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AG Press, LLC (Cheryl Pillsbury)
- Thread starter victoriastrauss
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- Joined
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Victoria, it's not just a reality show--it's a social movement!
Welcome to the future of the literary revolution where we strive to win against Illiteracy in 2010!
Alas, things don't look so good for Team Literacy at the moment...
As a matter of fact, I am the AD for four houses at the moment. Two traditional and two self-publishing.
I work where I am paid ... lol.
I just started with them a couple months ago. The art department was/is in desperate need of some reorganization.
Ah, yes...even if Cheryl 'Wiccan Curse' Pillsbuy's name doesn't make you run away screaming, the English language abuse on AG's site probably will.
Oh, and according to her Google profile Lisa Gaughen is 'Cheif Editor' at AG Press LLC.
At least Cheryl doesn't describe herself as an editor. It seems reasonable to assume that she wrote the Amazon description of her own book 'Peleport II':
I'm intrigued by this snippet of information on AG's 'Our Team Members' page:
What does handling copyrights for clients involve?
Oh, and according to her Google profile Lisa Gaughen is 'Cheif Editor' at AG Press LLC.
At least Cheryl doesn't describe herself as an editor. It seems reasonable to assume that she wrote the Amazon description of her own book 'Peleport II':
I'm intrigued by this snippet of information on AG's 'Our Team Members' page:
What does handling copyrights for clients involve?
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Earlier this year Lanaia Lee's Prey of the Scavenger was mentioned on a rather odd blog called Authors at the Virtual Park:
I can see no mention of the book winning an award, although it did get a rave review from Oro Shengo, 'Radio Network Owner, Producer and Broadcaster':
I can see no mention of the book winning an award, although it did get a rave review from Oro Shengo, 'Radio Network Owner, Producer and Broadcaster':
Not content with butchering the English language in book form, Cheryl Pillsbury of AG Publishing has unleashed a magazine...The Dark Realm:
The literary content of the mag is pretty much what you'd expect from AG, including the unique verse stylings of Lanaia Lee and short stories by Pillsbury herself. In the third issue, available for free in pdf format, Pilsbury informs us that:
The magazine - a surreal mixture of horror, semi-porn, Hallowe'en recipes, illustrations from children's books and a tribute to actor Taylor Kitsch - has to be read to be believed. One of the articles is about the X-Men character Magneto. On the first page of Dark Realm, right next to the address of Pearson and Pearson, Attorney[sic] at Law(?!), Pilsbury says:
(Marvel has its own copyright laws? Who knew?)
It would be interesting to know if Pillsbury's concern for respecting copyright extends to to the artwork used in Dark Realm. Most of the illustrations are either unsigned or by artists not mentioned in the list of contributors to the magazine, the only exception being those by Daniela Frongia. Some of the pictures are horribly pixilated and one gives me the impression that the artist's name has been deliberately obscured. Another sports a honking great Shutterstock logo!
Rather oddly, one of the articles - I Quit by Keith Rommel - tells the story of how his novel The Cursed Man was accepted for publication by another dubious outfit with its own thread on AbsoluteWrite, Sunbury Press: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217706.
The whole thing is wonderfully bizarre.
Edited to add:
OMG, don't miss the link to Victory International Promotions! Pillsbury can't speak too highly of them:
Hunter K's grasp of spelling and grammar is on a par with Pillsbury's - I particularly enjoyed the photo of his client Sherry Ransom with 'Opera'. We can also listen to an excerpt from the now legendary Of Atlantis read by one Viktor Aurelius, who apparently has 'A voice that Victor Price would Envy'.
You really, really could not make this stuff up.
The literary content of the mag is pretty much what you'd expect from AG, including the unique verse stylings of Lanaia Lee and short stories by Pillsbury herself. In the third issue, available for free in pdf format, Pilsbury informs us that:
The magazine - a surreal mixture of horror, semi-porn, Hallowe'en recipes, illustrations from children's books and a tribute to actor Taylor Kitsch - has to be read to be believed. One of the articles is about the X-Men character Magneto. On the first page of Dark Realm, right next to the address of Pearson and Pearson, Attorney[sic] at Law(?!), Pilsbury says:
(Marvel has its own copyright laws? Who knew?)
It would be interesting to know if Pillsbury's concern for respecting copyright extends to to the artwork used in Dark Realm. Most of the illustrations are either unsigned or by artists not mentioned in the list of contributors to the magazine, the only exception being those by Daniela Frongia. Some of the pictures are horribly pixilated and one gives me the impression that the artist's name has been deliberately obscured. Another sports a honking great Shutterstock logo!
Rather oddly, one of the articles - I Quit by Keith Rommel - tells the story of how his novel The Cursed Man was accepted for publication by another dubious outfit with its own thread on AbsoluteWrite, Sunbury Press: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217706.
The whole thing is wonderfully bizarre.
Edited to add:
OMG, don't miss the link to Victory International Promotions! Pillsbury can't speak too highly of them:
Hunter K's grasp of spelling and grammar is on a par with Pillsbury's - I particularly enjoyed the photo of his client Sherry Ransom with 'Opera'. We can also listen to an excerpt from the now legendary Of Atlantis read by one Viktor Aurelius, who apparently has 'A voice that Victor Price would Envy'.
You really, really could not make this stuff up.
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Copyright infringement and a bizarre claim
You'd think that Cheryl Pillsbury would have learned something from her involvement with the Lanaia Lee/Of Atlantis fiasco, particularly where copyright-related matters are concerned. Wait - what am I saying? Of course she hasn't learned anything! This is Cheryl Pillsbury we're talking about!
A couple of days ago I e-mailed Pillsbury to ask if she'd obtained permission to use the approximately two dozen paintings and photographs she used to pad out The Dark Realm. Her reply couldn't have been more succinct:
This 'free website' obviously wasn't fussy about the quality of the material it published - some of the images are so pixillated and compressed it was impossible to trace their origin. If only Pillsbury had used the magic of Google Image Search or TinEye she could easily have found most of the the originals on DeviantART and elsewhere and asked the artists for permission to use their work:
Spring Petals by Natascha Roosli:
http://kyena.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24
Spring Spirit by Stephanie Pui-Mun:
http://puimun.deviantart.com/art/Spring-Spirit-208491363
Butterfly Notebook by SkyBlueLunaSea:
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/337610759
Path Through the Woods by Matthew Nixon:
http://needanewname.deviantart.com/gallery/
Moondance by Chael Gunnell:
http://chael.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/&offset=96
Mystic Mushroom by RachaelRose:
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/164522337
Feast of Fools font by Nate Piekos – probably taken from here:
http://macmerc.com/blambot-serves-up-a-feast-of-flesh-the-free-font-for-october/
Photo of a waterfall by Pedro Terrinha:
http://smashingpicture.com/photographer-pedro-terrinha/
Mr Terrinha’s response to the theft of his work:
“Thank you very much for letting me know ! It's quite sad this type of abuse, specially when it's so easy to send a private message on deviantart ! ”
The Witches Cats by ArwensGrace:
http://arwensgrace.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=192
Dark Dress by Carsten Junger:
http://pixelmixtur.deviantart.com/gallery/
Nymph by Paul Hector Theofanous:
http://paulhectort.deviantart.com/art/Nymph-314098652
The Magician at Dawn by Alex Greenshpun:
http://alexgphoto.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24
Fruit Dragon by Augusto Kapronczai:
http://augustok.deviantart.com/gallery/
An internet trawl also provided Pillsbury with the material she needed for Hallowe'en recipes:
Slime Soup (photographer unknown) – probably from http://www.expatica.com/es/lifestyle_leisure/blogs_photos/halloween-hapjes-45481_9861.html but it first appeared in Nigella Lawson's Feast
Brain Cupcakes by Eric Staudenmaier – probably from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/photo/Brain-Cupcakes-232941
Green Gobble ‘ems (photographer unknown):
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/...ble-ems-garlic-bread-chunks-recipe/index.html
Ghoulish Glazed Meatballs – a Mr Food recipe reproduced word for word complete with a copyrighted photo:
http://www.mrfood.com/Beef/Ghoulish-Glazed-Meatballs#
Ghoul Aid by “Aunt Paula”:
http://www.food.com/recipe/ghoul-aid-71378
Owl Eyes – a recipe by LoriInIndiana with a photo by GourmetStamper, reproduced word for word from:
http://www.food.com/recipe/owls-eyes-80661
Pillsbury can't plead ignorance of copyright law here. From the 'Carla Michelle Olson - Photography' page on the AG Press website (my bolding):
Does Pillsbury think that the artists and photographers she ripped off would be any more likely than Ms Olson to give away their work for no payment or credit? She isn't just reproducing images on a website, she's using them in a magazine for which she charges $5 a copy.
Even more incredibly, Pearson and Pearson, the law firm whose name and address appears on the first page of The Dark Realm, are
But wait...there's more!
I also asked Pillsbury if she'd obtained permission from Marvel Entertainment to use stills from various X-Men films. After all, she did warn readers that:
Her single-sentence reply knocked me for six:
WHAT? Marvel Entertainment, which is probably second only to Disney for the zeal with which it protects its characters, allowed the barely-literate owner of a vanity press to write books 'for the kids' featuring Gambit of the X-Men? Even 'for free'? I found this claim incredible in every sense of the word and brought it to Marvel's attention.
I don't want to fall foul of AW's 'respect your fellow writer' rule, but let's have a look at some of the Amazon blurbs that Pillsbury, as the owner of AG Press, provided for her own books.
(Anne Rice is a vampire. Remember, you read it here first!)
And the mind boggles at a publisher so desperate for reviews they thought this damning-with-faint-praise gem, of Pillsbury's own Amie and the Purple Butterfly, was worth featuring:
Can't you just imagine someone from Marvel reading this and thinking "Yep, this is just the person we need to write books about Gambit!"
Incidentally, at first I was puzzled by the choice of Gambit as a central character in a series of children's books. Then I remembered that in the Wolverine:Origins film Gambit was played by Taylor Kitsch, an
actor on whom Pillsbury - if the palpitating poetic and pictorial tributes to him in The Dark Realm are anything to go by - seems to have an industrial-strength crush. It sounds like a weird form of fanfic by proxy, and given that Pillsbury wrote Forever Knight fanfic it probably is.
AG's prices seem to have gone down since the company was launched:
The Submissions page suggests that AG also accepts books on merit:
However, I suspect that AG makes its money by selling dubious "marketing tools":
I get the impression that Pillsbury doesn't know what an advance is:
So, publishing with AG Press could still be a pricey proposition if you want anyone other than your family and friends to know that your book exists. But that's OK because:
Finally, according to the AG Press newsletter one of their forthcoming books is by a fifteen year old. I wonder how much she - or her parents - paid for the privilege of being a published author?
You'd think that Cheryl Pillsbury would have learned something from her involvement with the Lanaia Lee/Of Atlantis fiasco, particularly where copyright-related matters are concerned. Wait - what am I saying? Of course she hasn't learned anything! This is Cheryl Pillsbury we're talking about!
A couple of days ago I e-mailed Pillsbury to ask if she'd obtained permission to use the approximately two dozen paintings and photographs she used to pad out The Dark Realm. Her reply couldn't have been more succinct:
This 'free website' obviously wasn't fussy about the quality of the material it published - some of the images are so pixillated and compressed it was impossible to trace their origin. If only Pillsbury had used the magic of Google Image Search or TinEye she could easily have found most of the the originals on DeviantART and elsewhere and asked the artists for permission to use their work:
Spring Petals by Natascha Roosli:
http://kyena.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24
Spring Spirit by Stephanie Pui-Mun:
http://puimun.deviantart.com/art/Spring-Spirit-208491363
Butterfly Notebook by SkyBlueLunaSea:
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/337610759
Path Through the Woods by Matthew Nixon:
http://needanewname.deviantart.com/gallery/
Moondance by Chael Gunnell:
http://chael.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/&offset=96
Mystic Mushroom by RachaelRose:
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/164522337
Feast of Fools font by Nate Piekos – probably taken from here:
http://macmerc.com/blambot-serves-up-a-feast-of-flesh-the-free-font-for-october/
Photo of a waterfall by Pedro Terrinha:
http://smashingpicture.com/photographer-pedro-terrinha/
Mr Terrinha’s response to the theft of his work:
“Thank you very much for letting me know ! It's quite sad this type of abuse, specially when it's so easy to send a private message on deviantart ! ”
The Witches Cats by ArwensGrace:
http://arwensgrace.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=192
Dark Dress by Carsten Junger:
http://pixelmixtur.deviantart.com/gallery/
Nymph by Paul Hector Theofanous:
http://paulhectort.deviantart.com/art/Nymph-314098652
The Magician at Dawn by Alex Greenshpun:
http://alexgphoto.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24
Fruit Dragon by Augusto Kapronczai:
http://augustok.deviantart.com/gallery/
An internet trawl also provided Pillsbury with the material she needed for Hallowe'en recipes:
Slime Soup (photographer unknown) – probably from http://www.expatica.com/es/lifestyle_leisure/blogs_photos/halloween-hapjes-45481_9861.html but it first appeared in Nigella Lawson's Feast
Brain Cupcakes by Eric Staudenmaier – probably from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/photo/Brain-Cupcakes-232941
Green Gobble ‘ems (photographer unknown):
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/...ble-ems-garlic-bread-chunks-recipe/index.html
Ghoulish Glazed Meatballs – a Mr Food recipe reproduced word for word complete with a copyrighted photo:
http://www.mrfood.com/Beef/Ghoulish-Glazed-Meatballs#
Ghoul Aid by “Aunt Paula”:
http://www.food.com/recipe/ghoul-aid-71378
Owl Eyes – a recipe by LoriInIndiana with a photo by GourmetStamper, reproduced word for word from:
http://www.food.com/recipe/owls-eyes-80661
Pillsbury can't plead ignorance of copyright law here. From the 'Carla Michelle Olson - Photography' page on the AG Press website (my bolding):
Does Pillsbury think that the artists and photographers she ripped off would be any more likely than Ms Olson to give away their work for no payment or credit? She isn't just reproducing images on a website, she's using them in a magazine for which she charges $5 a copy.
Even more incredibly, Pearson and Pearson, the law firm whose name and address appears on the first page of The Dark Realm, are
But wait...there's more!
I also asked Pillsbury if she'd obtained permission from Marvel Entertainment to use stills from various X-Men films. After all, she did warn readers that:
Her single-sentence reply knocked me for six:
WHAT? Marvel Entertainment, which is probably second only to Disney for the zeal with which it protects its characters, allowed the barely-literate owner of a vanity press to write books 'for the kids' featuring Gambit of the X-Men? Even 'for free'? I found this claim incredible in every sense of the word and brought it to Marvel's attention.
I don't want to fall foul of AW's 'respect your fellow writer' rule, but let's have a look at some of the Amazon blurbs that Pillsbury, as the owner of AG Press, provided for her own books.
(Anne Rice is a vampire. Remember, you read it here first!)
And the mind boggles at a publisher so desperate for reviews they thought this damning-with-faint-praise gem, of Pillsbury's own Amie and the Purple Butterfly, was worth featuring:
Can't you just imagine someone from Marvel reading this and thinking "Yep, this is just the person we need to write books about Gambit!"
Incidentally, at first I was puzzled by the choice of Gambit as a central character in a series of children's books. Then I remembered that in the Wolverine:Origins film Gambit was played by Taylor Kitsch, an
actor on whom Pillsbury - if the palpitating poetic and pictorial tributes to him in The Dark Realm are anything to go by - seems to have an industrial-strength crush. It sounds like a weird form of fanfic by proxy, and given that Pillsbury wrote Forever Knight fanfic it probably is.
AG's prices seem to have gone down since the company was launched:
The Submissions page suggests that AG also accepts books on merit:
However, I suspect that AG makes its money by selling dubious "marketing tools":
I get the impression that Pillsbury doesn't know what an advance is:
So, publishing with AG Press could still be a pricey proposition if you want anyone other than your family and friends to know that your book exists. But that's OK because:
Finally, according to the AG Press newsletter one of their forthcoming books is by a fifteen year old. I wonder how much she - or her parents - paid for the privilege of being a published author?
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The editorial reviews for the Purple Butterfly book feature quotes from "Grover", "Charlene", "Shirley", "Aretha" and "Charlene". Yes, her one-liner was repeated.
I checked out another book using the Look Inside feature, and it's a complete mess. This isn't something that can be salvaged with good copyediting alone.
I checked out another book using the Look Inside feature, and it's a complete mess. This isn't something that can be salvaged with good copyediting alone.
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Bugger. I was vaguely aware of this but the blind rage caused by copyright theft must have temporarily affected my memory!
QoS, 'Grover' is Cheryl's husband. He very generously provided glowing reviews for several AG Press books.
And poor old Angus and Duncan must be in desperate straits if they're drinking tea made from two tea leaves...
UPDATE: Pillsbury is also the VP/Publisher/Staff Writer of Poetic Monthly:
http://www.poetstage.com/pmissue/Issue81.pdf
The magazine is associated with the website of PublishAmerica poet Martin D White (Pillsbury’s poem Happy Birthday Mr Taylor Kitsch is apparently one of April’s Top 20 Winners).
One of AGP’s many ads in the magazine invites readers to pay $5 for
Please, please tell me this isn’t the the Jerry Adams book on successful marketing (itself plagiarized by Roval) referred to by Uncle Jim in posts 365 and 495 of this epic thread:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009448.html
But wait...what’s this? On page 40 of Poetic Monthly there’s a Preview from AG Press. Alongside a photo of the scrumptious Mr Taylor Kitsch as Gambit is the legend:
So the “books” Pillsbury referred to in her e-mail are in fact Gambit fanfic stories. I’m so disappointed.
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As of 4/16, site disabled "due to billing issues". Going by Amazon, last book pubbed April as well. Bookstore still up at: http://agpressbookstore.yolasite.com/