Some good new, a class-action suit has been filed against the notorious vanity publisher Publish America. In addition to misleading thousands of authors about their own business model, PA is indirectly responsible for the creation of the Shocklines board, which was created after some people (like me) on the Horror Writers Association board criticized Publish America. Sadly, this crime against humanity is not part of the suit.
The Kindle and the ease and success of ebook publishing has taken the wind out of outfits like PA, but there are still suckers born every minute. Sometimes they believe the hype about PA et al being "traditional publishers," and sometimes people are just impatient and want a turnkey operation to relieve them of their money. As I was reading about the PA suit this morning, my sister texted me a photo of this book:
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Uncle Sam's Schoolhouse
My cousins wrote this book after some conflict with the local school district; teachers bullied their kids, which given the fancypants district they're in I certainly believe happened, except that I could hardly tell what happened from reading the draft I saw. I had been given a draft copy in a spiral-bound Kinko's edition in November and wrote my cousin's a long editorial letter.
Basically, the book was what I call a "grudge job" or a "We The People" book. If you've read slush for a non-fiction publisher, you know the type—it's basically a public-access TV rant, written down. Lots of Google-research of lawsuits and Constitutional amendments; endless listings of personal arguments large and small— one "virulently egregious and inexpiable incident" after another to allow for score-settling and plenty of l'esprit de l'escalier; tortured English like "The slanderous libel of their attempt at defamation of my character was recorded in an official exchange"; and lots of generic "Wake UP, America!" rhetoric. We The People will not stand for this sort of thing any longer! Nine times out of ten, these sorts of books are written by retired white postal workers, and they are generally available in two flavors: Tea Party Hysteric or Aaaangry Democrat.
I made the usual recommendations one can make: start with an extended and illustrative anecdote and not a set of broad claims, don't play lawyer, cool it on the context-free quotes from Martin Luther King and Hannah Arendt and Webster's Dictionary, avoid rhetorical questions ("Did the supervisor understand that it was immoral to threaten children with punishment for the actions or even inactions of the parents?") and when describing experiences be specific. What else can one do?
In March I got a second draft; it was improved. I didn't have time to write another letter before April, when my cousins told that they had found a publisher. Which told me that they were going the self-pub route. They didn't fall for PA, but went with an expensive-seeming self-publishing outfit. Apparently, they paid for all sorts of PR stuff as well, but still got, well, the cover you see above and, I expect, very little in the way of actual editing. It's too bad—they had a good story to tell. But even in these days of Smashwords, there are plenty of people spending thousands of bucks to play Live-Action Role Play: Author Edition. And where there is demand, there is supply. Non-fiction is even more prone to this sort of dynamic than fiction, I believe, because crusaders get a charge out of spending a lot of money and effort on their holy wars. Kindle won't kill these outfits, but I hope the lawsuit provides a remedy for Publish America authors at least.
The Kindle and the ease and success of ebook publishing has taken the wind out of outfits like PA, but there are still suckers born every minute. Sometimes they believe the hype about PA et al being "traditional publishers," and sometimes people are just impatient and want a turnkey operation to relieve them of their money. As I was reading about the PA suit this morning, my sister texted me a photo of this book:
Uncle Sam's Schoolhouse
My cousins wrote this book after some conflict with the local school district; teachers bullied their kids, which given the fancypants district they're in I certainly believe happened, except that I could hardly tell what happened from reading the draft I saw. I had been given a draft copy in a spiral-bound Kinko's edition in November and wrote my cousin's a long editorial letter.
Basically, the book was what I call a "grudge job" or a "We The People" book. If you've read slush for a non-fiction publisher, you know the type—it's basically a public-access TV rant, written down. Lots of Google-research of lawsuits and Constitutional amendments; endless listings of personal arguments large and small— one "virulently egregious and inexpiable incident" after another to allow for score-settling and plenty of l'esprit de l'escalier; tortured English like "The slanderous libel of their attempt at defamation of my character was recorded in an official exchange"; and lots of generic "Wake UP, America!" rhetoric. We The People will not stand for this sort of thing any longer! Nine times out of ten, these sorts of books are written by retired white postal workers, and they are generally available in two flavors: Tea Party Hysteric or Aaaangry Democrat.
I made the usual recommendations one can make: start with an extended and illustrative anecdote and not a set of broad claims, don't play lawyer, cool it on the context-free quotes from Martin Luther King and Hannah Arendt and Webster's Dictionary, avoid rhetorical questions ("Did the supervisor understand that it was immoral to threaten children with punishment for the actions or even inactions of the parents?") and when describing experiences be specific. What else can one do?
In March I got a second draft; it was improved. I didn't have time to write another letter before April, when my cousins told that they had found a publisher. Which told me that they were going the self-pub route. They didn't fall for PA, but went with an expensive-seeming self-publishing outfit. Apparently, they paid for all sorts of PR stuff as well, but still got, well, the cover you see above and, I expect, very little in the way of actual editing. It's too bad—they had a good story to tell. But even in these days of Smashwords, there are plenty of people spending thousands of bucks to play Live-Action Role Play: Author Edition. And where there is demand, there is supply. Non-fiction is even more prone to this sort of dynamic than fiction, I believe, because crusaders get a charge out of spending a lot of money and effort on their holy wars. Kindle won't kill these outfits, but I hope the lawsuit provides a remedy for Publish America authors at least.