IANAL, but I'd be willing to bet that it would be covered by wire fraud. And, since it appears to be interstate ... oh, look, feds!

I'm a bit shocked to see this one's gone as far as ripping off bookshops though. I'd become used to stories of 'publishers' ripping off would be writers, and of the terrible deceptions the writers perpetrate on themselves, but this is the first time I've heard of it escalating to this level of fraud.

Other postings like this have led to hanging around on PublishAmerica forums, and it's a hell of an education in human weakness. The urge to believe in happy endings at any cost can male people paint themselves into pretty tight corners.

(And then she'd come in and get very angry when she saw they were remaindered with a dollar sticker on them...)

Back when I worked at West as a technical writer, I got cold-called by someone who wanted to try to convince us to acquire their consumer-oriented magazine, or something along those lines. It was very odd. It's been years since I've worked at West, so I don't know exactly what they publish these days, but at the time, it was legal stuff plus a few textbooks.

Yes, sure, I would love to be published. But... if I just want someone to see something I wrote, well, either a) I give it to them (takes maybe 3 minutes if they have email) or b) I put it online (mostly with poetry and non-fiction). So, it can't just be that. It's gotta be the money.

And, yes, sure, I'd love to be able to make a steady amount of money from writing -- say, enough to cover rent, leaving the other bills to my sweetie. Barring that, I'd happily take a couple short story sales and throw the money at debts or replace my ancient video card or something. But... those require me going somewhere where, well, I'm going to be paid.

If I want to hawk my own wares, I'll start printing them out and selling them on teh intarweb. No need for some pseudo-publisher to stamp their name on it. There's e-bay, or making my own commercial web site; I've got a business paypal account and can take credit card payments already, in fact. Or, heck, lulu.com. If I'm self-publishing and self-selling, why would I want to pay someone else for the trouble?

But beyond all that... what sort of satisfaction am I supposed to get out of trying to rip someone off? I mean, if I'm going to turn to a life of crime, there are far more lucrative avenues to pursue, and if I really-really-really want to be published and be making a living from it, wouldn't that sort of... defeat the purpose?

I mean... maybe I'm just too honest? Maybe it's that good ol' 20th-century-immigrant work ethic at play? I don't know.

It's boggling. I just don't get how anyone would get any kind of... fulfillment out of this.

Comesleep at #3 wrote:

> When I first started working for BN, there was a woman who'd incessantly order in copies of her nephew's appalling PoD book, and then never pick them up

It's the little things like this that gnaw away at my hope for humanity. The atrocities on the news I pretty much take in my stride, but these petty things slip past my guard.

Tina at #5 wrote:

> It's boggling. I just don't get how anyone would get any kind of... fulfillment out of this.

The whole vanity publishing area makes me think of fetishism - not the scam publishers, but their marks. Somehow people transfer their ambitions from the real deal - having thousands of people reading their writing because they actually enjoy it, or having a big pile of gold on the living room floor - to the external symptoms of those desires, like being able to hold a physical printed book with their name on the cover, or to say "I'm a published author". It seems to be the same principle as transferring ones sexual focus to some innocuous and faintly absurb physical object.

Or then again, maybe it's more related to cargo-cults, a mystical belief that once the book exists, readers will magically be brought into being.

Third possibility: I'm rambling and should go and make a cup of tea.

Maybe he can tell me if using the telephone to make fake credit card orders, interstate and international, is a federal rap.

In my inexpert opinion, more than one. (My guess is you already knew that.) Basically, if you intentionally defraud by material representation over any kind of interstate telecomminications method, it's wire fraud. In fact, just thinking up a scam somebody else executes can be a crime. Then there is the matter of using credit cards fraudulently.

If I ran a bookstore, or if I had a friend who ran a bookstore, I’d get the word out, and I’d check my records to see if a phone order for The Shortcut had come in with a phony credit card number. And if so, I’d call the cops, and the nice folks at the FBI.

You should add the Federal Trade Commission, as they supposedly investigate credit card frauds of over $ 2,000.

then again, maybe it's more related to cargo-cults, a mystical belief that once the book exists, readers will magically be brought into being.

Maybe it's some sort of spontaneous generation - pile unsold books in the corner, and readers will appear?

Everyone has a dream. Not everyone has a grip on reality firm enough to deal well with their dreams.

(Even those apparently straightforward explanations can be picked apart into their underlying motives. So, why do you REALLY want people to read your stories? ;-))

The victims of vanity publishers may not be fully aware of why they are driven to, say, hook up with PublishAmerica.

But why not simply ask one of them? "Why did you pay to publish this?"

In the case of PublishAnything and their ilk, the writer will say, "But I didn't pay to publish!"

To which you have to ask, "Then why is your bank account lower now than it was before?"

These people have no understanding that the symbol is not the thing. They do not comprehend that hanging on their walls first-place ribbons that were bought at a store is not the same thing as having won them. They simply don't grasp the concept of "earned," only "got."

Who you calling short?

Aconite@#12: So, what went through my mind when I read your response is, "So these people are Gollum?"

I guess I'm never gonna get that. The symbol is just a symbol. It's worthless without the thing it represents behind it. It's like if I nailed a crucifix up in my livingroom and said I was Catholic because of it.

James (D.) Macdonald (I feel so off calling you just 'James')@11: Seriously, people say that? How do you not call giving someone money paying for something? What the hell is wrong with people?

Steve Taylor@6 & Elusis@8: I can almost understand the cargo cult mentality. Allllmost within my grasp. There's something shiny about the idea of my-book-as-a-book; when I put my first book in PDA format I even gave it a mockup cover cuz the concept was neat: I wrote a BOOK! But that didn't make me published; it made me putting it in a form I could give it to a couple beta readers in.

A.R.Yngve@#11: There's another common motivation I can think of, which is "I have to write the stories or they take up all my brain", and then there's "I want people to like what I wrote" and "I want to be famous". But only the last one even remotely goes with this practice.

I have some mix of why I want people to read what I wrote. Some of it is that I like the stories and I want other people to like them too, of course. (That falls into two categories itself: simple ego-boo, and the same impulse that leads me to recommend other authors: "It's neat! You'd like it!") Some of it is just the bit where "I wrote a book!" seems more real if someone else reads it. And of course, someone reading it puts it that much closer to getting to it being published, even if there's a lot of steps between "I wrote it and got the critique I needed and fixed it up some" and "Look, it's on sale in a bookstore!"

But I've been thinking about it for... call it 20 years, give or take, whereas sometimes I get the idea that some of the people who take the vanity route woke up one day and said "I wanna write a book." without really thinking about why.

If Gollum carried copies of his book around in the trunk of his car, yes.

"Uh, I suppose it would."

"No dodging, please. You have the prize -- here, I'll write it out: 'Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.' " He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. "There! Are you happy? You value it -- or don't you?"

I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids -- a typical sneer of those who haven't got it -- and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.

Mr. Dubois had looked surprised. "It doesn't make you happy?"

"You know darn well I placed fourth!"

"Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you... because you haven't earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it."

-- Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. I suspect that a lot of those vanity-press folks would have failed H&MP.

On another note, regarding my relishment of this thread.... My students, especially the science and business majors, often ask me why it's important to study English (besides the fact that it's a requirement). I always start with the delight reading can and should bring, but being goal-oriented this often doesn't seem to satisfy; I usually then resort to the "thinking critically" and "effective research skills" that I believe they can develop through the discipline. What I should really do is point them here: posts like this one remind me how much delectable fun can be had with a little perception & research tied together. And delight. I detect delight being had.

I remember when I first read Foucault's Pendulum, I thought that Eco had made up the vanity press, that nobody would be stupid enough to fall for something like that in the real world. (In my defense, I not only had no experience with publishing, but knew very little about it. As if that wasn't obvious.) Now I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it had been invented within Gutenberg's lifetime.

I wish I had a copy of this book's table of contents, and exactly what it says on the copyright page.

* I don't have time just now to hunt down the thread involved; if anyone else cares, I can do it later this evening (Pacific Daylight Time).

** Note my philosophical pretensions: a little Kantian seasoning makes any intellectual meal better.

*** How could two be a writer?

The book was godawful. Terribly so. But she thought she was writing inspirational masterpieces, and had started up a second one.

She was a mark for all sorts of scams, unfortunately. I tried to help her, but in the long run, she didn't want truth, she wanted Truth--and in her version of the world, they weren't ripping her off.

Sigh.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain

The Rising Star: The Beginning
Kevin A. Fabiano

Ghost Writer
Norm Tyrrell

Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë

The Warehouse
Amber Sperry & Alex Ocasio

Lilith in the Garden
Raven West

The Blue and the Gray
Louisa May Alcott

Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Growing Up
Cady Hayden

The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin

Blackness
Sabra Carpenter

The Outfielder's Crying One Last Time
Regina Henson

The Lamplighter
Dene Chaney

Permanent Twilight
Sayan Mukherjee

The Schoolboy's Story
Charles Dickens

A Glimpse of Freedom
Michele Rowlands & Annastasia McGrade

The Revolutionary
Jonathan Marcantoni

A Predicament
Edgar Allan Poe

Unconditional Love
Matt Waters

Dracula's Guest
Bram Stoker

Oh hell, Mark Twain could have done all that - and much more - before he lit his first cigar of the day.

Of course, he wouldn't, certainly not at Mr Fabiano's behest. Rather, I fancy he would have turned up on Mr Fabiano's doorstep with a horsewhip in his hand.

I think I understand the motives of the writers, but I know I understand the motives of these sleazy scum. They are worse than spammers. Mother, where's the rusty razor blade and the Anthrax spores?

In the weapons closet, next to the chlorine and alcohal bomb. Why?

(I'm sure you've heard of The House of the Seven Gables.)

All of the stories by well-known authors are also widely anthologized.

:)

Contempt and revenge as financial motivators rarely works out all that well.

I believe this is probably related to the Just Showing Up Award - a phenomenon I saw at a particular post-grad institute where I taught for a while, whose MA-clad students thought it was acceptable to fail to turn in work, complain about having to read an entire book, write ungrammatical responses to an essay exam, and miss two out of four day-long classes, yet still expected to get credit for the course (and an A grade, no less). Because they were entitled to earn credit toward state licensure for Just Showing Up (or in some cases, Just Paying The Course Fee).

I no longer teach there, needless to say.

At any rate, I think some of these folks believe that Just Showing Up, in their case completing a short story or a children's book or NaNoWriMo or whatever, automatically earns them the right to be published, and when that "right" is denied... well I'll Show You.

Google claims to be able to recognize the bulk of clicks-for-the-purpose-of-costing-advertisers-money (which is one subcategory of the larger realm of 'click fraud'), but it's very hard for outsiders to tell how well they actually do at that.

Additionally, it is now possible for advertisers to opt into a 'pay per action' model, where they pay when someone places an order / signs up for a service / etc., in which case clicking won't do anything at all. I don't think it's possible to tell which advertisers are using PPA and which are using PPC.

And as of Monday, I'm starting a new job where I don't need to know any of that, so maybe this will be my last writing on the subject.

But that's not good enough for them, because it's a clear commercial transaction. What they pay so dearly for is to be coddled with the sensation that they are going through the same process that "real authors" go through.

I just realized - it's not exclusive to authors. I have seen something very similar to this in the small-business world, too. Some people really want to believe they are businessmen, and will steadily lose sums of money trying to run a small business with no real product or service and no idea what they are doing. There are a bunch of scams tailored to those people too.

If you crave to call yourself An Author, then (1) you need to get your book published, and (2) the publisher had better not admit to being a vanity press. So you can't publish your book through Lulu, because they're quite honest about publishing anyone and anything.

A clever scammer is more-or-less compelled to brag about their exclusivity. I suspect that it's the whole point.

(Self-publishing trivia: Edward Tufte mortgaged his house to publish The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. And most of us, I suspect, would be happy with his reviews. So Yog's Law does have the occasional exception.)

People would fall over themselves to become the Earl of Poughkeepsie or the Duchess of Peoria.

They wouldn't have to pretend to others or themselves that they've actually done anything of merit.

Looking at the book was depressing.

1: It was PublishAmerica
2: It wasn't without talent. About 13/rd of it was good, 1/3rd needed some work and the other 1/3rd didn't look all the strong to me, but I'm not a children's book editor, so I don't know.

Yes, exactly! I don't agree with everything in that book, but that scene, by golly, resonates with me.

There are many things I like to do. Some of them I am quite good at -- I'm a really good non-fancy cook, for instance. There are no doubt better cooks but I'm consistently good and people I cook for really like it. Some, well, I'm not so good at. I'm an okay artist -- you can tell what I'm drawing and I do halfway-decent sketches of my characters with a few good ones here and there (and some cute chibis). I am never going to be a professional artist, though, or win any prizes, and probably I'm unlikely to ever wow anyone with a piece of art, and I'm fine with that.

I'm sure there's things I'm self-deluded about, but I hope they're at a minimum. Being satisfied with what I can do with occasional bouts of "gah, I wish I could do this better" seems a much better recipe for a happy life than trying to trick myself into thinking I'm better than I am.

Steve Zillwood@18:

I'm all about sympathizing with the publishing process as frustrating and just wanting it DONE. (I have several very, very frustrating rejection letters, in that they basically read 'I really like this, but it's not quite right', and that's actually more frustrating than 'form: no'.) Where I lose the thread is how that turns into "therefore I shall pay someone to publish it and consider that victory".

Elusis@#32

I suspect that you are quite right about the "I'll Show You" mentality thing. I mean, obviously, I think my stuff is good enough to be published, or why would I be submitting it? So I'm sure these people feel the same way.

From that angle, I almost see how they leap to "Therefore I shall go where I will be accepted." I'm a little too... something... to take that leap myself. What's the 'something'? I need a word here. (Sheesh, and I call myself a writer.)

I read too much, that's what it is. For all that I think my writing is overall pretty good and enjoyably readable and such, I can easily see where many published authors have honed their skills more than I have.

In self-publishing the author spends nothing; the publisher still spends all. That the publisher and the author are the same person is a mere quibble.

The first and greatest error that self-publishers make is that they, as publisher, don't pay the author the royalties due or figure them into the total cost of the operation.

It's only moving money from one pocket to another in the same pair of pants, but it's necessary to the business.

Pray note that The Visual Display of Quantitative Information falls squarely into that area where self-publishing does best: specialized non-fiction.

>"You! I've just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy?"
(Starship Troopers)

Yeah - that's been running through my head for the whole thread.

God knows, Heinlein wasn't perfect, and had his crazy moments, but it's surprising how often some fragment of one of his books pops up in my mind as commentary on some situation - and this one couldn't be more apt

But there are some people who really do want the adulation and attention more than they care about actually doing something well.

For example, there was an S.C.A. cook a few years back who skimped on a lot of the preparation for a banquet (her official task) so that she could spend most of a day doing a really spiffy luncheon for the visiting royalty (not part of her job). We had moderate chaos in the kitchen, but she got noticed by the tin-hats.

Or the guy who was, for about eight months, the editor of the newsletter for an organization. He was given a few basic constraints: not more than five sheets of paper (the maximum that could be sent in a standard envelope with standard postage), and a publication schedule; the rest was up to his discretion. And there's no question that he put together a nice-looking publication: reasonably clearly laid out (apart from some really stupid widow- and orphan-line problems and some crappy-looking graphics, because he didn't know how to use his software and wouldn't accept any advice), decent-sized text, moderate white space. I wasn't too impressed by the content, but that's a matter of taste. But he was always way over his budget because the newsletter had two or three times as many pages as had been allowed for, and it was always mailed long after the schedule dictated -- except on the one or two occasions when it wasn't mailed at all. People weren't finding out about events until after they'd happened; they didn't get notice of official business until after deadlines were passed (which got into potential legal complications). Once or twice, he created fake titles and positions for himself in the list of the organization's officers in the newsletter. When it finally became clear that he could not be gotten to follow the needs of the group, he was removed from the position, with much acrimony.

But unfortunately (to my mind) he got the positive attention he was seeking; some of his friends nominated his issues of the newsletter for an award, and enough people voted in favour of it (either not knowing about the problems, or not caring) that he won the award.

When I was younger, I was more keen on getting awards and recognition than I am now; these days, I lean towards trying to do my best and hoping that people will notice. But even when I was young, I wasn't comfortable with unearned praise or recognition. My teachers thought it was bizarre that I would come up to them after they'd returned the class tests, and point out where they'd neglected to take off marks for things I'd gotten wrong. I was compulsively honest, I guess. Or figured that it would balance out when I complained about not getting marks that I deserved.

One of the pages in his second book is a swiss contour map -- it's a 27 ink plate, and all of them register perfectly. All of the contours match.

(I'm eric with a small e, not to be confused with the other one up thread who started the tufte diversion)

I think there's one thing wrong with Heinlien's passage quoted here in that the pupil knows he didn't earn that prize, the awarder knows he didn't earn it and the pupil knows that everyone around knows that he didn't earn it. Under those circumstances, it'll be a very rare person who'll accept first prize.

On the other hand, if no one knows how you got it... ah, now that's different. And you'll find a lot of people willing to either fake achievements or cheat to win real ones, particularly when there's a lot of prestige in it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you..."Bush patently in denial over Gonzales."

(oh, c'mon, we've all been thinking it...)

I've never been able to get my head around that behaviour. They're obviously doing it for the egoboo of being praised for good work -- but how can it feel good when it's not their work, and it's such shameless and outright theft that they can't possibly convince themselves that it *is* their work? I presume it's a status thing. They have the status of being authors with a string of comments praising their work, and that's more important than whether it's real. Get caught, and see the stolen story taken down -- just steal another one and put it up. Or even the same one. After all, the bragging rights over how many "OMG UR brill!!!!" comments you receieved are what's important.

I think you underestimate the ability of quite a number of people to convince themselves of what they want to believe, especially if they are incapable of earning what they think they deserve. Don't forget Unskilled and Unaware of It. No foolin'.

I'm really unsure how this relates to Texanne's(45) comment about the Bush/Gonzales affair (he said with a slash).

Realistic? Sane? Grounded? Or its folksy synonym, down-to-earth?

I'm just thinking here that we have a lot more varied and pithy words for degrees of "crazy" than for its antonym at the other end of the continuum.

Returning to the US Danna began a career as a mechanical editor.

What, exactly, does this mean? I think it has something to do with pasting up newspapers or magazines.

(I resist the urge to use this sentence as a straight line, making references to The Mechanical Editor of Oz, and instead observe that Another Sort of Editor might have put a comma after "Returning to the US.")

Tina @5 - I'm right there with you. It simply makes no sense to me. It's like plagarism in that I don't understand how anyone could derive satisfaction from it.

Of course, I've known a lot of poets to self-publish and they seem entirely happy to sell their books at readings, slams, etc. The difference, as I see it, is that they just want to spread their work among like minded folk. This scam is a clear appeal to writers with aspirations to commercial publishing. (Understand I am not a person who feels 'commercial' is a dirty word.) Why would such writers be satisfied with what 'Author Identity' is offering, even if it wasn't a scam?

Elusis @32 - That's a very good point about the 'I'll Show You' mentality. And ego is likely a factor as well. This Mr. Fabiano seems quite the egomaniac. I just can't understand how he thinks to get away with such blatant fraud.

It's the sense of entitlement inherent in this that most bowls me over. Perhaps I'm naive, but I would like to believe that most people don't think the world should be offered to them on a silver platter simply because they had the good grace to be born.

Julia Jones @46 - I was thinking exactly the same! :-)

Echoes of the Magic Get Published Button...

Yeah, there's a clear difference between "self-publishing" and "self-deluded vanity publishing". ^_^ I think you can assume pretty much everyone here sees the line between self-publishing and the sort of scam that's being run here, or between self-publishing and vanity publishing. And if you know you have a limited market and the ability and willingness to hawk your own product, self-publishing's likely even a smart move.

Selling your own poetry chapbooks when you've got a ready-made market for small quantities? That's just sensible. Getting poetry published is probably even tougher than getting fiction published, at least at collection length. It's in the same realm as musicians who sell their own CDs out of their trunk at small-venue shows, another thing I have no issue with.

Heck, even vanity publishing has its place, if you walk into it knowing darn well what you're doing is vanity publishing. Maybe it's worth some money to you to have a bunch of bound copies of your family history or recipe book or whatever, rather than try to do it yourself.

So, yes, the line definitely is where people mistake (willingly or not) vanity publishers for legitimate commercial publishers -- or, to use a vanity term, 'traditional' publishers. The ones with silly rules like "Your writing has to not suck." and "We must think this will sell." and "An editor at least needs to look at this at some point." :D

Emma@#47: :D Self-honest is something I strive for, yes, so that would work, but also...

Clifton Royston@#50: I like "down-to-earth". It's another thing I strive to be, and it fits the situation pretty well. I may sometimes have my head in the clouds -- everyone daydreams! -- but I try to conduct my life down here in the real world.

I think, too, that it helps a lot that I've had places like Making Light (amongst others) to read the realities of publishing at. I have a pretty good idea at this point what to expect out of the business end of publishing, and also that it's a darn good sign that I've gotten personalized rejections. The rest of the way there may be frustrating but I think I'll get there.

The good news: She's been mentioned in Publishers Weekly! The bad news: She's been mentioned in Publishers Weekly....

Big List o' Links here.

Would that be the one that was the narration of someone's D&D game, with the bad CG cover picture?

When I was about 7 or 8, I layered plasticine over a small plastic dinosaur and passed it off as a sculpture that I had made. The look of pride in my mother's face when I showed it to her caused the worse shame that I have ever felt, and I desperately attempted to make a real tricerotops sculpture that would genuinely earn that pride. I couldn't.

I'm inclined to think that people who don't feel that shame are sociopaths.

They think that this is really the way it is. See, for example, Ann Crispin's story "How Much Did It Cost You?"

Plus whoever buys it may well be impressed by the personal touch if you autograph it, and be that much more likely to come see you again. And at least s/he bought it, which may not happen if your CD isn't in stock in the shop, or your fan doesn't find it before getting distracted by something else, or is short on cash this week...

I wrote like this in the 4th grade, in short, simple declarative sentences. However, at that time I did not claim to have "lectured on the college circuit and helped to craft young adults into aspiring* writers" nor did I have "a career as a freelance editor making her services available to individual writers giving them the advantage of a polished manuscript."

I am comforted to know, though, that "She continues to write her own work today..." I'd surely hate to think she'd paid someone else to do it.

* A case of truthishness? She didn't say "successful" or "polished" or "skilled", after all.

Or that she was "writing" someone else's work, either as a ghost-writer or as a plagiarist.

I was more trying to illustrate the line between self-publishing and vanity publishing than anything. There are definitely pursuits in which it may work out better, and musicians came to mind.

I think you're exactly right with this. On a recent temp gig, I was explaining to the other temp what I did with the rest of my time (third novel just out now--squee!). She asked, "So how does that work? You get money for the book...then pay the publisher a percentage?"

I was a bit taken aback. I told her the publisher actually paid me for the right to publish my books.

She looked shocked. "But then what does the publisher get out of the deal?"

"Um...all the money?" So I had to back up and explain the entire system.

I've found myself in a constant process of educating people about how the publishing business actually works, and they're always shocked by it.

The ones I want to fire Miss Snark's clue cannon at are the ones who wander, stumble, or charge into the company of writers and editors and publishers and agents vastly more experienced and credible than they or their crowd of cronies who then proceed not only to ignore good advice and researchable fact, but to argue with it. Why, oh why, does it never seem to occur to these people to apply the same "Why should I take your word for it?" attitude to the piles of crap they learned first too?

The slushpiles are full of folks who are convinced that their writing is every bit as good as what they see on the racks -- but are mistaken.

To those people, the guy who says "I love your writing!" is a hero, a man of taste and good sense. He's so clearly right about the important thing that they'll accept everything else he says too.

Aconite @ #72: IANAW, but in my experience as a beta reader newbie writers ignore good advice and researchable fact for the same reason that people who can't sing insist on auditioning for American Idol.

In fact, it's an immutable Law of Nature that if you're a writer, then the question is not whether you're sane or sensible. (Of course, you're not.) The question is whether the variety of insanity that afflicts you is compatible with the peculiar requirements of the weird population of cranks and misfits who keep the publishing industry from completely cratering into mass bankruptcy on a daily basis by showing up and doing real work.

> Okay, so I don't have much familiarity with this particularly seamy aspect of "publishing", but do these writers and editors always write as poorly as poor Danna?

Darn. You made me look:

"I don’t look at you as just my mother
But a very special friend
Whenever I have a problem
A hand you’re always willing to lend"

Hmmm...

To be fair, Locus is not *that* commonly carried on the rack. It's more common to see it nowadays in the big-box bookstore era, but in areas not blessed with such stores I could see someone unaware of Locus' existence.

I think I only learned about Locus when I started reading rec.arts.sf.composition, back in, or shortly after, college.

That's innocence.

I've done both (although in the project for the real label I was a sideman, not the official creative force).

There are other factors that emerge out of that basic dichotomy. (Stop me if you've heard all this before.) A label deal is usually structured so you have a sum of money advanced (loaned) to you, out of which you budget what it's going to cost you to make the recording, and you deliver the finished recording to the label for pressing and distribution. In the overwhelming majority of cases this means you book time in a recording studio, hire a producer and/or engineer, and try to capture magic on tape as quickly as possible. (Unless you're Fleetwood Mac or Pink Floyd or someone like that, and can take as much time as you feel you need.) My "professional" recording took about six days to record, because we were pretty well rehearsed, and a gratifying number of tracks on the finished CD were first takes. (The rest of the deal, as in book publishing, is that you still owe the label for that advance, and in theory you pay them back out of your royalties. It is a rather small minority of CDs that recoup their advances. I don't know the comparable figures for books.)

In a whole 'nother band (and one which put more faith in the idea of improvisatory spontaneity), we accumulated tapes over the course of years, and when we felt like making a CD we picked them over, looking for performances with some magic in them (and adequate technical standards) and paid the thousand dollars to have it mastered and pressed. We sell it at our infrequent gigs, or trade with other bands, or give it away to new friends, and still have a stash in the basement. I don't think we quite broke even, but because we're an abstract instrumental band with a strong improvisatory component, and moreover we're lazy, we don't have much of a constituency anyway; there are many working musicians either more tuneful or more diligent than we are who follow this model and make a career of it.

The differences as I see it involve a bunch of tradeoffs among time, money, autonomy and indeterminate professional standards, many of which don't analogize well to book publishing-- for example, you can't reasonably expect any author to write a publishable novel in a week, even given Harlan Ellison's shop window stunts.

Except maybe in the sense that what passes for copy-editing in Publish America product kinda resembles excess distortion or tape hiss on a homemade CD. There was something of a trend back in the '90s to revere "lo-fi" recording as a sign of authenticity; critics who bought into that should probably be invited to read Atlanta Nights. But in my view that's a matter of insufficient diligence on the auteur's part. Once you decide you have standards, it's your own responsibility to meet them.

The question is, can you fill a hall with folks who are willing to pay five bucks to five hundred bucks a pop to listen to you gab?

This incident took place (a) less than a mile from a university campus and (b) less than two miles from a mall with a major-chain bookstore that *does* carry Locus (although it's on the bottom shelf).

She has no publications, or representative lists though she's suppossedly "World Wide"

I'm not sure what to think of her.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the whole point of Yog's Law is that (in legitimate publishing) the author is not required to pay one cent more than the postage necessary to ship the manuscript to the publisher, even if the book turns out to be a calamitous failure. The publisher assumes the risks and costs, which is why they collect the majority of the revenue and the author gets a significantly smaller share.

does the scheme described in #87 bear a much stronger resemblance to vanity publishing than to legitimate publishing

Too bloody right it does. The recording industry has long been notorious for its mistreatment of the artists that it ostensibly depends on. They get away with it because they're often the only game in town (at least up until the Internet). But it's really understandable why the RIAA's protestations of concern for the income of the artists has been met with less than enthusiastic agreement from many of those artists.

It's not just you. Authors may not make much more of a percentage on their book sales, but the process is a hell of a lot more fair than the crap musicians have to put up with. Rights management in publishing is far more friendly to the author, amongst other things.

Michael Bloom @#87

I suspect part of why there's more credibility for musicians self-recording is... well, fairly complex, probably, but I think it boils down to a couple factors:

1) A lot of bands are selling those CDs to people who have already ponied up for a show and have figured out if they like the band, which in turn relates to
2) Bands typically generate an audience via live performance before they cut anything more complex than a demo, and usually before that, too, whereas
3) A first-time author with a book is selling it to strangers who probably have no clue other than skimming the first few pages if it's going to be any good

Writing and recording music is every bit as complex and intricate a process as writing a book, but I think the end result is easier to judge, even for the musicians. I think because it comes in shorter chunks. Any given song is more like a short story or a piece of poetry (well, it is poetry in many cases, set to music), and the songs get judged individually before inclusion on a CD. That's why I think it's much more akin to self-publishing poetry, which is a more accepted practice than self-publishing novels.

By virtue of their length, novels have more places they can go wrong. Good prose doesn't ensure a plot that holds together for 300 pages, and a good plot doesn't ensure the prose is consistently good, the writing is technically apt, the dialogue is realistic enough throughout, etc. With a poem, it's generally either good or not. With a song, it's a little more complex -- you can have, say, a great melody but bad drumming -- but it's closer to the 'hit or miss' simplicity than a novel is.

However, this isn't a scenario most novelists find themselves in.

Just checking.

Mr. Glazier should, in a just world, still be in jail, though.

First, I hear there's a lot of effort put into wowing bands with "You're signed! You've made the big time! Now don't read this contract too closely, these are just details..." The result is that a lot of bands, unless they're street-smart and have heard the horror stories, or are fiends for reading complex legalese, really don't understand how the advance works and the structure of all the expenses that will be billed against their royalties. Does that remind you of what you would hear from the scam agents and vanity presses, as opposed to legit publishers?

Second, if you're recording an album, you're in theory free to use any studio you want. Street-smart musicians or bands choose their own and negotiate the hourly rates carefully. Bands that don't know this usually end up using a studio owned by - guess who, that's right - the label or its holding company and paying an exorbitant hourly rate, along with extra hourly charges for engineers, etc. who are employees of the label. Naturally in this case the label will encourage them to "take as long as you like... get the sound perfect..." and the naive do. This neatly skims off a bunch of money the label would otherwise have to pay the band, from one pocket of the company into another pocket. Does this remind you somewhat of the long list of "reading fees", "editing fees" and "preparation fees" charged by scam agents and publishers?

Same kind of deal might apply with the producer who's supposed to oversee mixing and give the album its overall "sound". I don't know as much about that, but I do know it's the band who ends up paying out of their royalties.

Then there's "promotion". Know of any legit publisher which bills their authors, on a line-item basis, for book promotion touring costs? PublishAmerica says it's all up to the author to promote the book, but doesn't - AFAIK - have the chutzpah to bill them for it. As I understand it, the expenses of the band's tour to promote the album, down to the M&Ms backstage, typically get billed by the label against the band's royalties, usually with a suitably creative accounting and mark-up.

Then there's the whole "independent promoter" scam, which is how the labels can pretend they're not doing pay-for-play to the radio stations, while according to rumors managing to involve executive kickbacks and organized crime in the process, and still all getting paid out of the band's royalties.

All these factors together lead to how and why numerous musicians have complained of releasing a platinum (over million-selling) album, which made the label tens of millions of dollars, and yet never seeing a net royalty check and owing their label money at the end of it. It's a great racket, and only the exceedingly wise or successful and experienced manage to avoid it. (By doing things like setting up their own label, by managing and paying for all of their own recording and touring expenses, by having their own song publishing company which gets paid a much smaller royalty but on gross sales, etc.)

I'm sure one piece of the puzzle is that for newcomers to the business, there is nobody experienced on their side who plays the same role as an author's agent and negotiates for them on the basis of a share of their net. A band's manager is often some friend of the musicians who doesn't know the ins and outs of the recording industry, but just knows how to soothe ruffled feathers, keep their books, and land them gigs at local bars and venues.

Another piece is that up to the last 20 years or so, there was a big technology investment required on the recording studio side, and a huge one on the music production plant. That favored the manufacturers. That advantage is now gone, but the industry hasn't adapted yet.

And another piece is that the recording industry is only about a century old, so more balanced institutions haven't yet evolved. Publishing is a lot older.

I find myself reminded of Brian de Palma's Phantom of the Paradise.

An interview with Kevin Fabiano.

He works for a legal publishing firm in New York*, he advises to never "write to the market," but that success lies in "marketing and tenacity."

Money quote: "Think outside the box when you think about marketing your books."

Uh huh. Though perhaps one should also think "inside the cell" when marketing in certain ways, no?

[*--anyone wanna guess?]

Oh my.

In the left-hand column there is a link to "Get Interviewed!"

You write your own answers to the canned interview questions. I was thinking it deliciously amusing that whoever conducted Fabiano's interview could not write or spell. Now I see the content was written by Fabiano himself, in an attempt at self-promotion. As a writer.

Priceless.

Amusingly, he also quotes his own answers from that form interview as a "book review" on his site.

What's the one thing that you want them to know about your writing?

I take great care in checking the facts I place in my books. All the information, dates, locations, technology and historical figures are accurate. I do this because I know I am writing to an educated reading and I would never attempt to insult their intelligence by massaging the facts.

becomes

[Fabiano] take[s] great care in checking the facts . . . [he’s] writing to an educated reader.
-Writers Manual

The rampant brackets on that page make me wonder about the rest of the quotes.

But note this:

What would you do differently if you could repeat the same publishing experience?

I would have started a marketing campaign before the book’s release date. This is what I did with my second book and it appears to work much better.

Hmmmm... I wonder if there been any bogus orders for "Poison: Unlocking Years of FDA Cover-Up"

The stupid, it's getting on me!

When looking for Poison, I found this item posted at Google Base by kevinfabiano@lawyer.com (which at the time I looked had exactly 1 view). Clicking on "all items by" brought me to Review The Palace of Wisdom: A Rock and Roll Fable.

That showed me this:

Description

A great book. It [will] keep [the reader] riveted from beginning to end. It is a must read for anyone who loves twists and turns, or rock n' roll.

-Barnes&Noble.com

Well, nothing would do but to go to BN.com to look for that review. It's the only review of Palace of Wisdom over there:

A. Dwyer, A reviewer, 09/12/2006 Customer Rating for this product is 5 out of 5
EXCITING
This was a great book. It kept me riveted from beginning to end. It is a must read for anyone who loves twists and turns, or rock n' roll.

After that I went to Amazon, where A. Dwyer also left a review:

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
EXCITING!!!, September 8, 2006
Reviewer: A. Dwyer - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
After hearing of the release of the Palace of Wisdom, I rushed out to buy it. I was excited when I began reading this novel and was thrilled at its conclusion. Not only was this a fascinating read, and a very quick read at that,it was very informative with all the rock and roll history that was hidden as clues in the novel. It took me a while, but when I uncoverd the names were anagrams, boy was it eye opening. It is a must read for any rock and roll fan!

That's the first review of The Palace of Wisdom over there, and that's A.Dwyer's first and only review at Amazon.

The names are anagrams? Let's look at that. Michael Evers is an anagram of A Vile Schemer.* That certainly seems apropos.

=======
* Also of I Shelve Cream and Vials Cheer Me.

Also, don't forget that also allows for "A Schemer Evil". I love the way that having 'vile' turn up means you can always use 'evil' as well.

"A Crime Shelve" very nearly also fits the theme, if you allow for the slightly ungrammatical bent. "He's Evil Cream" sounds either very odd or very dirty; I only include it because it struck me as funny, which I needed today. (Bad day. BAD day. My cat died.)

I was young. (Hey, 50 can be young.) I had published (conventionally) four technical books and been contributing editor to a technical newsletter, but no one ever mentioned writing scams and I'm not the kind of person who would ever PULL one, so it didn't occur to me anyone else might.

I had finished my first novel and sent it off to ten or twenty potential publishers. (I had been approached by a publisher for my technical books so never needed an agent.) I got a couple of rejections, but then an email came from PublishAmerica that SEEMED as if it was in response to my having sent them a query. (I realized later, too late, that I had not.)

As a computer geek, their explanation of POD made sense to me. Their request for addresses of local papers seemed a little odd--Wiley and Sons and Coriolis had always handed publicity for my computer books. But what did I know? So I signed on.

I did think the list price was a tad high.

Finally, I discovered the various writers' forums and learned that I had been taken. Oh, well. By then I had already finished a second novel and was well on my way done with a third. So I put it down to experience. I have NOT bought copies from PA. I figure to outwait them. Once I DO get fiction published, if that book is any good, it should be relatively easy to sell others. And after my seven years of limbo are over, I can market Midnight Harvest as a "lost" book by the well-known author...!

So, bottom line: I wasn't stupid, just naive. (And I was DEFINITELY naive!) I am not desperate to see my words in print; I'd just like to make a living writing books that I, myself would want to read. (The tech books were examples of that, once, but I no longer enjoy reading tech.) My wallet isn't lighter from the experience, because I haven't bought any of the overpriced PA copies.

Oh, one more thing: Although I don't like that PA misleads its writers, I have to say I believe there IS a place for what they do. Grandmothers who've written their memoirs and would like copies in the hands of their grandchildren, could never get the same result as cheaply from a conventional vanity publisher. After all, authors can buy these volumes for 50% list, which is between $8 and $12 depending on the size. And the author gets two copies free off the bat! So, it CAN be a good deal, IF the author knows what he or she is getting into and is okay with that (or better yet, is looking for that exactly).

My sympathies, Tina. Losing a pet really is losing a family member, and it's a hard thing.

And to all drawing parallels between vanity publishing and mainstream music labels: have you seen the film I Am Trying To Break Your Heart? It's the story of Wilco falling apart at the seams while struggling with their record company over the release of their soon-to-be-classic album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The money-grubbing, short-sighted, ultimately evil industry practices it documents are enough to make any self-respecting band go out and start its own label, a la Sufjan Stevens and Asthmatic Kitty Records. Massively recommended.

"Shining example" might be too restrained a phrase to use for Ahmet Ertegun. He understood the music deeply, cared about it deeply, and cared about the musicians as well. The problem he gave the industry was that he was so much better than almost everybody else in the field that he made them look even sorrier by comparison. Every so often someone comes from outside our artistic tradition and shows us some of what's possible with it, someone like Joseph Conrad or Ahmet Ertegun.

Details here in PW: Ingram Offers Refund on Scam Title

There are companies which will do short-run printing. There are freelance copy editors and designers. There's all sorts of stuff you can do yourself, if you know the trick of them.

There could even be room for an honest publishing services company, though I'm not sure it could be kept distinct, in the public eye, from the crooks.

Without that sort of support, outfits like Publish America will continue to thrive.

Come to think of it, I think I've seen books on self-publishing, but I can't recall details. Is the problem simply that the crooks have better advertising?

After all, Yog's law and the need to run your accounts properly as your own publisher pale rather next to YOU can be RICH and FAMOUS with us, a TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER! Send NO MONEY now!

Copyright page:

© 2006 by Danna Curran All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publishers, execpt by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

First printing.

All the characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblence to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN-13:978-1-4243-2797-3

2

First thing I notice is that there's no publisher's name or address or contact information. Second thing I notice is that the person who created this page doesn't believe in the serial comma. Third thing I notice is that whoever formatted the book put a page number on the copyright page (yeah, that's what the "2" is all about).

Onward to the book itself, again without commenting on the writing in the stories.

I note that whoever formatted this book didn't figure out how to put different headers on alternating pages, or how to change the headers between the stories. Every page has simply "The Shortcut" at the top.

First story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The story is set with indents of about five spaces at the start of each paragaph, and with line breaks between the paragraphs. Straight quotemarks.

Second story, "The Rising Star: The Beginning." The story is set with no indents: flush left the whole way. Again, line breaks between paragraphs. Curly quotes.

Third story, "Ghost Writer." The story is set with absolutely huge indents (around 12 spaces). No line breaks between paragraphs this time. Curly quotes.

Fourth story, "Napoleon and the Spectre." The story is set with two-space indents at the start of each paragraph. Line breaks between paragraphs. Straight quotemarks.

Fifth story, "Lilith in the Garden." Flush left, with line breaks between paragraphs. Straight quotemarks.

And so on. No attempt appears to have been made to regularize the formatting. Check out the bizarre quotemarks in "Young Goodman Brown."

That's what happens when you want to create ``directed'' quotes out of plain ASCII. I first saw this used in the TeX language. Of course, it's better when you run it through a text processor, or even print it in a font that has slanted apostrophes. I think some fonts even have curly apostrophes and render grave accents as inverted curly apostrophes. But when you're into cut-and-paste-and-don't-worry, that stuff goes out the window.

But given the ASCII quotes, I expect the PD text was ripped off the web somewhere. I think the Gutenberg project has restrictions on commercial use--I wonder if someone might not have bothered to check on that, being a big-time lawyer and all. It would be interesting if he got to pay for that, on top of the "out-of-the-cell" revisionism in the PW article.

``Why in a million years would I want to ruin the name of a character I am trying to brand?'' The usual answer is ``because you wore the juice, so you thought you would get away with it.''

(I'm not sure how far Gutenberg's no-commercial-use clause would take them, given that the texts themselves are PD.)

I've long said that PA caters to the desperate, the deluded, and the naive. If you haven't bought any copies, that's good! You escaped unscathed.

I've also long said that there's a place for what they do, or would be, if they dropped the false and misleading advertising. If they were up front about their business model and about what they do and don't do, I wouldn't have a problem with them.

Meanwhile, those granny ladies who want copies of their books in their hands would be better advised to go over to Lulu.com or CafePress. If they lack the technical ability to format and upload text, they could hire a teenager for the price of an extra-large pizza to do the job, and come up with a superior product far faster than PA is capable of doing it, without the seven-year anchor hanging off their ankles.

Really? Whose behind would that be, Kevin?

I don't think that's correct; the page describing the Project Gutenberg license has this to say about Gutenberg ebooks which are based on public domain books:

A Project Gutenberg ebook is made out of two parts: the public domain book and the non public domain Project Gutenberg trademark and license. If you strip the Project Gutenberg license and all references to Project Gutenberg from the ebook, you are left with a public domain ebook. You can do anything you want with that.

I sometimes get breathless with the effort of trying to keep up. Lulu.com? Omigod! I just got done reading their entire web site. I am so impressed, as much with the concept as with the fact that I could find no typos!

It almost makes me want to throw a book together just to have the experience of putting a book out myself (without the hassle of a know-it-all editor or the annoyance of realizing, later, that the editor actually did improve the book, after all).

Best of all, they seem to be honest and straightforward about what they are offering.

Thanks for the tip.

Uh...there isn't a similar model for agents, is there?

Am I the only person who was irked by the PW article's characterization of Mr. Fabiano as a "budding author"? There's a world of positive connotation in that adjective. The neutral "author" (or even more neutral "writer") would be more appropriate in a journal article.

*Whoever "they" are. Could be Kevin F., could be other members of the $750 crew, could even be PW/Kevin Howell. Probably all of the above.

Extra, extra sympathies. One of my cats has chronic renal failure, so I'm going to be facing the same thing in (vet's estimate) a few weeks. :( :(

I am having a hard time believing that someone who would never do something greedy and sleazy like this would say anything except, "I would not do anything greedy and sleazy like this, full stop".

It is really hard to not take that qualification as a "tell".

The 13 other authors provide plausible deniability.

Would those 13 other authors be the living ones, or the dead ones?

November 15, 2006
SELL YOUR SHORT STORY
Hi Authors, I want to introduce you to Author Identity Publishing. They are publishing one of my short stories and they may be able to help you get published. A ...
140 days ago · 93 words · SELL YOUR SHORT STORY by Kevin A. Fabiano

Right now he wants to stay out of jail for fraud.

Do me a favoure. Take your copies and rip my story out of them. And don't worry, I have recieved no royalties from the f###ers either

Booksellers can fax him a copy of the invoice, proving they made a purchase and he will send them a check to purchase those copies for the amount the bookstore paid. "I don’t want anyone to be defrauded, so the only person out anything will be me," said Fabiano. Bookstores can wait to mail out the copies of the books until his check clears.

Note that bookstores who take him up on this offer would still be losing money on the books, since he's offering to pay their wholesale price, but they'll have to pay postage to mail him the books and he's not offering to reimburse them for it.

(One wonders what's up with the checks, and why he doesn't give them a credit/debit card number to use instead.)

And I agree that saying, "If I were going to do this sleazy thing, I would only ever do it for my own book" just screams "I have no clue what I just admitted."

Michael Evers, a striking, stylish attorney carries his New York air of self-assurance with him as he criss-crosses the countryside to formulate what will develop into a historic case.

Does that sound like Mary Sue Gone Wild?

Can anyone find out if friend Fabiano is, in fact, a lawyer? Or exactly where he is or has been a professor?

Weirdly, none of the AIP authors who maintain blogs have so far mentioned this contretemps.

I recieved the book - after waiting for my unhinged postman for four weeks - and found, to my horror, that the editing was child-like. There were six mistakes in my story alone. The formatting was awful and the page numbering was off after a certain story, and I found myself wondering what it was I had gotten myself into. But, sure enough, a few days later I sent another story to them. I had near convinced myself that the reason for their bad formatting was inexperience. Then, like the epiphone, I slapped myself in the face.

To conclude, all I can say is after all of that I found myself cherishing the rejections as less of a failure than the so called "publication". A majority of those in the book are hard-working people who just want to be heard, and all this nonsence is hurting them. I don't write short stories anymore, but if I did, I'd find the hard way and enjoy every rejection as something to learn from. And I certainly wouldn't put myself in the hands of people who carry themselves in such a way. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

I hope people who refuse to listen are now paying attention. The world of publishing can be shitty if you look in the wrong places. Vanity publishing is fine, as long as it's what you want. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. This is from the horse's mouth.

Try not to feel too bad about being scammed by a vanity publisher. A lot of people get scammed like that. You were actually smarter than me, because I paid money up front to my vanity publisher, but your vanity publisher is the type where its business model is set up to make money off the authors after publication. Those are much harder to spot.

May I suggest you check out Slushkiller (and the many similar posts) here at Making Light? See also On the Getting of Agents. We do try to help. The real people in the publishing industry Just Won't Shut Up about how things are supposed to work.

I'm certain that the majority of the people in the book are good folks who naievely believed a fast-talker. I have no idea whether their stories are good or bad. Some could be outstanding.

The real pity of vanity publishing is that it sweeps up the good with the bad and hides it away.

Also according to a Google search, a Kevin A. Fabiano was fined $375 in 2000 in Miami for -- oops -- forgetting to turn in his campaign treasurer's report on time. (No evidence he won any elections, however.) Further down in the Google results, in May 1989 one Kevin A. Fabiano (registered representative, St. James NY) was fined $10,000 and barred from "association with any NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) member in any capacity" for some oopsies involving personal purchase of securities.

Do not feel too bad Simon. Welcome to the collective of writers and allies working to get the word out about these exploitive operations.

...and bless those in the publishing industry who "Just Won't Shut Up about how things are supposed to work."

Thank you for your kind words and directing me to advice I will use. As for Fabiano...I'm still trying hard not to swear. Maybe I should review my contract before I start commenting on his actions. I've probably paid for a "no slagging off the publisher" clause too.

Thanks again.

...what am I talking about?

YOU can be RICH and FAMOUS....

That isn't the real selling point of the vanities and quasi-vanities. The authors aren't after that. The real selling point is this: "You will get to HOLD a copy of YOUR BOOK in your HAND." That's what they're offering.

I hear it over and over.

She is also known to hobnob with celebrities who love to get free editorial advice.

Please don't confuse stupidity with ignorance. Nobody is born knowing how publishing works. It's something you learn, and if you're lucky, you learn from reputable, ethical, knowledgable people. If you're not lucky, you either learn the hard and ugly way, or you don't ever learn how it really works.

"As a small publishing house we are dedicated to quality work. Our reputation depends on it. We are therefore, careful with the work we present to the public. Great TIME AND ENERGY is spent in editing, proofreading and formatting your work."

I sympathize with you and your kitties. It's a wonderful and terrible thing that we fall in love with beings who don't live as long as we do.

In regard to Trip's note, One of my cats has chronic renal failure, so I'm going to be facing the same thing in (vet's estimate) a few weeks.

I hope your vet knows about feline CRF maintenance care, and has good reasons for rejecting it. When the cat's kidneys are functioning at a inadequate level, it is possible to maintain quality of life with regular subcutaneous fluid infusion, which is a form of osmotic dialysis. The injections, which I expected to be a horror for both of us, turned out to be a bonding experience, a regular pet&purr time.

I maintained one cat for 18 months and another for 6 months on this regimen. Eventually they died—eventually they all die—but they were healthy and happy during their treatment. So this is a warning for us all—watch your cat for evidence of rear leg weakness, excess water consumption, and bad breath, and see the vet. These may be symptoms of the time in the life of your cat that when taken in the flood lead on to an extended and enjoyable CRF maintenance experience.

This poem is about my Chihuahua, Khloe Amber

Soft hair round eyes a little wet, watery I think is what they call it
long thin nails they are very sharp if these nails will scratch me it
would most likely hurt this creature is small it weighs four pounds the
tail always wagging, happy to see me she wants her belly rubbed the
head round and small like a gala apple very loving and affectionate the
name is Khloe and she is my best puppy.

Well, I'm glad she loves her dog. I love my dog too.

Pictures in Danna's album titled MY BABIES!!:-) the brown dog is Gianna Summer, the black dog is Khloe Amber, and the guy in the white turtle-neck labeled My Baby is ... Kevin Fabiano! And here's Danna and Kevin on their ski trip this past January. According to his bio, Kevin lives with his "wife Claudia" and two children. Kevin in hot water. "This is so unbelievably refreshing!!!"

Danna's hubby in 2005.

This is as good as reading the National Enquirer. (Okay, I admit it. My secret vice -- I read the scandal sheets while waiting the supermarket line.)

*In answer to someone's question way up the thread, a mechanical editor is one who edits writing for grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.

Claudia
Female, 25, It's complicated
Interested In: Friends
Member Since: Mar 2005
Location: Greentown, PA
Hometown: Greentown, PA
College: State University of New York - Binghamton
Schools(Other): SUNY BINGHAMTON.. GO BEARCATS!!!! :-)
College/University: State University of New York - Binghamton, Attended 2006 - ????, Class of 2007, Bachelor's Degree, Spanish and English with a concentration in Creative Writing
Occupation: Student/Freelance Mechanical Editor
Hobbies and Interests: Dance, skiing, wakeboarding, traveling, red wine, working out, SUSHI, crafts, theater/shows - I LOVE NY!!, roadtrip, the beach, clubbin, reading, CHIHUAHUA's
Favorite Books: Too many..
Favorite Movies: Footloose, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Grease, Dirty Dancing - the original!!, Top Gun, Risky Business, and the list goes on....
Favorite Music: classic rock -- AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and more... i love the 80's too! --Metallica, Cinderilla, Poison, Journey, and again the list goes on and on!! And of course, HIP-HOP n RnB!!
Favorite TV Shows: the Sopranos, Sex and the City of course, That 70's Show, the oldies -- SOAP & All In The Family --...
Zodiac Sign: Gemini
About Me: pragmatic, spontaneous, loving, open minded, straightforward, sophisticated, and im not afraid of taking risks cause
"The way I see it if you want the rainbow you gotta put up with the rain."
GURL JUST WANNA HAVE FUN!!
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Who I Want to Meet: anyone mature & cool enough to share a thought or two with!!

Even among people with no pets, the best-case scenario is that nearly half of us do exactly that.

Yes, it is. But, although I doubted it for a while over the weekend, the wonder really does outweigh the terror.

I am definitely giving Dani-cat subcutaneous fluids, every other day. I also have my vet looking into Fortekor, which she had not previously heard of but another cat-owner recommended I check into (and which I mention here in hopes it might help someone else someday, whether it helps Dani or not).

I don't know if the vet who made the estimate (who is not Dani's regular vet, but just the one who was on duty at the time) was too pessimistic, but Dani is home now, and reasonably happy. I'll just have to do my best for her for whatever time she has left.

And that's the best case, which gay marriage*. We het women have a greater than even chance of outliving our menfolk**.

-----
* I had to say it. I'm staying in a house with my disgruntled lesbian sister, who brings gay marriage into every conversation.

** Actually, that means the straight men have it best. Typical. Even demographics favour them.

*speaking through a friend of mine, some years ago

One of my horses had to have some rather nasty wounds flushed and cleaned twice daily for about ten days. Even though this was unpleasant for him, he still came to me each time I called, even when he could see the honkin' big syringe in my hand, and stood like a saint while I did the painful business. I'm convinced he understood why it was necessary.

Tina and Trip, my sympathies. I try not to think about the day I'll have to say goodbye to my own kitty.

Tracie #156: Since your post, the College/University portion of the page has been changed, as follows:

College/University: State University of New York - Binghamton, Attended 2006 - ????, Class of 2008, Bachelor's Degree, ENGLISH

No more double major, no more CW emphasis, and graduation has suddenly been pushed back a year. Isn't misrepresenting one's education also a form of fraud? If so, you may have done Claudia a favor.

As the woman in a heterosexual marriage, I have a better than even chance of being a widow. In those circumstances, my husband will live his entire lifespan without the grief I will experience*.

-----
* Unless his theory** is correct, and we are each immortal in our own universes, in which case he will too.

** Not the one about sheep eggs. A different one.

Actually...no one can prove that they don't, can they? In fact I'd assert that no one who has ever eaten a sheep egg has ever died!

Sleep. Must sleep.

Suggestions were: Biblio-aisle; Checkout flick; a Checkout quick; Counterflitter; Eyebrowser; Flickpocket; a Fliptease; Gloss-adjusters; Gossaholic; Gossiptunist; In-line-(cheap)-skater; a Look-worm; Mag-nah-carter; Mag-scab; Muse-agent; Peekpocket; Peepskate; Queuedumper; Rag-snatcher; Scabloider; a Scandalouse; Slybrarian; Star Grazer; Steal magnolias; Sticky-Peek; Super-market-mag-addicted-neva-gunna-purchase (semi-sung); Tabloitterer; Waitwatchers; Woman’s Sneakly (pun on Woman's Weekly, a popular Australian magazine).

*Except about the sheep eggs.

Happy Easter, those who celebrate Easter.

I'm pretty sure I can call myself this, too, just like I can call myself a hero of space exploration, but nobody else will call me that (well, maybe Mr. Dell, but that's another story).

Question for the pros: what does it really take to be legitimately considered "a bestselling author?" Is there still a NYT Book Review bestseller list (or NY Review of Books, I can never remember) that's kind of like the billboard charts for books? Because right now it seems like people throw that term around if they sold out the stack they offered at Granny's yard sale.

(One of these days I'll get around to printing up the membership cards for the United Solipsists Association.)

I can't comment on its perceived importance, but there is still a NY Times bestseller list (or lists, really; broken down into "Fiction," "Nonfiction," and "Advice," in Hardcover and Paperback subsets).

Curiously, if you go to the individual pages (e.g., Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers), they're dated "April 15, 2007." Apparently the NY Times is able to extract book sales statistics from the future. Spooky.

I did buy the issue of the Weekly Weird News with the 12 members of Congress admitting to being space aliens. (Kinda explains some things, don't it?) The story of how the reporter got the story -- which was not a fabrication -- made the mainstream news. He called up Congressional offices asking the members (or their staff) to confirm or deny that Sen. X was a space alien. 12 of them decided to play along with the joke. "Why yes. There are more of us that you suspect. I'm surprised it too you so long." The article also included a checklist on how to tell if your congressmember was a space alien, very similar to how to tell if your husband/pet/boss or even a prostitute is one. Useful.

I do remember the narrator finding a copy of Heinlein's[1] The Stone Pillow.

Great Ghugle, I've found it; Robert Charles Wilson's "Divided by Infinity". (Thanks to the NESFA list of recursive SF.)

I am somehow completely unsurprised to find that it appeared in Starlight 2.

[1] Another one for the spelling reference, perhaps?

To me, the idea of sheep eggs brought to mind the kind of animation segments Terry Gilliam would cook up for Monty Python's Flying Circus, maybe a crossover between Basil the Killer Sheep and Eggs Diamonds.

@#153 Faren Miller (individual)scams were much larger and more outrageous back in the day....

Oh, I dunno. There was that author(?) who turned out to be a multi-year masquerade act, for one! There's the usual parade of "self-improvement" and "alternative whatever" gurus, and a few have been pretty flashy. One could also point to ShrubCo, but that's just too easy....

@#155 Tracie: Well, my first thought was that she could be his mother, but she doesn't really look old enough.

I think I'm so fascinated with familia Fabiano because I'm alternately too depressed and too annoyed to want to think about Iran, Iraq, etc. They're an amusing distraction, like the supermarket tabloids.

Finally, I get a chance to use my very favorite Jane Yolen quote:

"It is fearful to love that which is touched by death."

"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...." Lies breed like vermin. Let enough lies accumulate, and they'll build complicated defensive "nests" until the structures fall over of their own weight.

Danna cut car brake lines with a pair of tin snips.

Could you ask Claudia herself to drop by? I have some questions for her.

r y rll jst fckn jls f thrs' ccmplshmnt? Mnd yr wn fckn bsnss. Gt yr ft fckn ss p, nd d smthng prdctv

If you have a point to make here, it's best made by being civil and showing some manners.

> (One of these days I'll get around to printing up the membership cards for the United Solipsists Association.)

Surely one card would suffice?

teehee. i read that first as "get your fact-checking ass up."

sadly, that would be too witty & also too accurate for our troll to have come up with.

"doesn't even owe you guys anything" If she you told you that you might want to reconsider your friendship, since apparently she is lying to you too. "even if she did you should have..." what we "should have" does not excuse the fact that she is financially delinquent and a liar: that is what _really_ is immature. "What were you guys trying to do anyway?" Get paid for the 3 months of rent she never paid, also get the money for the utilities someone loaned her out of kindness (granted, thinking that she was trustworthy was immature on our part). "You were already overcharging her _in the first place_" in the first place? to go along with your sophomoric rationalizations, 'in the first place' we could have never overcharged her because she never paid, and if she felt paying $235 a month for rent was out of her budget she should have never rented 'in the first place', THAT was immature (since you seem found of calling people that).

Her "accomplishments," that we're supposed to be "jealous" of, appear to be these:

1) Married a rich guy old enough to be her father.
2) Threw a birthday party for her dog.
3) Incompetently edited a vanity anthology.

Did I leave any out?

No one would have noticed that she existed at all if that vanity anthology hadn't been marketed via federal crime.

The rich guy, now, is a depressingly familiar character. Privileged white male goes to private school, gets everything he ever wanted handed to him. He writes a book and for the first time ever is judged purely on his own merits, not on how much money he has in the bank or who his daddy knows. For the first time ever he's told "No, not good enough." He decides publishing is broken (since there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with perfect him) and becomes a publisher--with predictably bad results. (Though I must say that in this case he went spectacularly, if not hilariously, wrong. Most of those other rich white guys never get mentioned by Publishers Weekly.)

The tragedy is for the other writers who didn't know the warning signs and thought that he actually was a real publisher. They put their stories in his hands--with predictably bad results.

You have no reason to feel defensive. If Claudia undertook to share the rent and utilities, then never paid up, she's inarguably in the wrong. The word for that isn't immature; it's dishonest.

(Go back and look at comment #192. I knew the moment I read it that it had to be Claudia. No one but the person being discussed would react like that.)

If you want to get your rent and utility money, take Claudia to Small Claims Court. They make it cheap and easy to file (that's the whole point), and it sounds like you have a clear case. She promised to pay, she failed to pay, and if she's throwing birthday parties for her dog she can damned well afford to pay.

By the way, verbal promises can be binding. They're just harder to prove than written ones. You don't need a tape recording. It's probably enough to have a couple of people testifying that that's what the absconding renter promised to pay.

It's a pity we can't pin Claudia down (by full legal standards, at least) as the author of comment #192. Not only is "I don't owe you anything, and you should have picked a different way to collect on the money I owe you, and anyway you were overcharging for the room" a ludicrously stupid defense -- it's right up there with the classic "I didn't push him, he jumped, and anyway I acted in self-defense, and furthermore I was in another city that day and I can prove it" -- but it's also an admission that she owes you rent money and has repeatedly failed to pay up when asked.

Good luck!

Sez you. My Mileage May Vary.

I'm certain that whoever maintains the server logs up there at SUNY Binghamton could take that, plus the date/time stamps on the messages, to tell who was logged in.

Who's the BITCH now!? hahahhh!!! lmao!!!!

Jnn, or whatever your real name is, please find a more appropriate place for your juvenile behavior.

Ex-housemate, that last comment from "Jenna", #208, was posted from 149.125.254.253. I'm loath to disemvowel it -- one so seldom sees a baddie provide her own cackling, villainous laughter -- but I assume those are your and your other housemates' names. It's your call. Should I disemvowel it, or -- in the words of Jim Macdonald just now in a chat session -- "leave it up in all its drooling stupidity"?

If you want or need copies of the original versions of Claudia's earlier messages here, with their full message headers attached and the vowels still in the text, let us know. If you're going to be contacting Computing Services, you should have all the information we can give you.

I'm sensing...a J name..with an N in it...possibly two. </John Edwards>

“So, bottom line: I wasn't stupid, just naive.”

Truer words never spoken, my friend.

- Matt Waters

Take your story, go to Duotrope, and find paying markets that take reprints in your genre.

Move forward, write more, and only go with publishers who have a proven ability to get books onto bookstore shelves.

A belated note to Jim Kopp (#222): I certainly hope you sought legal advice and informed all of the proper authorities, including the state bar association(s) where ever Mr. Fabiano is licensed to practice law.

Opinion seems to be divided on Mr. Fabiano at Rate My Professors (for his teaching at the McCann School of Business). Mr. Fabiano is not currently mentioned on the McCann website.

Over at LinkedIn, a Kevin Fabiano has this:

Kevin Fabiano
Owner, West Legal Reproductions, Inc.
Location
Greater New York City Area
Industry
Legal Services
Current
* Owner at West Legal Reproductions, Inc.
Education
* University of Florida

University of Florida certainly seems to fit with our boy, as does the legal profession and greater New York area.

Googling on "West Legal Reproductions, Inc." leads one to all kinds of interesting places, including an ad posted on 30 May 2008 offering a $100K salary for a salesman, but nothing more recent.

West Legal Reproductions was located at 99 PARK AVE
NEW YORK, NY 10016-1601
Phone: (212) 764-1126

It was apparently founded in 2001, and its president was Kevin A. Fabiano. The phone is now disconnected; Switchboard.com does not give any listing for West Legal Reproductions in New York City.

Mr. Fabiano donated $300 to the National Republican Congressional Committee on March 21, 2003.

He appears to have entirely dropped off the map (or at least the web) under the name "Fabiano."