Hackers targeted Curtis Brown for months in bid to get hold of The Testaments manuscript

Margaret Atwood’s literary agent Karolina Sutton of Curtis Brown has revealed how the agency was besieged by a “carefully orchestrated” campaign by cyber criminals attempting to obtain The Testaments manuscript which “carried on daily for months”, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal. 

The much anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale is being published worldwide on 10th September to global fanfare with a string of major events, tightly controlled press and retailer embargos on top of high security during the editing process to keep the manuscript safe. Amazon caused international upset with a high-profile “technical error” which saw copies sent to US customers almost a week before publication, causing various newspapers to break the embargo for reviews – the e-retailer later apologised.

The breach followed Atwood’s Booker shortlisting on Tuesday (3rd September), and chair of the judges Peter Florence has described a “ferocious non-disclosure agreement” for the book conducted by UK publisher Chatto & Windus.

Florence and Sutton have now revealed that over the last six months they experienced sophisticated phishing attempts to access the manuscript - similar to a rash of cyber scams which hit major publishing houses at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair and intensified later in the autumn.

However Atwood's book caused an unprecedented cyber frenzy. “Most people publicly associated with The Testaments were targeted by hackers determined to get an early copy of the manuscript,” Sutton told The Bookseller. “It was a carefully orchestrated campaign that carried on daily for months. A number of us had our email identities stolen, which is commonplace in publishing these days, but it was for the first time that fraudulent emails with addresses indistinguishable from our own had been used to reach beyond agents, editors and scouts. The moment the Booker Prize announced the longlist [in July], the judges became targets of a phishing attack.”

She revealed that Curtis Brown was forced to increase security measures. “Luckily, the system we put in place kept the manuscript safe, but in this context we had no choice but to introduce really tight security measures. We had not seen this level of attack before. It became a daily occurrence. Fortunately, everyone inconvenienced by the extra layer of security has been really understanding, which shows again that our industry is made up of the best people.”  

Florence told The Bookseller: “I had a very odd email from Karolina Sutton who I know and have worked with for many years. I received the email very shortly after it was announced in the press that we had received early copies in order to consider for the longlist, late July. It said: ‘Margaret Atwood would like to submit a revised edit to the one you have so could you please send a photo of the first and last four pages of the version you have.’ I was not able to as I was not at home and nor would I have done so I emailed to say ‘I don’t have access to it’. Because it was rather strange, the reply which came back was using a very odd form of words which I hadn’t heard Karolina Sutton use before so I rang Curtis Brown and they knew absolutely nothing about it. Someone had hacked the email server - the first email came from her address but the reply returned to a slightly different email address with a different spelling."

It is believed the scam could be used to extort money from agencies. Florence said: “Karolina explained that the most likely hackers would be people trying to extort ransom money from the agency. This is a familiar Hollywood practice, but is not widely used in the book world. It is a mark of the significance of the book that a literary novel would get this level of attention. I understand from the agency that they have been assailed in this way for months and have had to really improve defences systems to protect the book. I know that they have been targeted over the course over about six months.”

Florence believes the situation could mark the beginning of the end for literary embargoes. “I suspect this is the last time an embargo is used on a fiction book successfully,” he said.

When asked about the "ferocious" non-disclosure agreement issued by Penguin Random House imprint Chatto & Windus in the UK, Florence said: “It’s the same one everyone was made to sign, bookshops as well, I understand. But Booker as an organisation had to give very, very clear promises about the way in which access to the manuscript would be controlled, that all came down to PRH’s extraordinary delivery of watermarked copies. I don’t think I’ve ever come across - in 35 years in the book industry – an embargo that seemed so intense, we had to be giving detail of where we would be to receive the couriered manuscript directly into our hands."

He added: "In the grand scheme of things, this is not a nuclear weapons count. It’s a publication strategy and PR strategy for an extraordinarily brilliant book. And the moment that the book is out none of it matters, but the tone with which it was conducted does seem to be almost totalitarian and the irony of that given the content of the book is not lost on anyone.

“What matters is that it’s an extraordinary novel and one day next week literally millions of people across the world will get to read it. As a containment operation you have to admire its thoroughness. I think PRH would say they are protecting the public from spoilers with these measures.”

“Ultimately, people will be richly rewarded on publication. There are few things that deliver on their promise and this book is absolutely one of them.”

The Testaments is set 15 years after Offred's ambiguous final scene in the acclaimed 1985-published novel. It was announced last November that Sutton had sold UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada, to Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director of Chatto & Windus, as well as signing to a string of other territories around the world.