Today, I picked up a letter sent to me in care of Mysteries To Die For, a bookstore in Thousand Oaks, California. The letter was from Airleaf Publishing, the vanity press company formerly known as Bookman Marketing, and they were offering to "sell MY GUN HAS BULLETS to a national audience!" for the low, low price of $3000.
I wrote about these parasites back in November… when this same "opportunity" to flush your money down a toilet cost a whopping $7000. Since then, it appears that they’ve become a shade less greedy but monumentally more stupid.
The incompetence represented by this letter is so extreme, I almost don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with them sending this pitch to a successful, published author who has castigated them publicly for their business practices before.
And where do these idiots send their letter? They send it to me in care of a bookstore that’s already selling my books.
The folks at Airleaf Publishing are obviously trolling the catalogs at iUniverse and other competing vanity presses,
figuring if the aspiring authors could be suckered once, they could be
suckered again.
But the dimwit who is doing the trolling apparently
doesn’t know when he’s picking books that are part of either Mystery Writers of America Presents or Authors
Guild’s Back-in-Print programs (both of which reprint
previously published books through iUniverse as a free service for their members).
The dimwit doesn’t realize that when he picks books from the MWA Presents or Back-In-Print authors, he’s
dealing with experienced professionals who haven’t paid to be published and who know
better than to be suckered by an insanely pricey vanity press come-on.
The Airleaf Publishing corporate policy must be to hire people who are "mentally challenged" or born with only a brain stem…and to hope whoever gets their letters are just as stupid and have high credit lines on their Visa cards.
Sounds like they’re playing the numbers. After all, if all they spend is postage and they charge three! thousand! dollars! per book, they can afford to have a very high proportion of their targets chuck their letters straight in the bin and still make a profit. Meanwhile, part of their system is to spend minimum time actually reading anything by or about the people they rip off, so this latest cock-up seems perfectly consistent with their practices. Why not? They can afford it: $3000 buys a lot of stamps.
Let’s hope stories like this circulate enough to save people from being robbed. Three thousand dollars is less than seven thousand dollars, but it’s still outrageous.
But Lee,
Why wouldn’t you want a new swanky cover design done by their obviously photoshop savvy art dept? Diffuse glows and drop shadows and linear burns galore!
Wow, they’re one step shy from using DAZ3d or Poser generated covers like erotica ePubs.
Sad.
-=Jeff=-
Lee,
Yeah, I’m with you. I was approached by these guys to promote their business on my web site. After looking through their materials, I made it clear that I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t see where they added enough value for what they said they would do. Mostly hype with little substance.
It’s a shame. There are some decent print on demand publishers out there, but there are those who will suck the poor unkowing author dry.
Sid
Okay, I need help from all of you eperienced writers. I am one of those poor unkowning authors scammed by airleaf. However I’m in the middle of airleaf’s scam.
Back in 2006 they sent me something, I went with them because they were a fraction of the price of other vanity proposals that I had seen. I signed on for about $1300.00. I got a signed contract from them after demanding one. I started to get suspious when they were dragging there feet in finding me an illustrator. Finally they hooked me up with an unsuspecting first timer from Scotland! I guess they couldn’t find anyone over here? I than worked with her via e-mail for about 10 months. During this time I did not hear from airleaf once. The artwork was complete and she was looking for her payment. Feeling more, and more like a scam I refused to send anything without getting the actual artwork. Also being unexperienced in book publishing She sent me, not airleaf thank god the actual poster sized paintings she did. She put a lot of time, and effort into this (my) project that once in my hands I felt she had to be paid for her artwork, so I sent out another $950.00. The good news is I’ve been sitting on the whole project. Due to airleaf’s lack of communication I’m very leary on sending them this artwork that I paid for. I do not trust them, and with good reason after finding your site. So now what do I do? The kicker is that I’m a preschool teacher and I have 3 years worth of students and parents who are dying to buy my book!!! I have the story (that I did register), all the artwork, and about 300 potential sales how can I pull it all together? Can someone out there please point me in the right direction, and is there a chance in hell that I can legally get my money back from airleaf?
Roni
My name is Bonnie Kaye. I am the leader of a group of over 80 authors which is growing daily who are working to put Airleaf Publishing out of business and behind bars where they belong. If you would like to read about our group and join our cause, please see our website at http://www.AirleafVictims.com. We are making great progress. There is power in numbers.
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.
http://www.AirleafVictims.com
If the state attorney general can go after Airleaf, how come the SAG in Maryland will not go after Publish America? I can’t believe that company is still in existence!
The three biggest crooks at AirLeaf is its owner Carl Lau, his two pards in crime Bob Denton and Dawn Rogers.
I cannot believe I let myself be taken in by these sonsofbitchs. The Indiana Attorney General has proved one thing, He has NO BALLS when it comes to protecting consummers. They’ve had enough complaints to shut down this outfit years ago, yet they are still pussy footing around with there bullshit of sending AirLeaf form letters to fill out to address those folks complaining.
May they all rot in hell
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Harvesting New Suckers
As I warned back in December, it appears that the Jones Harvest vanity press is following the loathsome example set by Airleaf, the notorious publishing scam, and is targeting the elderly with false promises of bestseller success and instant celebrity….
My name is Linda Mata. Airleaf
published 2 books for me, “Upon
the Stars” and “Flower in Bloom.”
I paid them hundreds of dollars
for both publication and promotion.
They took my money but failed to
promote my books. They hadn’t even
sent my books to bookstores after
I had paid hundreds of dollars for
them to send them. I was so disappointed.
Hi Bonnie :
I just posted an electronic download for a Kindle on Amazon. I just want to mention that a lot of Airleaf authors can make a kindle of their book like C. Gale Perkins did with her book “The Baby’s Cross”. You don’t need books just convert the Pdf you got from Airleaf to a Kindle to put on amazon. If you select the 70% royalty you will get about $2. for every one you sell at $2.99.. you can list it for more if you wish and get a larger Royalty. I just wanted to mention this to the great authors that got ripped off by Airleaf Publishing.