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

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!

That's pretty juicy, even for a publishing scam story.

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.

Steve, at #2--
It's fairly common practice to rip off the booksellers, really. 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--meaning that we had to shelve them, as they're nonreturnable.

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

They claimed to be affiliated with West? ::spits drink on keyboard::

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.

Every once in a while I wonder: is there just something wrong with me, some missing Ambition Gene? Because I just... I don't GET THIS.

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.

In my first posting, s/male/make/, of course. Stupid fingers.

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.

OK, fair warning, I am not a lawyer, but I spent the dotcom bubble years building and running electronic commerce systems. We regularly got fascinating briefings from our nervous corporate attorneys on this stuff.

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.

Steve at #6 -

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?

Tina @ 5, Steve Taylor @ 6, Elusis @ 8- I believe you're very close to the truth with your questions and observations. There's a kind of magical thinking involved. I was a SAG/AFTRA agent for a while; the parade of the self-deluded was sad to behold.

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

People do not always have clear-cut, simple motivations for writing, such as "I want to make a living" or "I want people to read my stories".

(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?"

#10 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?"

Tina @ 5: The mentality of people who do that kind of thing is very strange. They believe the outward seeming of a thing is the same as the reality. Getting to 89 on Amazon by playing the system is the same as having legitimately earned the ranking; having a book in print by a vanity publisher is the same as having it published and paid for by a commercial one.

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."

Hi Short Story Author

Who you calling short?

Wow. The Google-ads in the right-hand column read like a Who's Who of scammers. If you want to know who the bad guys are and what their pitches look like, check 'em out.

In no particular order...

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.

Tina @ 15: "So these people are Gollum?"

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

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

"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.

Tina @ 15 - I think back to a friend who had not one, but two "agents" over the past few years that were fee-based, and used a vanity press to finally get his book in print (with the commensurate growing pains, increasing fees, inadequate cover art, etc.). He, too, had been trying for years to achieve his dream of publication, and in his case I think he finally ran out of patience - just a single case, but I guess there are a few that simply lose a bit of faith in themselves. I suspect most are as you suggest, and either think writing a book would be "cool," or wake up to a new "Great Idea to Become Wealthy and Famous" (tm) at least a few times a year. I blame the sense of entitlement obvious even in a simple act like trying to drive five blocks to the store, and the overly goal-oriented focus of our education system and the media. I think we still need goals, but whatever happened to pride in doing one's best, like the Heinlein Joel quotes above touches on so perfectly?

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.

Although the book is a short story collection, *each* of the included authors is required to find 25 friends/relatives who will promise to buy "your" book? That's somewhere around 500 pre-sold copies before the book even goes to press - and it shouldn't be *that* hard to arrange for them all to buy within a week or two, creating an artifical flurry of interest. Then you add the fraud on top of that...

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 do wonder whether Mark Twain was required to sell 25 copies of the book, send out five press releases, and get two bookstores to stock it.

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

Joel #17: apt quotation--but judging by the prevalence of cheating, doping, etc., plenty of athletes appear to be motivated to acquire ribbons, medals and titles they haven't earned. (See also padding your resume, hiring agencies to write your term papers....)

Attributing magical thinking to vanity press authors reminds me of a short discussion a few threads back* about the Harvard MBA mentality. It's a very similar notion: the thing is real when I have acquired or created the appropriate symbol, so it isn't necessary to actually create the ding an sich**. I have personally seen MBA-trained managers insist that the job of re-organizing a troubled organization was done, and done well, once the Mission Statement and new org chart were published. This seems the same to me as insisting that one is a writer*** because your book has been printed, never mind that it was never accepted by a real publisher with real distribution capablity, and it sits in a warehouse somewhere and rots.

* 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?

And then there are the sad cases, like the one sweet old lady I worked for years ago, who dearly wanted her self-published, vanity press book to succeed. But her motive was Christian evangelism to young kids. Using dogs as a mouthpiece.

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.

Thanks to a tip from Victoria, and Google's Book Search feature, here's the table of contents for The Shortcut:

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

Whoa! Bram Stoker is still alive??
;-P

James D Macdonald @ 20

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?

where's the rusty razor blade and the Anthrax spores?

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

Nah, Bram Stoker isn't still alive. He's just there to fill out the roster, and to make true the publisher's promise that Well Known Writers were also going to be in the volume.

I'm not particularly capital-L Literate. Are any of the works by Well Known Writers (however you care to define that) still under copyright? I recognise Twain, Bronte, Alcott, Dickens, Poe, and Stoker. I guessed that Nathaniel Hawthorne was also a classic author, but I'm not familiar with his work.

Hawthorne, like the rest of the Well Known Authors, is very much Public Domain.

(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.

#14 Jim -- the thing to do with ads by offensive groups is click on them -- a lot. It costs them for every click.

:)

Steve @18 and Bruce @22 - the thought has just struck me that perhaps part of what is at work here is the I'll Show You mentality. These authors cannot concieve of the possibility that their work is just not good enough to publish, and thus the only explanation for their lack of acceptance by the mainstream press is some sort of conspiracy or willful ignorance. Hence, "I'll get published, and you'll see, I'll Show You just what you were missing!"

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.

#14, #31: James may qualify as a 'publisher' of the site, in which case he falls under the Google AdSense policy which includes 'Publishers participating in the AdSense program: ... May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language'.

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.

It's not just the getting published, though. They could do that a lot more cheaply via Lulu for PoD, or via an honest, above-board old-style vanity press. I think Mr. Macdonald has pointed out a number of times that there is nothing wrong with that - sometimes it's the best way to get something into print, when there's no commercial market to sustain it.

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.

Ironically, I think that the key phrase here is "author identity."

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.)

Sometimes it would seem more honest if we just created old-fashioned European aristocracy in America, with titles that can be purchased.

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.

I'm in Arizona right now, and at the Sierra Vista Mall (as we were searching for wireless) I saw a table at Dalton's advertising a signing for a "new local author" of children's books.

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.

Joel@17:

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.

Self-publishing is not an exception to Yog's Law.

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.

Joel Polowin at #17 wrote:

>"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

Personally, I think you people are being way too hard on this guy. I, for one, was really inspired by him.

The Heinlein passage makes an assumption about... I don't know, personal integrity? In a similar vein, there's the line from Aral Vorkosigan in Bujold's A Civil Campaign: "It could be worse. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating."

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.

Tufte really is one of those people who should self publish -- his works are solid, and he's too much of a perfectionist to trust them to anyone else. (And typeset) (And Layout). It's all part of the point of the books, really.

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)

*avid reader, very shy poster here*:

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.

Dei, 44: Under those circumstances, it'll be a very rare person who'll accept first prize.

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

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

There's a phenomenon in the world of fanfic which I think is related to the vanity presses which cater to the people who want other people to believe they've been published. In recent years there have been a good many people who find actually writing a story far too much like hard work, when it's ever so much easier to lift a story from a LiveJournal or website, change the author's name, and submit it to fanfiction.net. When caught and exposed, they cannot see anything wrong with what they've done. In fact, the standard reaction is to say that the ripped-off author should feel honoured that they were chosen.

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.

Tina (#38): the word is "honest," as in "you are too honest to lie to yourself about something important".

Per the second PW story, the editor of The Shortcut seems to be one Danna Curran.

Dei, 44: Under those circumstances, it'll be a very rare person who'll accept first prize.

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).

Tina @ 38: 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.

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.

The Heinlien passage reminds of when I was given an academic award in school that I didn't earn under the rules because the teachers felt sorry for me. No one understood, including my dad why I refused to show up for the ceremony. He insisted I should have been there to rub it in the faces of those that spent too much time telling me I was worthless loser. He failed to see how a framed piece of paper I didn't earn wouldn't change that.
My ethics and integrity always knows it was a cheat and rings hollow. Drat that his lessons in honour actually stuck.
If I give in my vanity press will be self publishing at Kinko's or Lulu. Why disguise it as otherwise.

Re #48, following the link I learn:

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.")

*Delurks and gives a shy wave*

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! :-)

A friend was telling me about an incident earlier this week, when he answered the door and found a young man who was selling his 'science fiction story' door to door. (Said young man described himself as a 'great fan of science fiction' but didn't recognize Locus. We suspect someone who doesn't actually read it, only watches it on TV.)

...does anyone else find it deliciously ironic that the anthology is called The Shortcut?

Echoes of the Magic Get Published Button...

Mary Sipe@#53 -- Welcome to unlurk land!

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.

Leah @55: Probably in imitation of The Secret. I was browsing an article in Newsweek, which described that book as packaging yet another 'power of positive thinking' message (the latest in a lineage going back a hundred years), but thought its success could be attributed to the punchy title, which suggests that there is a simple secret that the author was going to let you in on.

According to her AuthorsDen bio, Danna Curran's "...lastest book is The Shortcut..." Quite possibly it is.

That's very interesting. I think I saw a copy of The Shortcut in my local B&N Saturday eve. Hmm -- have to swing back by for another look.

Poor Danna also misspelled the title of the book on her AuthorsDen page.

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.

...copies of her nephew's appalling PoD book...

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

The one review The Shortcut has on Amazon is by Cady Hayden, the author of one of the stories in the book.

“Your manuscript is both good and original; but the good parts are not original and the original parts are not good.”

Re: unearned rewards and praise:

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.

The more I follow these stories, the more I suspect that the writers who are sucked into them genuinely don't know that they aren't involved in genuine publishing.

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

Tina @#56: Touring musicians should always carry copies of their CDs in their luggage. If your CD sells in a store, you make (at the level I'm at) maybe a dollar, payable sometime over the next year, *if* the record label *and* the distributor are honest about their accounting, and nobody in the chain has gone bankrupt. (One CD I played on had a bunch of copies in stock at Tower, requiescat in pace.) If you sell it yourself at a gig, you get to put the entire purchase price in your pocket immediately, at a point where you're probably wondering how much gas it's gonna take to get to the next gig, and your profit is the difference between that amount and what you paid for it. (Even corporate labels will probably sell you your own CDs in quantity for $7 each or so. Of course you'll forfeit the royalties on those, but see above.)

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...

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?

"Danna wrote her first freelance story at age 16. It was crafted in poetic form. This story was picked up by the Capitol Courier."

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.

"She continues to write her own work today..." I'd surely hate to think she'd paid someone else to do it.

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

Michael Bloom@#66: Oh, actually I agree. Having extra CDs around to sell to folks, particularly if you're mostly playing small venues where they're more likely to approach you, is a grand idea. I was thinking more of the folks who booked their own studio time and cut a CD they're going to distribute themselves. Some musicians do that, and I think of it as the equivalent of poets who self-publish. Sometimes it's the better choice.

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.

Thanks for the welcome, Tina!

James on #65:

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.

James D. Macdonald @ 65, Carrie V. @ 71: Those are the ones who break my heart: the ones who had the bad luck to fall in with the wrong kind of crowd early on and just don't know any better. There but for the grace, &c.

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?

Dan linked to "Unskilled and Unaware Of It" back up at #49. Now should come the ritual link to SlushKiller.

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.

Carrie @#71: third novel just out now--squee!
John and I finished said 3rd novel a week or more ago. Thanks for the fun read!

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.

Carrie V... I was recently visiting my buddies at my employer's main San Francisco office, and said to one of them how I wish we could afford to move back there. My buddy, who is not a stupid man, suggested that my wife's agent should send her books to Hollywood. He obviously has a strange (but probably quite common) idea of how things work. Of course, should the phone ring and it's Steven Spielberg himself calling...

Please allow me to drop a link for Varieties Of Insanity Known To Afflict Authors to add to Mr. Macdonald's post above. The points made there are worth noting by my fellow unpublished scrubs who haven't yet been culled from the herd by pseudo-publisher scammers. Consider them carefully. It should be easy to see how even getting your novel published by a reputable house will be far from a clear indication that your writing is any good, or that you're a sane and sensible person.

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.

Tracie at #67 wrote:

> 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...

Serge @ 75 - Hi. I'm Stephen Speelburg from Production America and I can help you get your screenplay produced...

Nothing much to offer other than saying 1) I think Lulu.com is as good a place as any for an orphan work (I'm thinking about compiling my published short stories, my contract stated that as long as I credited where they appeard they are mine to do with what I wanted). and
2) Just about every Ren Faire musician worth their salt (and a lot that aren't) sell their CDs for at least $10. That likely pays more than than the venue does. And the seven-song wonder that appears at our local faire has apparently never gotten that message. Good because as far as we can tell, he only knows seven songs. And $10 is a fair price (I've paid it often enough).

Sure, Mister Speelburg. Could you get Miss Black to play the leading lady? And I mean Claudia Black, not Karen Black.

"We suspect someone who doesn't actually read it, only watches it on TV"

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.

Anyone else see the irony of the title of the book? It hit me when I looked at that Danna blog and read the caption of a photo, "Shortcut Authors." As in, taking the shortcut of self-publishing?

Serge #80: Why not Halle Berry?

Fragano @ 83... Nah. Angela Bassett. I wish she had played Storm in the X-men movies.

Serge #84: Not a bad choice either.

The living authors (so far as I'm aware) in this anthology were adamant that this was not vanity publishing, despite the requirement that they buy or cause to be bought 25 copies each.

That's innocence.

Tina @#69: It seems to me that making your own CD has more "indie cred" than self-publishing a book, even though in most respects it's exactly the same process.

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.