Scams

The Independence Fallacy

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I have to point you to two terrific blog posts from Writer Beware's Victoria Strauss, who tackles the fallacy behind POD companies calling themselves "independent publishers"  and their customers calling themselves "independent authors." The POD companies are eager to cast themselves as the equivalent of indie movie-makers. But the comparison doesn't fit. Indie film-makers and musicians don't pay someone to package and market their work, they do it themselves. Victoria notes:

If you sign a contract with a self-publishing company, you are not an independent writer, no matter how emphatically the self-pub company says you are.

She goes on to note:

If you are a true self-publisher–if you've handled every aspect of publication on your own–then yes, you can accurately call yourself an independent author.[…]If you've used a print-on-demand self-publishing company, you've granted it a limited license to your work, you've chosen from a pre-determined package of services, you're dependent on whatever distribution the company provides, and you probably don't own your ISBN number. Also, since most self-pub companies reserve the right to discontinue publication for any reason, you don't fully control your work's availability, and since most pay a royalty, you don't control its income, either. In other words, you are not independent.

By the way, there's some very good news coming soon about the future of Writer Beware that will make it even stronger.

Lightsword Becomes a Vanity Press

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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. 

You Don’t Pay Agents

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Author Alison Kent tipped me to this terrific blog post from Jennifer Jackson, her agent:

Just in case there is someone out there reading this who doesn't already know: Reputable agents work on commission. Commissions are based on selling your work. They make money if you make money. It's a motivational system.

This is something every aspiring author needs to know. Any agent who asks for a reading fee, a submission fee, or any other kind of fee is a fraud.

Harvesting More Suckers

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Brien Jones is at it again…the vanity press huckster is offering to sell your self-published book to Hollywood using all of his amazing connections (which, translated, means he's going to attend "The Great American Pitchfest" like hundreds of other wanna-bes).  Victoria Strauss at Writer's Beware has the scoop on Brien's pitch, which sounds an awful lot like the scams run by Bookman/Airleaf, his former employer, which I first blogged about back in 2005.. Airleaf has since been shut down by the Indiana Attorney General.

Light Goes out at Light Sword

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73537Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware is reporting the long-expected news that sham publisher Light Sword, which defrauded authors and was run by the talentless Linda Daly (pictured on the left) and the convicted felon Bonny Kirby, has filed for bankruptcy. Daly has also filed for bankruptcy, but it may be a lame move to keep her sham publishing operation going:

Daly's personal bankruptcy petition, which Writer Beware has seen, makes no mention of her interest in LSP Digital, or of the contracts in her/the company's possession. Also, while the bankruptcy petition for Light Sword Publishing (which Writer Beware has also seen) claims that Light Sword has had no income for the previous 12 months, LSP Digital was only incorporated last June. So what happened between December 2007 and June 2008, when Light Sword was still Light Sword, and was still publishing and selling the books that are now with LSP Digital?

Is Daly hoping that she can solve her personal and corporate credit problems by declaring one publisher bankrupt while continuing to operate the other? I can't help but be reminded of literary scammer Martha Ivery, who declared bankruptcy for her vanity press Press-Tige Publishing, but attempted to shield Press-Tige's assets by transferring them to a "new" publishing company called New Millennium. The bankruptcy trustee in her case wasn't fooled.

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Let's hope the same is true with the trustee in the Light Sword case. But it won't be too hard for him to see the truth. Daly is so inept that the web address for LSP Digital is Lightswordpublishing.com.

Bonny Kirby, Daly's publishing partner, is also the advertising director at Affaire De Coeur Magazine, which heaped glowing praise and cover stories on Light Sword …without any reference to her personal and financial connection to the sham publisher. These ethical lapses are exactly what you'd expect from a woman who is currently on probation for writing bad checks and third-degree felony theft.

I hope the fall of yet another POD scam will teach aspiring authors to be more careful about who they get into business with.

I’m a Woman…and a Publisher?

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Bonnie Kaye's Jones Harvest Fraud Victims site and Jones Harvest Fraud Victims Blog must be doing some good because she's certainly rattled Brien Jones, the founder of the sleazy vanity press. 

Brien, you may recall, is a former top exec at the Bookman and Airleaf vanity presses, which defrauded scores of gullible, aspiring authors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars before they were shut down. Today he's posted a new rant on his Jones Harvest blog defending himself against Kaye and the legions of bloggers who are warning people to stay away from his latest vanity press scheme, which seems to prey primarily on the elderly:

I also understand cowardly women like Victoria Strauss, Julie Neidlinger and Lee Goldberg and their lies. After all they’re not saying anything bad — just repeating what they were told. And what do you know! They all have their own publishing companies too! 

As far as I know, I am neither a woman nor a publisher. But you can't really expect a guy with Brien's shady vanity press past to concern himself with facts. It's clear that the only fact he is interested in is whether or not his elderly clients have any credit left on their Visa cards that they can spend on his false promises of publishing success. 

I have blogged about Brien and his vanity press scams here for years…not based so much on what other people have said, but on the sleazy solicitations the moron has actually sent to me and the outrageous promises he's made on his websites.

Kaye's efforts brought down Airleaf and exposed their rampant fraud … with luck,  she will accomplish the same with Jones Harvest.  Keep up the good work, Bonnie!

UPDATE 12-31-08: Brien Jones has, apparently, sobered up and removed his rant from his blog. But you can still see it here on his BonnieKayLies blog. I've also saved it here  as service for students studying to be mental health professionals. 

 UPDATE 12-29-08: Flights of Fancy blogs nails Brien Jones for their amateurish covers and using his receptionist to write the rave reviews that are used as blurbs on his customers books.

UPDATE 12-28-08: Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware discusses Brien's latest rant. 

UPDATE 12-28-08:  Brien Jones has launched a new site, BonnieKayLies, where he cross-posts his rants from the Jones Harvest Blog. I was scrolling through his blather when I came across his remarkable take on Kaye's efforts to expose the fraud at Airleaf, which eventually led to the Indiana Attorney General shutting down the scam:

In my opinion Bonnie Kaye wanted her books published and sold for free. That’s what she did to Airleaf Publishing. Bonnie Kaye didn’t complain then. Why would she? Then when Airleaf didn’t pay HER enough Bonnie Kaye started a vicious campaign against them (thankfully long after I resigned my position there.)

When Bonnie Kaye was done with Airleaf what happened? The owner walked away scot-free, ‘thanks for all the swell money.’ The people that were there when it closed started their own companies. The only real result of Bonnie Kaye’s campaign was over 1000 authors lost the books they paid to have published.

Then along comes me and Jones Harvest Publishing. ‘Well’ Bonnie Kaye says, ‘let’s try it again.’

Uh-huh. In other words, Brien and his friends at Airleaf did nothing wrong. I guess Brien didn't read the Attorney General's report on the Airleaf  fraud. Maybe that's why he hasn't learned from his mistakes and seems intent on repeating them.

You’re So Vain

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There were several interesting and informative blog posts on the web this week about self-publishing. 

After publishers rejected his thriller, CNET columnist David Carnoy spent $5000 to self-publish it through Booksurge, against the advice of his agent. He notes that:

The average self-published book sells about 100-150 copies–or 2/3 to 3/4 of your friends and family combined (and don't count on all your Facebook aquaintances buying). I don't have a source for this statistic, but I've seen this stated on several blogs and as a Publishers Weekly article titled "Turning Bad Books into Big Bucks" noted, while traditional publishers aim to publish hundreds of thousands of copies of a few books, self-publishing companies make money by publishing 100 copies of hundreds of thousands of books.

But that reality check didn't stop Carnoy, who does such a good job listing all the substantial pitfalls of self-publishing that I wonder why he bothered to go that route and what he hopes to gain. 

Author J. Steven York points out that vanity presses stress the difficulty of selling your work to a real publisher as a good reason to pay to be published. York concedes that it's true that getting published is hard:

It takes time. The deck is stacked against you, and a lot of the publishing process exists primarily to keep the flood of dreck out, sometimes keeping good books and writers out in the process. If it bothers you, and it probably does, I've got two words for you. Boo. Hoo. Like many things worth doing, getting a book published is work. It requires patience, resilience, and determination. And despite all this (and this is what the vanity publishers don't tell you), it beats the alternative.

[…]If selling your book to a legitimate publisher is too too hard for you, then going to a vanity press won't solve your problem, it will multiply it.

York lists many of the same pitfalls as Carnoy does. In a later post, he takes issue with some of Carnoy's conclusions and challenges the columnist's rationale for self-publishing his novel. York makes a lot of excellent points. His two posts should be required reading for anyone contemplating self-publishing their books.

I Should Be Appointed Secretary of State Because My Mom Had Her Picture Taken With Gerald Ford

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You know how much I like to trash publishing scams. Well, now my brother Tod is jumping into the fray with an expose of BK Nelson Literary Agency and their, um, "qualifications":

I can't think of a better reason to sign with BK Nelson other than she was associated with a law firm that, uh, had a partner whose daughter married Paul McCartney. If anyone can think of a stranger biographical note in an agent's bio, please, forward it to me. It's pretty much the equivalent of me saying you should buy my books because I once worked at a staffing service that sent temps to Disney (which was founded by Walt Disney).

Snead’s Screed — Dishonest or Stupid?

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I don't know whether Louise Snead, publisher of Affaire De Coeur, is dishonest or stupid or self-deluded..or a little of all three. As you may recall, I took her magazine to task for her unethical editorial practices (accepting advertisements in exchange for reviews) and for an outrageously unethical conflict of interest  (her advertising director co-owns a sham publishing company that received cover stories, features, and extraordinarily positive reviews in the magazine).

In subsequent public comments on this blog and others, Snead and Bonny Kirby, her advertising director, unapologetically confirmed both the reviews-tied-to-advertising policy and the conflict-of-interest and defended them as appropriate conduct.

But now, in an Affaire De Coeur editorial, Sneed is trying to reframe the discussion by grossly mischaracterizing my objections, lying about her advertising policy, avoiding any mention of the magazine's conflict-of-interest, and chiding publishers for not rushing to her defense. Snead writes:

These are very serious, slanderous allegations, not even borne out by his own review. He didn't take out an ad and his publisher has never taken out ads either, so how did he manage to get a five star review if what he allegesis true?

As she knows, I never said my five-star review was bought. What I said was that AdC offered publishers the opportunity to buy reviews (and other editorial coverage) in exchange for an ad…and that, in some cases, purchasing a review was required before the book would be reviewed. Don't take my word for it, take Snead's, as stated in AdC's own advertising package:

To compliment your ad and review we also offer interviews or articles.
If you would like an interview let us know 3 months in advance so it
will go in the same issue as your review and ad.[…]Book cover
ad.–This is the cover of the book that goes right beside (or above or
below) the AdC review of your book.[…]We do not review books after
publication unless it is done in association with an ad.

It's sleazy and unethical. And, therefore, I wanted nothing to do with them or their positive review of my book. She pretends not to have this policy in her editorial and then has the gall to say:

I was under the impression people could not simply tell lies on the Internet as if they were gospel. I was wrong.

But apparently she's under the impression that it's okay to tell lies in a magazine, since that is what she's doing. She's denying an advertising-for-reviews practice that both she and Kirby have previously defended in comments they posted here and on other blogs. Did she think no one would notice?

But of equal surprise was how disinterested in the truth some readers are. Some of the AdC staff and I responded to Goldberg's allegations with the correct facts, borne out by statistics which anyone can gather from our magazines, only to be completely ignored.

She's being disingenuous. It's not possible for readers to make an informed judgment about the magazine's biases and conflicts of interest when those relationships aren't disclosed.  You won't find any disclaimers alerting readers to reviews and articles that were written as a result of an advertisement being purchased by a publisher or author…nor any disclaimers alerting readers to articles, reviews, and cover stories about publishers and books in which executives at the magazine have a financial interest. Therefore, it is impossible for readers to gather anything from flipping through the magazines about the objectivity of Snead's reviews and articles. She writes:

[…]for 27 years we have strived to produce
a product and reviews that are as good and unbiased as we can make then.

If that were true, she would have informed readers that all the Light Sword books that were reviewed — all but one of which received four stars or better — were published by a company co-owned by AdC's advertising director.

If that were true, she would have informed readers in the cover stories about Light Sword that the company they were raving about was co-owned by an AdC executive.

But those facts, representing an outrageous conflict-of-interest and bias, were not disclosed. And yet, Sneed expected publishers to line up to defend AdC's dubious editorial integrity.

A greater revelation is how cowardly some people are. AdC reviews over 100 books per issue, the vast majority of which do not have ads in the magazine. Hundreds of authors and publishers could have stepped forward and declared that Goldberg's opinions were false but sadly, only a few authors did — some with qualified statements — and only one publisher stepped up to the plate, saying that we review dozens of their books and they've never taken out an ad. And even then, she did it anonymously.

I'm
guessing that publishers didn't defend
of Snead because they have very little respect for the magazine and are
disgusted by the repugnant conflicts-of-interest. I'm making that assumption
based on the tons of emails I've received from authors and editors
thanking me for taking a stand and exposing Snead's highly unethical
editorial practices.

I am not surprised that Snead is using her magazine as a soapbox to present her side of the story nor that I am
depicted as the anti-Christ nor that she doesn't acknowledge the unethical relationship between
AdC and Light Sword Publishing.  It makes sense. She doesn't think that
there is anything wrong with her ads-in-exchange-for-reviews policy
or that her advertising director co-owns a sham publishing company that
has been heavily promoted in her magazine and has been found guilty in court of defrauding authors. In her view, the
only wrong here was that I dared to call her on it.

(Thanks to EREC for alerting me to the editorial)