A Writer's Life

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 5

Okay, the first month of my Kindle experiment, inspired by the successes of Joe Konrath and John August on the platform, has ended. Here are the results.

From June 1-30, the Kindle edition of my 2004 novel THE WALK sold 444 copies @ $1.89 each, for $302.67 in royalties. As of today, I have sold 37 more copies for a royalty of $24.78 (I also raised the price a dime to $1.99 for the heck of it).

The book was also available on Smashwords, where I sold one copy, and Scribed, where I sold two copies, for combined royalties of about $4. Hoo-hah.

I have since pulled the book from both Smashwords and Scribd so that it's exclusively available on the Kindle. I've done that as part of a promotional effort by Amazon that will roughly coincide with the release Tuesday of the Kindle edition of my new MONK novel, MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP (I'll talk more about that in a later post).

I also released a collection of previously published shorts stories that I packaged for the Kindle under the title THREE WAYS TO DIE. I sold 54 copies @ 99 cents, earning a royalty of $18.90. I sold one copy of the collection on Scribd and none on Smashwords. It remains available on all three services. 

The only promotion I have done for these books are posts on this blog, my Facebook page, Twitter, and a few Amazon Kindle forums. 

I haven't spent a dime on this...but I have spent time.

What have I learned? 

Well, there's money to be made from your out-of-print work. Not a lot, but it's found money. THE WALK wasn't earning anything for me anymore and now it is. Pretty soon, it will have earned enough to buy myself a Kindle.

I wouldn't write an original novel for the Kindle. It just doesn't make any financial sense. But if you have an out-of-print novel, and you happen to have the copy-edited manuscript sitting on your hard-drive, it makes more sense to re-publish it for the Kindle than have it brought back in print for free as a POD title through the Authors Guild. You won't get rich doing this...but it also won't cost you anything. In essense, you have absolutely nothing to lose. And if the Kindle edition sells in huge numbers, it might help get your book  back-in-print (though I haven't heard about this ever happening for anyone). On the other hand, it could also limit your agent's efforts to sell other print editions of the book...which is why I haven't posted THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE on Kindle, even though it is now out-of-print in hardcover.

I think there's no real money in "self-publishing" original novels to the Kindle if you aren't already an established name (which both Joe Konrath and John August are). You won't sell much, if anything, because you don't have a strong platform from which to promote your work. I'm not famous, but at least I have a little more recognition than your typical, unpublished author...and my Kindle sales so far aren't phenomenal or particularly lucrative. You could argue that THREE WAYS TO DIE is essentally a self-published, original novella...and it has tanked. I've sold 55 copies @ 99 cents each in total across all three web platforms this month for a royalty of less than $20. (Joe has an excellent post about the pros and cons of self-publishing here)

The one big advantage the Kindle platform has for self-publishing is that it's free and puts your book on the best bookselling website on the planet.  And It cuts the predatory, vanity presses with their outrageous fees out of the picture entirely. Good riddance! 

The "publishing" aspect of making your book available for the Kindle is not as easy as it seems at first. My manuscripts looked fine in the "preview" on the publishing page but turned out to be filled with formatting errors when actually seen on the Kindle. It took me a lot of time, and the generous assistance of some Kindle owners, to clean the manuscripts up. 

Smashwords and Scribd are also very easy to publish to...perhaps easier than Amazon...but if my experience (and Joe Konrath's) are any indication, your sales will be pitiful to non-existent. They just aren't in the game yet. Then again, they are free...so it costs you nothing to make your books available there as well. Just don't expect to make any money off of it.

So is this the future of publishing? 

I don't think so...the money just isn't there yet for authors or publishers. That's not to say it won't be in the future if the price-point for the Kindle, and products like it, drops considerably and millions of people buy them. 

Is it the future of self-publishing? 

Perhaps. It certainly has the benefit of being free to the author...at least for now. But actually selling copies will be a huge challenge. And in a broader sense, if there's a deluge of horrendous, self-published crap on the Kindle, it could actually turn readers away from risking money, even a few cents, on authors they aren't already familiar with. 

Right now the Kindle is a novelty, and users are eager for content...they're grabbing whatever they can, especially if it's under a buck or free... but if they get burned too many times by garbage, they'll be a lot more discerning about what they download, even for nothing.

That said, there are some unknown, self-published authors who are making decent money selling books on the Kindle...and I've interviewed a few of them for an article in an upcoming issue of the Novelists Inc newsletter (www.ninc.com). I believe, and so do many of them, that they are the exceptions rather than the rule. I'll share some of their experiences here at a later date.

I'll also report back on how THE WALK continues to fare as a Kindle edition.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 4

Here's  a quick update on my e-publishing experiments. Following in the e-footsteps of Joe Konrath and John August, I made  THE WALK, my out-of-print 2004 novel, and THREE WAYS TO DIE, a collection of previously published short stories, available as Kindle editions. I subsequently made them available as downloadable PDFs on Scribd as well.

So far, I haven't had nearly the volume of sales that Joe and John have experienced. From June 1 to today, I have sold 371 copies of  THE WALK at $1.40 each (the actual price is $1.89, but Amazon has discounted it), earning myself $236.91. My sales of THREE WAYS TO DIE are flat at 54 copies at 99 cents each, earning me a whopping $18.90. I have sold two copies of THE WALK and one of THREE WAYS TO DIE on Scribd, at the same prices as the Kindle editions, earning me a staggering $2.44 in royalties.

At the request of several of my blog readers, I have gone one step further and have made THE WALK and THREE WAYS TO DIE available on Smashwords, where you can download them in the format of your choice. The price in all formats for THE WALK is $1.89, the same price I set for the Kindle edition on Amazon. 

So, here's where you can buy THE WALK and THREE WAYS TO DIE  in the e-versions of your choice... 

THE WALK on the Kindle 

THE WALK as a PDF at Scribd 

THE WALK in multiple formats, including Kindle, PDF, and Mobipocket, at Smashwords. (If you use this code KN24A at checkout, you will get 25% off, the same as the Amazon discount)

===========

THREE WAYS TO DIE on the Kindle 

THREE WAYS TO DIE as a PDF at Scribd.

THREE WAYS TO DIE in multiple formats at Smashwords. (I am experimenting with this title by using their "set your own price" feature where you, the reader, decide how much to pay).

I shall report back at the end of the month on how the books are doing on the various sites and in all the various formats. 

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

But just for hell of it, I decided to follow Joe's advice and put my out-of-print 2004 novel THE WALK and a short-story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE up on Amazon for sale on the Kindle and see what happens. 

So far, after only a few days on Amazon, sales of those Kindle editions have been brisk. For instance, today THREE WAYS TO DIE was ranked as Amazon's #30 bestselling Kindle short story collection and the 40th top-selling hard-boiled Kindle mystery. 

Pretty impressive, huh? 

And it's paying off in the wallet, too, my friends. I've already raked in ten dollars in royalties. So I spent today at the Bentley dealership checking out the car I'm going to buy at year-end with my Kindle royalties.

I do not mean to belittle Joe's success on the Kindle. It is truly impressive and its a reflection of his considerable promotional skills (as well, I'm sure, of the quality of the books themselves). But do I think the vast majority of published, as well as unpublished, writers can easily achieve the same success he has with Kindle editions? No, I don't.

But I would love to be proved wrong. I'll report back at the end of the month on how my Kindle sales on these two titles are doing.

(Incidentally, several of my MONK and DIAGNOSIS MURDER books are also available on the Kindle. Although the MONK books sell very well in hardcover and paperback, the Kindle sales are miniscule...and keep in mind that my MONK books, unlike those that an unknown writer might put up for sale on the Kindle, benefit from the huge advertising, promotion, and brand awareness that goes along with a hit TV series)

UPDATE 6-11-2209: Joe Konrath has updated his Kindle sales figures and they are pretty impressive. Here's a sample:

On April 8th, I began to upload my own books to Kindle. As of today, June 11, at 11:40am, here is how many copies I've sold, and how much they've earned. 

THE LIST, a technothriller/police procedural novel, is my biggest seller to date, with 1612 copies sold. Since April this has earned $1081.75. I originally priced it at $1.49, and then raised it to $1.89 this month to see if the sales would slow down. The sales sped up instead. 

ORIGIN, a technothriller/horror occult adventure novel, is in second place, with 1096 copies sold and $690.18. As with The List and my other Kindle novels, I upped the price to $1.89. 

SUCKERS is a thriller/comedy/horror novella I wrote with Jeff Strand. It also includes some Konrath and Strand short stories. 449 copies, $306.60.

Joe also talks about some of the lessons he's learned along the way. I'll post the stats from my experiment at the end of the month.

Blog Spamming

This takes some chutzpah. S.G. Kiner is trying to promote her self-published book by spamming the comment sections of blogs all over the Internet. Take, for instance, this comment that she left on author Laura Caldwell's post at The Outfit:

"The Hong Kong Connection" is a legal thriller about a gutsy female attorney who takes on high ranking International officials. It's a taut, rollercoaster of a ride from New York to Palm Beach to Washington D.C. to Hong Kong. The plot is expertly woven, the characters persuasive, and the dialogue snappy and spot on. www.StrategicBookPublishing.com/TheHongKongConnection.html

This comment, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of Laura's post. It is, however, an example of inappropriate and stupid behavior by an aspiring author. First Kiner was dumb enough to fall for the Strategic Publishing scam (the latest incarnation of Robert Fletcher's infamous Writers Literary Agency). Now Kiner is compounding that mistake by ineptly trying to leach readers off of another author. The only thing she's succeeded in promoting is her own rudeness and ineptitude. 

When to Self-Publish

Karen Opas-Lanouette, a freelance editor and ghostwriter, believes it only makes sense to self-publish if you meet three criteria, which she's posted on LinkedIn. I think her list is great:

1) You have written a memoir or cookbook that you want to share with family and friends. Professional editing and cover design/interior layout are not an issue. A POD self-publisher like Lulu or iPublish is an inexpensive way to put a book into the hands of friends and family.

2) You have a successful business and a book will enhance your authority as an expert. You prefer the 50%+ of the cover price you will receive via this process than the 7-15% you will receive via traditional publishing. You can write the initial expenses off against marketing, and declare income as you hand sell books to clients and at lectures. In this case, it is worth the money to hire a professional editor, an experienced book designer, and create a combination of printed physical copies and a POD set-up with someone like Lightning Source.

3) The expenses involved in creating a professional quality self published book are worth it to you in the same way that going on a vacation is worth it--you are unlikely to make a profit, but the mental and emotional rewards of having your book out in the world, along with the statistically slender chance that your book will hit, make it worth the money.

That is one of the most-clearheaded, accurate, and helpful posts about self-publishing that I've read in some time. I agree with everything she's said. But I would add one more important criteria -- self-publishing makes sense if you have written a non-fiction book and have a built-in sales and promotional platform. In other words, if you lead seminars, have a TV or radio show, teach a class, preach to a congregation, etc...a stage from which you can promote the book and a ready-made venue/audience for selling it yourself.

UPDATE: Jane Smith pointed me to this excellent post that makes some excellent points about self-publishing Here's a taste:

4) Nearly all self-published books sell in minuscule numbers. How many friends do you have? How many could you persuade to part with cash? Well, that's how many books you will probably sell. Unless you are a seriously brilliant and dedicated salesperson and are prepared not to write any more ever again because you will be selling, selling, selling. You will lose hair, weight (hmm, good idea), self-esteem and years off your life; you will gain wrinkles, bags, and new respect for book-led publishers. You will probably not make any money but if you do, you will be rightly proud of it. But too tired to do it again. 

5) Whenever someone tells you that publishing is "broken", ask yourself who is saying this and why. Is it a published author? Is it an author who has won awards, received good reviews, has a genuine fanbase? Or is it someone who has either failed to get published or who has decided to make money out of other people's failure to do so? 

6) When you hear about a self-published book becoming "successful", (and this does occasionally happen, but much less often than you are led to believe) realise that this success nearly always happens when a book-led publisher takes on the formerly self-published book. So, is that a self-publishing success or proof that publishing is neither dead nor the future?

The Independence Fallacy

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

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

She goes on to note:

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

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

More Vanity Press Kool Aid

Every time a major magazine or new outlet does a story touting self-publishing, in this case a piece on the CNN tech website, I get inundated by readers asking me what I think. So does Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware...only she probably gets it ten times worse than I do. She's written a post on the formula most of these articles usually follow. She says, in part, that they:

1. Pick a rare instance of self-publishing success--in this case, Lisa Genova, whose iUniverse-published novel Still Alice garnered a major publishing deal. Make sure not to tell the whole story--omit, for instance, the fact that Genova hired PR firm Kelly & Hall--the same firm that propelled self-published Brunonia Barry to success--to publicize her book, and acquired a literary agent as a result of the attention Kelly & Hall was able to generate.

2. Segue to the growth of self-publishing and the great possibilities it offers for budding authors, while taking a swipe at the commercial publishing industry. Totally ignore the contradiction inherent in the fact the success of the self-published author just discussed hinged on her transition to a commercial publisher.

3. Toss out a few random facts about self-publishing (not all of them necessarily relevant--Khatami notes that the self-published author "retains the copyright to his or her book," as if this were not the case with commercial publishing), while ignoring the issue of low sales (the average self-published book sells fewer than 200 copies) and limited distribution (most self-pubbed books are not distributed beyond the Internet).

These articles never mention the tens of thousands of dollars that these "successful" self-published authors had to spend...and how extraordinarily rare it is for vanity press authors jump to a real publisher, which despite their hoo-hawing for vanity presses is what they all want.

The CNN website story mentions that Lulu has published 820,000 titles since 2002 but they don't say how many of those authors actually sold more than a few dozen copies of their work. A real reporter might have asked that question...and posted the answer as a reality-check. But this was nothing more than a vanity press puff piece...the last thing anyone was interested in doing was shining a light on the ugly truth.

AuthorHouse's online Fact Sheet, updated in September 2008, reported 36,823 authors and 45,993 titles. According to the New York Times, AuthorHouse reports selling more than 2.5 million books in 2008, which sounds like a lot, but averages out to around 54 sales per title.

iUniverse's 2005 Facts and Figures sheet reports that the company published 22,265 titles through the end of that year, with sales of 3.7 million: an average of 166 sales per title. Obviously some titles can boast better sales (Amy Fisher's If I Knew Then sold over 32,000 copies)--but not many. According to a 2004 article in Publishers Weekly, only 83 of more than 18,000 iUniverse titles published during that year sold at least 500 copies. And in a 2008 article in The New York Times, iUniverse's VP, Susan Driscoll, admitted that most iUniverse authors sell fewer than 200 books.

The vanity presses make their money selling books to authors, not selling books to readers.

There are three more items on Victoria's list and I'm going to refer people to it every time they email me a mindless article like this one.

An Unpleasant Word

The Winepress Group's print-on-demand vanity press Pleasant Word, which calls itself  "a leading light in Christian self-publishing," is threatening to sue author Mark Levine for criticizing their business practices and proclaiming them "a publisher to avoid" in his book "The Fine Print of Self-Publishing" (which I favorably reviewed).  Winepress/Pleasant Word sent out a press release through the Christian Communications Network that reads, in part:

His review of Pleasant Word closes with the statement that "there are plenty of honest Christian publishers. Find one."

In the book, Mr. Levine asserts that he holds publishers "who cloak their services around religion to a higher standard." However, he ranks another Christian publisher as "Outstanding," despite comparing poorly on many of the same criteria he used to judge Pleasant Word.

The Winepress Group has been a leading light in Christian self-publishing since 1991 and enjoys a reputation for integrity and quality within the industry. The company is also a member of the Better Business Bureau with an excellent record.

"This is not about a bad review," said Malcolm Fraser, the Executive Officer at WinePress, "Mr. Levine's research was certainly poor and his conclusions are totally inconsistent, but he's entitled to his opinion. However, he has misrepresented the facts and published statements that are blatantly untrue. His accusations of dishonesty cross the line into slander and break the law. It's potentially very damaging to our reputation and harmful to everyone connected with the company."

What Levine has done is scrutinize Pleasant Word's contract and fee structure in detail and comes to the conclusion that company is not very author friendly.  For instance, Pleasant Word claims they give their authors, excuse me customers, 100% of the net profits, which Levine says is not the case:

The author makes 100% of the profits after Pleasant Word nearly doubles the printing price and adds a handling fee

For a book priced at $17.99 and sold on Amazon, Levine calculates that the author's royalty is a mere fifty cents...while Pleasant Word pockets $3.60. Praise the Lord. Levine writes:

I believe it's a compromise of Christian values (and just about every other moral value I can think of) when a publisher leads authors to believe that its printing costs are 100% higher than they actually are.  

[...]When a publisher choose to make religion a central focus of its service and writes copy that suggests that due to strong Christian principles authors "know they can trust us," the publisher has a duty to be over-the-top honest. Being less than forthright about the real printing costs, while advertising how honest and Christian it is, instantly makes Pleasant Word a publisher to avoid. 

[...]There are simply no pleasant words to describe the business practices of this publisher. 

For the record, Levine also lists Tate, another "Christian" vanity press, among the self-publishers to avoid. But he praises Xulon Press as "hands down [...] the best exclusively Christian self-publishing company out there."

The Vanity Press Kool Aid

Mrs. Giggles blogs today about the slew of self-publishing hype lately. She says, in part:

The problem with self-publishing propoganda, if you ask me, is that most of these circus barkers are telling people what they want to hear, as opposed to telling them the hard facts. They tell barely literate high school dropouts that grammar and writing ability don't matter because stories "come from the heart" or something like that. They tell desperate authors that traditional publishers are evil people who deliberately set out to crush their dreams. They tell these people that they are entitled to be authors, and yes, fame and success and respect will follow shortly after because look at the handful of current self-published authors who have made it big, blah blah blah.

[...] Self-publishing is no short cut to success - it is another way to get published, but it is also another kind of hard work awaiting the author. And the rewards are far lower than you would reap with traditional publishing, unless you are an expert in your field with a ready-made audience at your seminars and classes [...] or you are content to sell a dozen or so copies and knowing that there is an audience, however small, that appreciate your art.

I couldn't agree more. The problem is that most of the reporters writing about vanity presses either have their own agenda or don't dig deeper than the press releases they are giving. Recently, Publishers Weekly profiled several fast-growing "small presses" but neglected to mention that two of them -- Greenleaf and Morgan James -- are vanity presses that make their money selling books to authors rather than readers (hat-tip to Victoria Strauss for that one). PW is an industry trade publication...they should know better.

Lightsword Becomes a Vanity Press

Now that Lightsword Publishing has gone bankrupt, crippled by revelations of fraud and incompetence, disgraced "publisher" Linda Daly has reconstituted the company as a vanity press operation. Here's what she's written on her Lightsword Digital site:

Currently, LSP Digital is NOT accepting submissions. In early Spring of 2009 we look forward in updating our guidelines for submission requirements along with a complete outline of any and all fees for publishing with LSP Digital, LLC.

Now that's chutzpah. 

Hosing Yourself

Author John Gilstrap doesn't understand the desire to self-publish at all.

I don’t understand why people would pay the thousands of dollars necessary to make self-publishing happen. If the goal is to get one’s book into the hands of friends and family, a Kinko’s would serve as well as a self-publishing house. If the desired audience is bigger than that, the writer is hosed. Selling a hundred copies to people who all know where you live is not really publishing, is it? Isn’t the point to sell not tens of copies, but tens of thousands of copies? It’s impossible to get that kind of distribution without a legitimate publisher.

He's right, of course. But some argue that pros like John are looking at this from the wrong angle. Some authors aren't interested in making any money on their art, they are in it for the creative expression. Well, if that's the case, why not just post the book for free download on a blog? doesn't understand why anyone would self-publish.

Harvesting More Suckers

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

No End to Vanity...or Stupidity

The New York Times reports that print-0n-demand publishers are flourishing...even if their customers are not.

As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs. 

[...]“It used to be an elite few,” said Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company whose revenue has grown to $30 million, from $1 million, in just two years and which published more than 300,000 titles last year. Many of those were personal books bought only by the author. “Now anyone can make a book, and it looks just like a book that you buy at the bookstore.” 

[...]Author Solutions estimates that the average number of copies sold of titles published through one of its brands is just 150. Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said. 

It's sad that there are so many suckers out there. That said, the New York Times piece should be required reading for anybody thinking about going to a vanity press...and is a sharp counterpoint to Lev Grossman's inane opinion piece in Time Magazine this week.

(Thanks to Daniel Powless for the link)

Is Free, "Ravenously Referential" Fiction the Future of Publishing?

A lot of folks have sent me a link to Lev Grossman's essay in Time Magazine that proclaims that:

Saying you were a self-published author used to be like saying you were a self-taught brain surgeon. But over the past couple of years, vanity publishing has becoming practically respectable.

He's the only person, besides a vanity press huckster, I have ever heard voice that opinion. He tries to back it up by citing a couple of the extraordinarily rare examples of self-publishing success. He neglects to mention, just like the vanity-press hucksters do, that these are extremely rare cases that represent a miniscule percentage of the self-published books printed every year.

But I'm not surprised he neglects that fact...and so many others in his essay. He's the same guy who thought Lori Jareo, the dimwit who self-published her STARS WARS fanfic and sold it as a novel on Amazon, was some kind of "unsung hero." He's also notorious for trying to jack up the rankings of his novel on Amazon by posting scores of fake, five-star reviews.

He believes that publishing books on paper, paying authors advances and giving booksellers the opportunity to return unsold books are old-fashioned practices that are so "20th century" and will soon become extinct in favor of  -- drumroll please -- fanfic.

Put these pieces together, and the picture begins to resolve itself: more books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic, far outside the charmed circle of New York City's entrenched publishing culture.

[...]Not that Old Publishing will disappear--for now, at least, it's certainly the best way for authors to get the money and status they need to survive--but it will live on in a radically altered, symbiotic form as the small, pointy peak of a mighty pyramid. [...]The wide bottom of the pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, Web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses.

And what will that fiction look like? Like fan fiction, it will be ravenously referential and intertextual in ways that will strain copyright law to the breaking point.

Only someone who thinks Lori Jareo is a pioneer, and who wrote a novel about a "Boston slacker who has trouble distinquishing between reality and Star Trek," could make that prediction with a straight face. 

He's looking at publishing from within the insular world of science fiction and fantasy fandom, which bears little resemblance to reality. I don't think the majority of book-readers today-- the millions who can't speak Klingon and never heard of Joss Whedon -- would embrace the "ravenously referential" and poorly-written world of free literature that he desperately hopes the future of publishing will become.   

I agree with him that publishing is changing, and I suspect that ebooks and print-on-demand will be a big part of the future of the industry, but I doubt that wide popular and critical acceptance of self-publishing and fanfiction will be the ultimate result. To put it in terms Grossman would understand, I think commercial publishing, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and authors being paid for their work are practices that will "live long and prosper" in the face of new technology and new means of communication.

Vanity Consolidation

First the vanity press Authorhouse bought iUniverse, which was one of the few "reputable" players in the largely disreputable print-on-demand, self-publishing industry. Now Authorhouse has gobbled up xlibris, too. Can Lulu be far behind?

Other rivals in the print-on-demand space include closely held Lulu Enterprises Inc.'s Lulu.com, based in Raleigh, N.C. Last October, Lulu laid off 24 employees, including its president, or nearly 25% of its work force. "It was less about the state of Lulu and more about the economy," said Gail Jordan, a company spokeswoman. "We pared back to ride out the storm. Our company is actually doing well."

Yeah, right.  But in her comment lies the good news: the consolidation of the vanity press business means that the sleazy little fly-by-night vanity presses (like Jones Harvest)  are probably doomed. If the big-boys of sham publishing can't make it on their own, it's unlikely these tiny, far less capitalized vanity presses will be able to stay alive for long. I say good riddance.

On the other hand, Victoria Strauss fears the lack of competition among vanity presses will lead to more, and costlier, abuse of the aspiring authors who use those services.

One in a Million

J. Steven York has a very smart analysis of the sale of the self-published novel Daemon to Dutton in a rich deal...and what the vanity press industry won't tell you about what the sale means.

Light Goes out at Light Sword

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mail I Get

I got an email from a self-published author. Here it is, in its entirety (minus his name):

Hello, Thank you so much for your time and I hope today finds you well. I write today to present 2 works…one fiction, one non-fiction which I am hopeful you may wish to review. Descriptions of both are below as well as links to read the first chapter of each. In the case of the non-fiction work a current press release (with review excerpts) is also below. Looking very forward to hearing from you. 

Wow, what a compelling pitch. Does he really think that would entice anyone to review his work? Well, to be fair, it did entice me to read the descriptions that he included. Here's the one for his non-fiction book (minus the author's name and book title):

An often terrifying journey through XYZ’s childhood in a “haunted” house through to many strange and unexplainable supernatural contacts and occurrences in his later life. Then the twist. A complete second book is added that the author feels was actually sent from an otherworldly source. Multiple cases of connections to the US 9-11 events, even mentions of the flight numbers and a description of the feelings of the World on that day are to be found in this second book. Eerily it was written and copyrighted 4 years prior to the events. XYZ feels his work was “spiritually sent through me to serve as a guide to help bring peace of mind to us all in the post 9-11 World”. 

Gosh, I wonder why he had to self-publish this one. Here's how the author describes himself on his website:

XYZ is many things. Author, award-winning Poet,popular paranormal Blogger, explorer of the strange and unusual, a guiding hand, a creator and developer, and more.

The "and more" should include nutball and sucker. By the way, I feel this entire post was sent to me spiritually from an otherworldly source.

I'm a Woman...and a Publisher?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You're So Vain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mail I Get -- Still More!

I have two pieces of mail to share with you today. First off is this query from an aspiring screenwriter in Germany:

I am trying to collect experience in "stoffentwicklung" what might be similar to the expression "scriptwriting" for movies and television. I had the Idea to got to Los Angeles- Hollywood to do a trainee, but I really don't know if this is common in the same way as it is here in Germany. I would be very greatfull if you could help me on this.

I replied:

I'm not aware of all the trainee opportunities in screenwriting in L.A...but the few that I know about are highly competitive. You would be competing against graduates of the film schools at UCLA, USC and NYU, to name a few. And I suspect the trainee programs are more likely to take a U.S. writer than one from Europe. That said, it couldn't hurt to apply anyway. All it will cost you is a stamp or a click.

I got the following email from a writer who says he's trying to decide whether or not to self-publish his novel. But  it seems to me from his note that he has already decided to self-publish and is trying to justify his decision to himself:

I am an aspiring and intelligent writer who is aware that there are so many less-than-honest companies. Do you despise all self publishing or do you see the value in some authors deciding to self publish? Are there any companies in particular that you have found success with? Do you know approximately how many legitimate literary agents are available in the US and how many manuscripts they take on per year? I know that there are relatively unknown authors that do get the opportunity to publish but is there an average advancement amount that is given to a first timer? How is the figure decided? I am passionate about what I have written and I do not want the manuscript, characters, places, etc to be altered in any way. Can I get a guarantee from a traditional publisher that my work will not be manipulated or misconstrued?

Here's how I replied:

I don't know how many legitimate literary agents there are, or how many manuscripts are published each year, or what the average advance is for new writers. It's irrelevant anyway. It sounds to me like you are asking those questions to justify a decision you've already made to hand over your credit card to a vanity press. What you're implying is that it's just too damn hard to break in... and you don't want to make the effort. And since, on top of that, you refuse to even consider editing your work in any way, then yes, I think it's unlikely that you will find an agent or a publisher.

Why? Because no agent is likely to represent a newbie writer as inflexible  as you appear to be...unless, of course, your work is mind-blowingly spectacular and amazingly commercial.  And while a real publisher won't edit your work without your consent...they also won't publish it if you are unwilling to make the changes they think are necessary.

So if what you want is your manuscript to be printed in a form resembling a book without any editing whatsoever, then hell yes, call iUniverse right away. You won't sell any copies, and it will cost you a small fortune, but at least it will be printed in book form without any chance of rejection, editing...or  advances and sales. But hey, at least you will have done it your way and avoided any chance of someone telling you something you don't want to hear.

You are, in fact, exactly the kind of person vanity presses pray for...not only do they like the desperate and naive, they also appreciate people whose high opinion of their own work is only matched by their fear of rejection and lack of fortitude.

Do I despise all self-publishing? No, I don't. I despise the vanity presses that prey on the stupidity and desperation of aspiring authors and swindle them out of their money. And I have little patience for newbie writers who are so intent on finding a short-cut that they blind themselves to obvious scams.

Self-publishing is rarely a wise idea for fiction but it can work with non-fiction, especially if you have a strong platform from which to publicize and sell the book,  like teaching a class, hosting a TV or radio show, preaching to a congregation, touring as a speaker, running seminars, etc.

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

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

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

Vanity Press Trickery

The wonderful Writers Beware blog led me to this excellent list of tricks vanity presses use to con desperate, and gullible aspiring writers into believing that they are "real" publishers...which also double as rationalizations the suckers use to convince themselves that they haven't been swindled. Among them, the myth that if a publisher doesn't accept all submissions (eg. Tate), and pays a token advance (eg. PublishAmerica), they aren't a scam.

2. Misconception: Vanity presses don’t pay advances.

While vanity presses are supported primarily by the money that writers pay them, the less-than-honest vanities try to pass themselves off as real publishers. One way to do so is to pay advances (or claim to do so).

Now, how to be an advance-paying publisher and still make a profit from writers? Well, the advances could be very low. For instance, $1 per author, non-negotiable. The publisher could also pay – or claim to pay – advances to some authors but not others. Maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t.

They can afford to pay you the $1 or the $100 because they know they will make it all back in the money they make off of you and your family buying copies of your own book...which, in fact, is their actual business. They make are in the "selling books to authors" business.

Bookwise is Bookdead

The vanity press and multi-level marketing scam Bookwise has gone out of business. Good riddance.

Snead's Screed -- Dishonest or Stupid?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Thanks to EREC for alerting me to the editorial)

Why Reviewers Ignore Self-Published Books

Chicago Sun-Times book critic David Montgomery explains why he doesn't review self-published books.

In my experience the overall quality level of self-published fiction is not sufficiently high for the books to be given serious consideration. This is not to say that all self-published fiction is bad. The law of probability alone would indicate that at least some of it must be readable. But the vast majority of it is not.

There are many reasons for this (e.g., self-published fiction has no third-party vetting, most of it is not professionally edited, much of it was already rejected by agents/editors for a variety of reason), but the bottom line is that most self-published fiction just isn't very good.

He's right, and although he's only speaking for himself, he might as well be talking for the majority mainstream magazine and newspaper book reviewers out there.

Inexplicably, I keep getting emails from publicists and vanity presses to review their self-published authors....even though a) I am not a book reviewer and b) I am a harsh critic of self-publishing in general and vanity presses in particular.

Beware the "Term of License" Contract

In this month's Authors Guild Bulletin, Mark L. Levine warns writers to be very wary of publishers offering a so-called "term of license" contract (signing you for seven to ten years with an option to renew) unless you are already a best-selling author or are negotiating paperback or reprint rights to an existing work.

If they're offering it to you as a novice writer, then it's a big warning sign that "the publisher in not a bona fide trade or academic publisher or even a bona fide print-on-demand one but a vanity publisher masquerading as a bona fide POD publisher."  He offers some more good advice:

Recently, a handful of POD publishers have been soliciting and "accepting" manuscripts at an astonishing rate and not requiring money up front to publish a book. They even offer what on its face apperas to be a relatively standard publishing agreement and sometimes agree to pay a nominal advance (eg one dollar). This has led writers -- particularly novices-- to think they are being published by bona fide trade publishers.

[...]They typically will not publish any copies other than those ordered at the authors discount. Apparently, the total number of books purchases for friends and relativesat the "special" author's price by the presumably large number of people taken in by this scheme makes it a profitable venture for the ethically challenge.

[...]If you are still interested in proceeding in the hope that your publisher is bona fide, be sure to insert, in addition to the requirement that the book be published within a specified time period at the publisher's sole expense, language stating tha the number of print-on-demand copies of the book initially published at the publisher's expense "will not be less than ______ copies" (eg 500 or 1000). Language like this, as well as a good out-of-print clause, should flush out the intentions of the publisher and save you from a bad surprise.

The Fine Print of Self-Publishing

Mark Levine has just published the third edition of  THE FINE PRINT OF SELF-PUBLISHING. I was a fan of the first edition and this one is even better. Particularly useful are the updated and expanded  examinations of the various self-publishing companies, their services and their contracts.

Anybody who is thinking about self-publishing must read this book first.  Even authors who aren't interested in self-publishing will come away, as I did, with a deeper understanding of publishing contracts and what the various clauses actually mean for you.

I strongly recommend this book.

Airleaf Reborn?

Bonnie Kaye, who was a key player in the demise of the Airleaf vanity press scam, is now leading the charge against Jones Harvest Publishing, a sleazy vanity press run by Brien Jones, a former Airleaf exec (who is also doing business as Author Celebrity, Starred Review, Great Concept Books, Book Wheat  and Author Profile, to name just a few).

She has launched JonesHarvestFraudVictims, a blog for people who claim that they've been swindled by Jones. She writes:

In the aftermath of Airleaf Publishing's demise, the former Executive Vice President, Brien Jones, has "re-invented" this system all over again in his own publishing business.  Although Mr. Jones swore he was not the man to be blamed behind Airleaf's fraudulence, the investigation conducted by a number of members of the Airleaf Victims support group has proven that this is not the case. Mr. Jones was no innocent victim of Airleaf fraud as he proclaims like the authors who bought their worthless promises—in fact, he perpetuated much of it. According to a dozen ex-employees, Mr. Jones was the mastermind behind the worthless promotions of Airleaf that he was pitching.

Brien Jones has cast himself as an innocent victim who is being trashed by "baseless and vicious attacks from competing publishers," even though his critics aren't publishers at all.

I was an employee of another publishing company and despite being called the “mastermind” of this operation I was not in charge of anything at all. I never had access that company’s check book, company credit cards, accounts payable, or accounts receivable. I never saw a bank statement, not one time. Most amazing of all, I was not allowed to look at the mail!

I also had no information, none, about book sales. Despite nearly constant pleas I never had any clue how many copies of client’s books were sold.  I had no clue how many of MY books were sold, even though I had to pay out of my pocket (just like the other authors) to print them! I DO know that I never got paid a percentage of any book sales, including my own.

[...]When I left that publishing company it was up to me to decide how much of the responsibility was mine. I decided I deserved my fair share of the blame. So I sent out apologies. I published 30 books for free (including the crusader’s), and 30 more at our hard cost. I also used and use the same vendors that got stiffed by my former boss. In other words I have done all I can to atone for my role in that other company. Since many of our client’s now were clients there, I guess we must be doing something right.

That's one way of looking at it. Another would be that he's suckered the same suckers again using the same schemes that worked so effectively at Airleaf (which seem primarily targeted at senior citizens). He's not the only one who has seemingly gone back to the Airleaf playbook for inspiration. As Writer Beware notes:

Airleaf has spawned several publishing enterprises run by ex-staff--including Fideli Publishing, a fee-based publisher whose marketing packages bear an eerie similarity to Airleaf's, and Brien Jones's Jones Harvest Publishing, which also charges fees for publishing and offers many Airleaf-style services (Writer Beware has gotten some advisories about Jones Harvest's email solicitations, and Mr. Jones has recently chosen to reimburse several Jones Harvest authors who alleged performance problems). If you trace the family tree backward instead of forward, you arrive at the Big Daddy of POD vanity publishing, AuthorHouse, where Brien Jones was employed before he co-founded Airleaf's predecessor, Bookman Marketing. It's a tangled web indeed--which, sadly, is not unusual in the murky world of vanity POD.

Sadly, many of the desperate, and insanely gullible, aspiring authors who were swindled by Airleaf learned nothing from the experience...and have gone running from one vanity press scam right into others.

Kaye organized over 450 scammed authors against Airleaf and succeeded in getting the Indiana Attorney General to shut the company down. I wonder how many victims she will rally together this time...

Another Opportunity for Vanity Press Suckers To Throw Away Their Money

The Telegraph is amused by Blurbings.com, another inept "service" aimed at hopelessly stupid people who've already been suckered by a vanity press and are eager to throw away even more money:

It had to happen sooner or later: an American company is offering writers gobbets of praise with which to decorate the covers of their self-published books. A plug from an unknown author is unlikely to encourage anyone to buy a book by another unknown author, but this has not stopped www.blurbings.com offering various packages that start at $19.95 for 10 micro-bouquets.

Victoria Strauss at Writers Beware also points out the stupidity of this new attempt to shake a few more bucks from the pockets of the dumb and unwary:

According to Blurbings' About Us page: "Normally, a blurb will cost an author and/or publisher $14 - $23, which includes printing of the galleys, packaging and mailing fees. The standard 30 – 50 blurbs expected per book can range from $420 to $1,150. It is also very time consuming researching and contacting prospective authors as well as conducting follow-ups during the duration of the process."

Uh...okay.

[...]The whole point of a blurb is that the blurber be recognizable to the general public, or else be someone whose credentials suggest that his or her opinion is worth taking seriously. But how likely is it that someone like that will find his or her way to Blurbings and happen upon your digital galley? (And if you contact them yourself, what do you need Blurbings for?) It's far more likely that the blurbs you'll get will come from other site users--i.e., other self- or small-press-published authors--or, possibly, from random web surfers. No offense to Joe Micropress Author or Jane Random Web Surfer...but blurbwise, who cares what they think?

Emily Maroutian, one of the owners of Blurbings.com, defended her "service" in a comment on Writer Beware:

Blurbings.com was not created for big industry authors or authors, like yourself, who don't like blurbs. Blurbings was created to help self-published authors and small presses receive blurbs for their work. It was created to shorten the process and make it cheaper. [...]If anyone here feels as if our service is pointless then don’t use it. It’s as simple as that.

I don't know why the Telegraph and Victoria are criticizing Blurbings.com. Everyone knows that a ringing endorsement from a complete nobody for a total unknown is better than no blurb at all. But I think I'm going to save $20 and just ask my gardener, the cashier at Ralph's, and the first person I see on the street to blurb my next book.