The email went to an old web.de address I don’t use at all anymore – not the Huliwood inbox, not my Gmail.
Subject: “Julián, Your Essays on Money, Meaning and Modern Life.”
Signed Liz Stein, Vice President & Executive Editor at HarperCollins Publishers.
She liked how Huliwood connects money, travel, personal choices and the search for meaning. My background in multilingual editorial work and digital content strategy added “an interesting dimension”.
Then: was I represented by a literary agent, and if so, by whom?
I forwarded it to my dad with the most professional reply I could manage: “Uhhhm… that escalated quickly. Que es esto un catfish?”
Dad called it quite a hook, worth exploring, and told me to look into it with Claude.
So I did.
There is a real Liz Stein. In 2024, Publishers Weekly listed her as an executive editor at William Morrow, one of HarperCollins’ American imprints. She buys commercial novels – a diary about money and the AI transition, written out of a backpack, is not her kind of book.
The email came from “harpercollinsau.com”. HarperCollins Australia writes from harpercollins.com.au. And turns out, the look-alike was registered on 2 October, less than two weeks before it wrote to me.
Plus, HarperCollins Australia only reads manuscripts that come through an agent, so the question sounds like protocol.
My guess was that the next email would introduce a very good agent. Writer Beware, which tracks these scams, says it does: the fake editor recommends “one of our company’s private and reliable literary agents”, who passes you to a “book doctor”, who wants money.
The email praised my themes and my CV. It never named a single essay. Then again, I’d like to call this a milestone – Huliwood, finally worth a forgery.
I made a list: has a newsletter, has a LinkedIn, might want a book… may or may not be desperate for attention.
Moving up in life.
For the record, I’m still not represented.
Related: True, But Incomplete – true facts arranged into a false impression, which is most of this email.
Sources: Writer Beware, 2026 · HarperCollins Australia, Publishing Fraud Alert · HarperCollins Australia, FAQ · Publishers Weekly, Book Deals, March 2024 · Verisign RDAP, harpercollinsau.com
I love that being the target of a scam translates to "I'm a little closer to making it".