Possible scam?

[WhaleSprite]

I got what I thought was someone messaging me telling me they legitimately like my story for the first time, but now I'm a little wary. They said my story is engaging but didn't really go into detail, which is fine, but they suddenly brought up they were inspired by it to do illustrations and asked to send them to me through discord or email. Could it be a scam? I'm kind of new on here, so I'm not sure if it is or if it's common for artists to suddenly bring that up? Have you guys ever gotten messages like this? I mean it'd be great if it was legit, but there's so many online scams now a days ?

 

[MasterY001]

Some are legit, some are scams. If you are genuinely interested, then reply and see

 

[WhaleSprite]

Some are legit, some are scams. If you are genuinely interested, then reply and see

It'd be great if it was truly the case.

 

[Amrasil207]

I did, it was from an account claiming to be from amph something.

 

[Bishop_Quarter]

I got what I thought was someone messaging me telling me they legitimately like my story for the first time, but now I'm a little wary. They said my story is engaging but didn't really go into detail, which is fine, but they suddenly brought up they were inspired by it to do illustrations and asked to send them to me through discord or email. Could it be a scam? I'm kind of new on here, so I'm not sure if it is or if it's common for artists to suddenly bring that up? Have you guys ever gotten messages like this? I mean it'd be great if it was legit, but there's so many online scams now a days ?

Someone did the same to me as well a week or two ago, just when I started publishing. That person contacted me through my insta page, praising me as well like you do and even directly offering to make my story into a manga. Of course, being broke and still starting, I told them the truth about my financial condition. Still I offered them my help in return, in case they needed an original story for them to make themselves.
However, the moment they declined it, I was sure about their intention to just wanting me hiring them for illustration work, so, I told them again about the possibility of it if the story started to make money.

Of course, in the end we lost contact, as I asked the person to give me input on my story.
So, just asked around and tell them about your condition first and see where the talk will go after.

 

[WhaleSprite]

Someone did the same to me as well a week or two ago, just when I started publishing. That person contacted me through my insta page, praising me as well like you do and even directly offering to make my story into a manga. Of course, being broke and still starting, I told them the truth about my financial condition. Still I offered them my help in return, in case they needed an original story for them to make themselves.
However, the moment they declined it, I was sure about their intention to just wanting me hiring them for illustration work, so, I told them again about the possibility of it if the story started to make money.

Of course, in the end we lost contact, as I asked the person to give me input on my story.
So, just asked around and tell them about your condition first and see where the talk will go after.

It's sounding more and more like a scam man I was so excited, I thought someone actually read and liked my story.

 

[HoracioGui]

Two people messaged me, saying the same thing haha, they tried to sell you their art afterwards.
I just looked here for these two accounts that no longer exist, they sent me a message

 

[CharlesEBrown]

About a month a go I had someone here message me about that. At first it felt like AI messages, but then I got some real responses and finally a link to their gallery. Looking it over, they had some nice work but nothing that matched any of the stories I have up (and the prices were too steep for me anyway), so didn't go anywhere with it.
Ask to see if they have an online gallery so you can see if their work is a good match (in your view) to your stories and go from there.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

Did they say your name, the title of your story, or anything they would only know if they'd actually read the book? If not, it's a bot copying and pasting the same comment all over the site to try and trick people into giving it money.

 

[HisDivineShadow]

You could ask what exactly they liked. If it’s something from the first chapter, chances are they haven’t read much beyond that.
And that’s how you can tell whether they actually read beyond the first two paragraphs of chapter one.
I’ve had about five like that — almost no one responded when I followed up with deeper questions

So.. it’s a mailing list

 

[John_Owl]

I had one. They even included details from a handful of different chapters. But turned out, it was a solicitation to "bring it to life in a comic." For pay, of course. I'm just replied "Dude, I'm doing this for free. You think I can afford to pay you for it when I'm not making a dime? Nah, try elsewhere. I'm happy to receive and showcase fan art, and I'd LOVE for a comic artist to bring it to life in their medium. But it'd have to be free, since, again, I'm not making anything, so my budget to spend on it is precisely $0.

 

[Corty]

It is a copy pasta. I have been getting them frequently on all the platforms I am on. The funny thing is that they usually bring up my less-read books, not the big three I have. Which is super sus.

 

[soupsabaw]

Just shot out a post asking about this too. It's what I figured: it's all scams. You can tell because the accounts are made the days you got the message, and after about a day, the accounts are already deleted

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Had one contact me. When I finally got a link to their portfolio, the story they contacted me about was the WORST match to their style of anything I had up on the site!
If I had money to spare and had posted my romance novel, I might have considered trying to work out a deal with them, but neither was the case ...

 

[Ai-chan]

Ai-chan got 3 different users say roughly the same things lately. The first time Ai-chan was flattered. The second time Ai-chan was suspicious. The third time Ai-chan just sighed and waved it off. It's probably not a bot as the replies were genuine, genuinely namedropping the name of the book that most people hated instead of the books that people actually read.

But it's fine. Ai-chan just take the positivity and say hello, farewell, auf weidersen, good bye.

 

[Little-Moon]

Mostly it is fishing costumers. If someone seriously wants to do it for free they say it, explicity so there will be no miscommunication. But it's extremely rare.

Other then that.

Usually solid artists don't do stuff like this. Because one it ruins reputation because there is a lot of scamming and you don't want to be thrown into the same pot with them. Two well artists have to live off something too.
Doing free art, is not paying any bills.

So yeah if they have not exactly stated it's free it's likely a to be a scam.