Now that Lightsword Publishing has gone bankrupt, crippled by revelations of fraud and incompetence, disgraced "publisher" Linda Daly has reconstituted the company as a vanity press operation. Here's what she's written on her Lightsword Digital site:
Currently, LSP Digital is NOT accepting submissions. In early Spring
of 2009 we look forward in updating our guidelines for submission
requirements along with a complete outline of any and all fees for
publishing with LSP Digital, LLC.
Now that's chutzpah.
When are you all going to let the thrill of atempting to ruin people’s lives die down? You and a couple of other people just can’t seem to let go of this Lightsword place. I’m sure my comment will be moderated out, and not shown, but I just had to ask, why not just leave them alone? Writer’s can choose to use them or not choose to use them, there are many publishers to choose from. But no, you can’t let it go, you have to keep pushing the dagger in and then twist it to inflict as much pain as possible. When is enough enough?
Angel,
Whose life do you think we are attempting to ruin? A court of law has determined that Lightsword defrauded authors. Not only that, but one of the two founders of the company has a previous history of felony convictions in Texas. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the perpetrators of this scheme. The only people being “ruined” here are the victims of the incompetence and fraud that runs rampant at Lightsword. By spreading the word about this company’s deceptive practices, we will hopefully prevent anyone else from being suckered.
Is there a reason you don’t want people to know about Lightsword? Who is it that *you* want to protect?
You ask “when is enough enough?” It’s simple: when Linda Daly stops masquerading as a publisher and screwing aspiring authors out of their money and their dreams.
Lee
lol, I am protecting no one, I have nothing to do with them in any way, I am an aspiring writer who just happens to be extremely tired of you and the other running this Lightsword place into the ground. Eveyone knows what has happened, they have read it, more than once from what I can tell. I just happen to think that once is enough, and it being continued on here, as well as on Absolute Cooler and things of this nature is just getting to be rhetorical is all. You all say the same thing, all the time, over and over again. Just rubbing it in all the time. It’s just time to letr the fire burn out. And didn’t you say her name was Daly, not Kirby. Kirby is the name of the other woman if I recall. You, Ann Crispin and Victoria Straus (Spelling) all just seem like the Puritans from Salem, hunting down witches for the fun of it, and it does nothing for your own reputations in the doing of it.
I’d like to have ‘Angel’s’ rationale for her/his attempt to cast blame upon those willing to step up to provide gatekeeping for a profession that becomes less professional everytime a Light Sword Publishing, now LSP Digital, floats to the surface.
No one, NO ONE, is responsible for this company’s travails except Linda Daly, Bonny Kirby, et al. Had this LLC conducted itself professionally, been operated by people with even a modicum of skill, and had not defrauded authors, there would be no negative information to post about them. They and their Kool-Aid swilling devotees provide the fodder for this continuing saga.
Don’t forget the online evidence, created by their own inept hands: the LSP Digital web pages. In spite of the fact that those pitiful examples of the company’s literary skills have been lambasted ad infinitum, NO ONE at the company, including their illustrious editing staff, seems to possess the ability to correct grammar and spelling errors.
Don’t suppose for a moment, Angel, that Linda Daly is going to fold her sullied tent and disappear into the Michigan northwoods. She still believes, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that she’s a literary professional. The excerpt from her pages which Lee previously posted makes that abundantly clear. Given the least opportunity, she’s going to continue to destroy people’s dreams and now take their money in the process. It’s a real shame that you apparently think she should be left to do just that.
I didn’t say she should be left to do anything. It’s just that everywhere I go I here this or that, all repeated information, no matter where you look, about this Lightsword place. I thought only kindergarten children needed repetition in order for things to be learned. I have visited this website you all keep running into the ground. It is plain as day that when they reopen the submissions, they will also have fees. Any writer worth their salt knows that they shouldn’t pay to have their book published. If you feel your book is good enough, you don’t pay to get your book printed, it’s that simple. The way I see it, anyone who submits a book to them, and pays fees to get published, frankly deserves whatever they get. The thing I am getting at on this blog is that there really is now reason to shoot an already dead horse. Smart writer’s won’t submit to them, so why bother keeping this on top of everyone’s head? It does nothing to improve Lee’s reputation to keep mentioning it. It’s all rhetorical.
Angel wrote: “The way I see it, anyone who submits a book to them, and pays fees to get published, frankly deserves whatever they get.”
On this point, I agree with you. My sympathy for people who get caught up in these obvious (and often widely known) scams is rapidly diminishing.
Lee
I agree, too, Angel. Anyone who looks at the LSP Digital web pages with its errors and awfulness will get just exactly what those pages depict. But there are many, many budding authors whose grammar skills need work and who wouldn’t know a scam if one jumped up and bit them. It’s those starry-eyed dreamers who need this information most. Without postings like these, those people have only Daly’s profession of her need to ‘make authors’ dreams come true’ to determine whether they are going to sign up or not. Sorry, that’s just not enough information.
My suggestion to you is this: when you see anything on the web that references Light Sword Publishing or LSP Digital, don’t read it. Judging by their past performance coupled with their current adherence to unprofessionalism, it’s sure to be negative.
As long as this company exists, it’s important to make clear its practices and its past. The more information that is picked up by automated web-scrubbers and thus appears on web searches, the less likely ANY budding writer will be taken in. Sorry if you don’t get the nexus between information being posted in this regard and the fervent desire to protect the naive.
Since you dislike Lee’s willingness to take on these types, perhaps you should give up his blog, and the Water Cooler and Writer Beware, altogether. BTW, both those entities, as well as Goldberg, here, take on frauds all the time. Why no outcry from you in their behalf?
I think I smells me a rat.
Poor Angel. She “heres” when she meant “hears.” And her phrase “any writer worth their salt” is, shall we say, embarrassing. Again, she refers to “anyone who submits…deserves what they get.” Hmmm. And “smart writer’s won’t submit to them…” Hmmm again. I think maybe Lightsword is about right for her.
I have been writing for myself for several years. Only in the last year have I been seriously looking into the possibility of publication. This blog, as well as writer beware and a few others were suggested to me by other writers as a sourse of information, I don’t spend a lot of time online reading blogs, and it just seems like you are out to crucify people. This Lightsword place is just the most recent entry, and I decided to comment. If writing things like you do in this blog and in the other blogs, is what writers do, then I am not altogether certain I want to be counted as being one of you. For the most part, I don’t usually comment on blogs, and no matter what I say here, you will think of me what you will. I’ll not comment anymore.
Angel’s leading candidate for submission?
The writers who signed with Limp Sword were warned to ask more questions and get more data than they wound up getting. When some of them did ask about routine publishing matters such as distribution, they were lied to. Any of us might fall into a similar quagmire if we ask the right questions and receive dishonest answers.
The web site, however…no excuses. That sorry mess speaks for itself and hasn’t changed one iota from its inception, that I can see.
The time to stop bashing Limp Sword is the day after it goes out of business.