Photo by Huang Yingone on Unsplash
I’m not going to bury the lead on this one: No, Netflix is not turning my book into a movie.
One Friday in June, a message purporting to be from “Maria Ferreras, Global Head of Partnerships at Netflix” hit my inbox. I nearly deleted the email without reading it because of the cheesy subject line: “Lights, Camera, Collaboration: Your Book’s Journey to Netflix.”
It had to be fake, right? I mean, look what happened to Elvis. If criminals can nearly foreclose the rug right out from under Graceland with a fraudulent claim, what hope is there for the rest of us?
It’s embarrassing to recount the internal battle I waged over whether to hit “delete,” but here goes, because I don’t want this to happen to any other author:
First of all, the email seemed really specific. A Google search confirmed Ferreras as an actual Netflix executive at the physical address on the email. Her Netflix corporate photo and job title matched, too. Everyone knows Netflix is ramping up their original content. My book focuses on the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which marks its 125th anniversary next September (2025). What if Netflix wanted to do an original long-form series where “Anne with an E” meets “The Perfect Storm” – and survives?
But, seriously, how did Ferreras get my personal email? I lost my author site years ago. Well, maybe Ferreras contacted my publisher. But wouldn’t the publisher (a small academic press) have given me a heads up? Maybe not. Most publishers, big and small, are way understaffed. Although my book is still in print, I haven’t seen a royalty check in a while. (Note to self: email you know who re book sales…)
I played the six degrees of separation game. Maybe someone connected to Netflix ran across my book in Galveston. Or, OMG, they flew to Austin for SXSW, dropped into the Bob Bullock Museum and stumbled across my YA in the gift shop after being primed by the museum’s multimedia depiction of the storm. No, I got it! Weren’t my daughters in the same Girl Scout troop as Rick Linklater’s daughter? I know that scenario’s a stretch, but we did do our campout at his Bastrop ranch and I was Cookie Mom for the troop that year.
Perhaps the simplest explanation was the right one: As a Netflix subscriber, Ferreras already HAD my email.
Against my better instincts, I clicked the PDF proposal attached to the “Ferreras” email. Horror aficionados recognize this fatal mistake as the point in the movie when the heroine runs up the stairs instead of out the front door. I can hear you all out there hollering, “Don’t do it!”
Well I did, and that email was mighty specific. Someone must have actually read my book from 20 years ago. How else would they know “Abby Kate’s survival during the hurricane offers gripping scenes of resilience and human spirit amidst natural disaster” or that it “explores family dynamics and relationships, particularly Abby Kate’s bond with her grandmother, cousin, and brother.”
Huh? Brother? Abby Kate didn’t have a brother. Freddie, that boy she spars with, was a neighbor. But wait! She DID have a brother, back in Austin, who’d contracted a serious case of diphtheria to solve a gnarly plot point.
I can’t believe it – Ferreras knows my story better than I do. The proposal mentioned money, to be paid in various stages that matched the film schedule milestones I’d found online. Wow, maybe I could finally replace my 16-year-old car.
I did more online searches but didn’t see anything re this particular Netflix phishing scam, only a weird Quora thread.
Excerpt from the fraudulent Netflix proposal
The email addresses and links seemed okay. I asked my ex, who’s a lawyer. He thought the proposal looked real but warned me to watch for subsequent emails asking for money. I checked with several well-connected author friends. They hadn’t heard of the scam. I almost posted over that weekend to a big Central Texas authors group, but the Ferreras email included a confidentiality clause. Besides, I didn’t want to tell everyone about my big Netflix deal, only to have it not pan out. Because we all know authors whose books have been optioned but never made it to film.
Scams like these isolate the victim. You don’t want to seem foolish if it’s not real. You don’t want to get other people’s hopes up on your behalf, only to disappoint them. You don’t want to jinx your lucky break.
I wasn’t agented at the time my Galveston book was published, and I’m not agented currently. But, wait for it…A great agent at a great literary agency wants to see my new YA manuscript. So I forwarded this Netflix adaptation proposal to HER in case they’d want to represent me on this deal.
My second “Netflix” email detailed all the info they needed from me for their film development meeting – including a query letter, film adaptation proposal and detailed outline of the film. My heart sank. The only thing worse than cleaning bathroom grout is writing a one-page query and detailed synopsis. If I found this “to do” list daunting, they offered to connect me to one of their “trusted partners who specialize in assisting authors with adaptations.”
Internet marketers describe this moment in a sales pitch as “showing your whiskers.” The typical online pitch starts with giving away free goodies, a.k.a. “cheese,” without letting on, just yet, how much you’re trying to get the customer to spend. Meow! Is that a cat I hear? Well, one thing’s for sure – he’s not making my book into a movie.
Now, I’d caught a whiff of AI magic in these emails right from the beginning, but I assumed some young, low level Netflix assistant (picture Kayla from Max’s Hacks) had enlisted it to tame their workflow. I myself have used AI to speed me through job tasks. Spend my weekend drafting an elementary school library collection development policy? Or read Tana French’s new novel?
Research how to organize a school chess tournament? Or binge watch part two of Bridgerton? I rest my case.
Curious by now if AI was turbocharging this phishing scam, I typed into ChatGPT: “Writing as the global head of Netflix partnerships, write a proposal to author Julie Lake about turning her book Galveston’s Summer of the Storm into a movie or visual media.” Presto! Five seconds later a verbatim copy of the initial email I received populated my computer screen. I wanted to throw up.
Then I did a different ChatGPT prompt for a response to this same author about materials needed to review and evaluate her book for film adaptation. Up popped the exact wording of the follow-up phishing email.
Guys, the scary part of this story is that this is kindergarten AI – the free stuff anyone can use. AI, and the scams that employ it, are only going to get better.
A second horrifying thought struck me. The middle school kids in my media literacy class would have a field day with this one. How often had I warned them about online dangers and fakes, taking them through Common Sense Media lessons on evaluating sources? And yet, for a few days, I fell for this one. Man, I would never hear the end of this.
And the truth is the internet scam examples we share with students are often archived specimens as harmless and frozen in time as a lizard in amber. AI juiced scammers, in contrast, are another creature entirely. A wily predator with endless reach unencumbered by the need to maintain a duplicitous call center. Picture a T-rex vaulting from the permafrost with flawless spelling, grammar and high-speed internet.
At some point I’ll laugh about this. For now, I’m glad I only wasted a weekend on this scam. I didn’t detour into a bogus project writing a film adaptation that Netflix doesn’t want. Nor did I pay a bunch of fraudsters to do the work for me.
It’s back to the real world, now, and my blank computer screen. I still have time to send pages to that agent. My two-page synopsis is not going to write itself.
Or is it?
P.S. The Writer Beware blog is a trusted website investigating the deluge of too-good-to-be true scams targeting writers these days. In case you haven’t guessed by now, the “We Want to Turn Your Book into a Movie” scam is quite popular, with endless variations.