[size=-1]In November, the trade journal Publishers Weekly reported that more than 100 disenchanted PublishAmerica authors — science fiction writers among them — had begun a campaign to expose what they see as the firm's failings.[/size]
[size=-1]Last month, the Associated Press and the Washington Post explored some of the complaints, which the Frederick, Md., company dismissed as the grumblings of a handful of dissatisfied authors.[/size]
[size=-1]PublishAmerica officials did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for an interview.[/size]
[size=-1]"They are the biggest and most obnoxious … author mills of them all — and one of the most successful, I imagine," said Ann C. Crispin, chair of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Committee on Writing Scams.[/size]
[size=-1]But for the sci-fi and fantasy writers, the bigger outrage was PublishAmerica's insulting tone on its Authorsmarket.net website, which the authors took as a playground taunt. The door to revenge, they concluded in discussions on an Absolute write.com bulletin board, was to test exactly how "picky" PublishAmerica would be about a manuscript.[/size]
[size=-1]The muse struck like a stomach flu. Up came "Atlanta Nights," by Travis Tea, the author's name a phonetic giveaway.[/size]
[size=-1]"We decided to see how bad a book we can write and see if they'd accept it," Macdonald said. "Over Martin Luther King Day weekend a year ago I put out the call for volunteers, and about 30 writers said, 'Sure, I'd do that.' "[/size]
[size=-1]Macdonald outlined the premise: "Bruce Lucent makes hamburgers for Penelope Urbain as Isidore arrives. And I gave them little sketches of each of the characters. Bruce is a 20-something software developer. Isidore has red hair and a ponytail. Penelope Urbain is really stacked."[/size]
[size=-1]Each writer committed to a chapter, and some did two. The style was to be "modern," undefined further, set in Atlanta, and none of the authors knew what the others were writing or even where in the book a chapter would fall.[/size]
[size=-1]And they were to write as badly as they could muster.[/size]
[size=-1]"I thought, 'I can spare 20 minutes to ram out some God-awful piece of tripe,' " said young adult author Sherwood Smith, 53, a teacher at the private Carden Conservatory in Huntington Beach and ghost author of Chapter 1. "I just tried to think of every mistake new writers ever make…. Mine really does look like what a clueless newbie would do."[/size]
[size=-1]American literature might never recover.[/size]
[size=-1]"It's like the 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' of novels," Macdonald said. "Some of the chapters are hard-boiled detective [style], some are women's sexy shopping novels. There's a little bit of horror. It changes from chapter to chapter. Which characters were in which chapter was determined by rolling dice."[/size]
[size=-1]To further test PublishAmerica's standards, Macdonald, who compiled the book, left Chapter 21 blank because one writer missed deadline. He included another chapter twice. And he took portions of two other chapters, ran them through a software program that randomly reordered the words, then accepted all the spell check and grammar fixes his software recommended.[/size]
[size=-1]The result is Chapter 34, nine pages of disconnected gibberish that begins: "Bruce walked around any more. Some people might ought to her practiced eye, at her. I am so silky and braid shoulders. At sixty-six, men with a few feet away from their languid gazes."[/size]
[size=-1]Macdonald found a friend unknown in the publishing business to submit the manuscript, and then waited. On Dec. 7, the acceptance letter came. "PublishAmerica has decided to give 'Atlanta Nights' the chance it deserves," it reads. A contract followed, which the hoaxsters decided not to sign after a lawyer advised it could lead to a fraud complaint. Instead, they confessed the hoax on a writers website. The next day, Macdonald's friend received an e-mail from PublishAmerica rescinding the contract, with a wink that they'd caught on.
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