your devices (and they will…).
These aren’t stand-alone episodes limited to writing scams, but cautionary tales that cross the globe, revealing a relentless effort by scam artists to disrupt the lives of ordinary people in order to exploit everything they have…
…and these aren’t just stories about theft and swindling, but about cults, grifts, human trafficking, criminal patterns of targeted assault (physical, emotional, sexual, psychological), hacking to mine data, even murder-for-hire.
Don’t like true crime? Then don’t listen. But then you’ll be missing out on something valuable these narratives have to teach us all about how vulnerable we are to con artists in 2026, many which are politically motivated to destabilize the US.
🔗 Behind the Scams || Stamp Out Scams Inc || Real stories of fraud, romance scams, and online deception come to life
🔗 Easy Prey || CGP Holdings || Reveals the hidden dangers of scams and frauds, giving you the tools to spot red flags and stay protected
🔗 Guru: Beware the Self-Help Charlatan || Wondery* || Explores the dark side of the spiritual self-help industry through the chronicling of the infamous Sweat Lodge Incident
🔗 The Kill List || Wondery* || Tech journalist plumbs the depths of the dark web to reveal a secret murder-for-hire website targeting hundreds of innocent people
🔗 The Perfect Scam || AARP || Stories of people targeted by scammers, with leading experts “pulling back the curtain” to show on how scammers operate
🔗 Scam Factory || Wondery* || Investigates the brutal reality behind predatory scamming “factories,” operations imprisoning abducted people and forcing them to scam others digitally
🔗 Scammer Payback || Scammer Payback.org || A deep dive into the dark world of scams, exposing the tactics of scammers and the vigilante hackers fighting back
🔗 Something Was Wrong || Broken Cycle Media || Award-winning docuseries about survivors’ discovery, trauma, and recovery from crime and abuse, including scams, cults, cybercrime, and more
🔗Wild Boys || Campside Media || True story of two young men who appear in a Canadian town claiming to have been raised in the wilderness
*Please note: As of May 21, 2026, Wondery will transition programming to a split between two channels, one for Audible and one for Amazon Creator Services. It may be iffy trying to find these through their native apps and subscriptions if you have used them in the past.
Have you been Pwned?*
Finally, as a way to fully understand how you are at risk, go visit Have I Been Pwned to safely learn whether any of your email addresses have been revealed in data breaches.
This will certainly wake you up to the insidious nightmare of identity and information theft, and I’m willing to bet you have at least one email address that’s been violated in this way.
Go there to learn more about what it means to be part of a data breach and why you need to be extremely cognizant of your password generation practices.
*Pwned = video game term for being “owned”
COMING THIS SEPTEMBER!
Shady literary biz: resources for protection, advocacy & justice
All of these organizations and individuals have a stake in weeding out the literary world’s bad actors. There’s much to learn from all of them, so do some browsing. If nothing else, follow Victoria Strauss in social media!
🔗 Alli
Alliance of Independent Authors has advice tailored to self-published authors, who may be some of the most vulnerable marks for fraud.
🔗 Australian Society of Authors
Doesn’t matter if you’re not Australian. They know what they’re talking about, and literary fakery impacts authors the world over. Especially useful: their cautions about the use of AI to defraud writers.
🔗 The Author’s Guild
Scam alerts are just one benefit of this author-centered organization with watchdog Victoria Strauss at the helm.
🔗 Draft 2 Digital
One of the most popular self-publishing platforms and also one targeted by imposters. Link takes you to Part 1 of their two-part series on spotting indie publishing scams.
🔗 iUniverse
Like Draft2Digital, a scammer’s mark of choice for taking advantage of vulnerable indie authors.
🔗 Nathan Bransford
This editor/author has great advice considering the writing life big picture, and that includes scam awareness and how to avoid being exploited.
🔗 Preditors & Editors
A long-time resource currently undergoing site and personnel reconstruction. Keep an eye out their reappearance; they have always been reliable and full of information.
🔗 Reedsy
Comprised of publishing professionals, this organization’s link takes you to a smart table that identifies the five fake publishing situations you might face and must avoid.
🔗 Victoria Strauss
Perhaps the Erin Brockovich of literary hucksterism, she has her eyes peeled for all the fraudsters out there and constantly posts about new schemes you need to be wary of.
🔗 Writer Beware®
The blog “shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.” Sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
🔗 Writer’s Weekly/Angela Hoy
I’ve been following Angela forever. This link takes you to a checklist for determining if you’ve been targeted by a literary scammer. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to find a long list of publishing predators to avoid.
Coming in two weeks: “What is the rush to publish?”
As a GenXer, my whole life has been nothing but adapting to rapid change in nearly every aspect of life.
We are the first generation to truly understand the notion of a bottomless learning curve, thanks to the Internet, computers, and digital services that came into being during our coming of age…
…aspects of 21st century living where change comes so fast, it’s no longer optional to keep up.
Staying ahead of the curve is necessary for these systems, products, and programs to function.
Listen, I love the idea of becoming a Luddite, too, but it’s just not practical.
However, one thing I’ve seen that concerns me is this rush by authors to publish before they’re ready.
I mean, they may even know they’re not ready, but they still seem so eager to pull the trigger on a submission or a self-published project regardless.
I’ll peek under the hood of why this is and why it may not be in any writer’s best interest to hurry into a writing career (if it’s a career you really want).
With summer upon us, I’m wishing you all cool breezes, rainy evenings, mild temperatures, and abundant flowers. See you soon!
⸙ Tamara
🔗Seattle Chapter, Horror Writers Association
🔗Dread Writers Society
🔗Authors Against Book Bans WA branch
🔗Northwest Film Forum
🔗Seattle Film Society
🔗Bainbridge Island Film Group/Emergence Films
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📨CNT: Tamara Kaye Sellman
