Interesting situation

First off, I'm represented by Irene Kraas and the only reason THE NEXT STEP isn't being published is because it's not quite good enough. Steps are being taken to rectify that situation. EQUINE LIABILITY was published by a small start-up publisher with solid creditials in the publishing industry, sold its entire print run, made the equine book of the month club, cost me nothing to publish, and earned more than McDonald money for me. One copy of it sits in West Point's library and a few others are in other law libraries. Only reason we didn't do a reprint is because of the changing economic situation indicated future sales would not have been too good. A horse book during a depression is not the smartest business situation I can think of.

I told Victoria privately the web site, and she can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's run by a member of AW and does a solid job of policing itself. As much as I trust anything in this world, I'd trust this site. On the site, you can find agents listed by the genre's they represent. By going to the agent's name, if the agent has a web site, you can click a link to go to the agent's web site. And that's what I did.

We all do this, many times a day. Even in this thread are links to other web sites, that we all presume are reliable.

Now keeping this relatively simple, web sites have a domain name, which the owner of the site rents. You pay $X to use the domain name for Y period of time. The question becomes what happens when the rent isn't paid? You might get a notice that the site is "not found." If, however, the site is a good site, someone else buys the name and uses it.

Some kid show had this happen to them, and a porn site bought the name. And this is becoming an area of widespread internet legal actions. Celebs have had this happen to them, as well as other businesses.

In this case, the agent allowed the link to lapse, for whatever reason. The agent has a solid reputation and never has been anywhere near the bewares list. The agent has legitimate sales, and solid recommendations and could be on people's lists as an agent they want. And yeah, I checked. But the agent has been contacted about the problems and can deal with it. I'm not trying to be snotty here, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a private matter and privately dealt with.

But so from a legitimate web site, with a legitimate agent, with what appears to be a legitimate link, as good as any in this thread, I end up being phished. I'm now at a web site that doesn't have the agent's name, but has a form to fill out for sending in a query.

Now I'm not a trusting person. So normally I'd just have taken a pass, but I was curious to see what happened. And you can see the results.

If I was a trusting person, I would have been scammed. I don't know if this is a new technique in publishing. It most definitely is not a new technique for the internet. Among other places, eBay has had major problems with this type of scam.

As far as I'm concerned, listing names for scams is great for shutting the barn door after the horse left. Five years ago, lots of people did investing with Bernie Madoff. But the warning signs were there and people just didn't know them. The thing is, now that Bernie is enjoying his stay with the Feds, someone else has taken his place. Last I heard, in 2009, over 70 Ponzi schemes were busted by the Feds.

Now we're seeing an apparent rise in scams, whether out and out criminal or just questionable behavior. Best way to protect people is to show how these things work. This particular operation is a bit more fancy than some, but the techniques of a good scam are real simple and just about the same.

For the people who deal with scams, I know you've seen this stuff, over and over again. But for a lot of people, they've never seen how this unfolds. They think if they check the lists that they'll be safe. Yet I had a client who's "also known as" run onto a second page. Names and lists are nice, but seeing a scam unfold can help people as well.

But it's up to Mac and the mods whether I continue to publish this. I don't care. If you think it won't help the innocents to see this sort of stuff, that's fine.

And the only money I'll be sending anybody will only be useful when the person receiving it is playing Monopoly at a prison.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

IceCreamEmpress said:

Jim, have you shared the squatted-upon-by-Fletcher website with Victoria? Because that's really the key bit of information that would be helpful to others here.

Click to expand...

No, but the agent has solved that particular problem. The link no longer leads to the form.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Now personally this whole aspect bores me. And the only reason I did anything here was because of a minor level of annoyance that I felt like returning. I posted it here because I thought some of the weasel's answers would be entertaining. But because of the confusing, let me explain what I thought was more commonly known.

I don't understand the technical details here, nor do I care. When someone sets up a domain name on the internet, a place is created. And to hold that place, a placeholder is created. As near as I can tell, that placeholder exists forever.

Now before the site is launched, a placeholder for under construction exists. Depending on how your website goes down once it's been up, another placeholder will pop up. And when you decide you no longer want your website, a placeholder will go up.

When EQUINE LIABILITY came out, I decided I wanted a website. Seemed like it would generate some revenue (which it did for a while). As is frequently the case, I listed the link with various other websites. Further, people listed my website through links, such as other people have done in this thread. And on the back cover of EQUINE LIABILITY is my website.

So someone goes to one of these links -- www.equinelawonline.com -- or types it in from the back cover. Well, the thing is I stopped using the site years ago. But there's a place holder there. As happened with this agent, someone bought my domain name and in both cases is using it for advertising.

If you go to my website, however, you'll notice a very lawyerly looking gentleman to reassure you. Hell, I never looked that lawyerly even when I was doing a jury trial. There's nothing on the page to indicate that I'm not connected with it. If I'd bought the domain name to match my name, that's what would be appearing up top.

Absolutely nothing illegal in all this. But I have no connection with anything listed on this site, which is all advertisements. Now let's say an advertiser decides to post an ad that says "CONTACT ATTORNEY" or "CONTACT AGENT." With my website, your assumption would be that if you pressed that, you'd be in contact with me. With an agent, you'd expect that you'd be contacting the agent. But this is definitely a way of phishing someone.

Pressing the link on a very legitimate website can lead you to placeholders that you don't anticipate. Some people realize it quickly, others don't. If you press the button that says "CONTACT ATTORNEY" and an attorney responds (ignoring Bar Association considerations), there's nothing illegal about it, until that attorney represents to people that he's either me or acting under my direction. It's called "Buyer Beware."

As far as getting someone to stop, depends upon the situation. Mac uses advertisers to help pay the freight for this place. How fast do you think she'd discontinue someone when she found out the advertiser was being investigated by an attorney general, with the appropriate links? Even the guys who skirt the law don't want to deal with the ones who have been caught.

Hopefully this clarifies something that bores me and doesn't really matter to what I'm interested in doing.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

One thing I noticed was that the agent was willing to help with an unfinished manuscript. So while VENOM was getting set up for a computer file, I decided to seek help with another novel.

So I took STALLED DREAMS out of its trunk, where it belongs, and cut the end of it off. But that looked too short, so I took an opening that died within 10k of the start, and tacked it on the beginning of STALLED DREAMS, as it has the same character, and changed the names to the absolutely exciting HORSE PROBLEMS.

I sent it as an attachment to my new agent with the following message:

I'm working on getting VENOM to the great publisher you found for me. I found a computer glich and am working on fixing it.

But since you're my agent, I'm wondering if you could help me with the attached manuscript, as you said to send incomplete manuscripts. For some reason, I'm not able to make it work and I'm wondering if you might have some ideas. I answered your question down below.

Click to expand...

Let the games begin.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

It is an ad. That's why it's legal. It just doesn't look like an ad.

And an advertising company, unconnected to anyone in publishing as far as I can tell, bought the placeholder.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

CaoPaux said:

M'kay, now you've confused me.

Were you using listings or clicking on ads?

Click to expand...

I'm always confused.

I went to a site owned by one of the members of AW, where he or she has links to agents. I clicked on a link that appeared to be the agent's website. That link took me to a page somewhat similar to my equinelawonline site. There an advertisement that looked like a button said "CONTACT AGENT." I pressed that, leading to the form.

Less confused?

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

While waiting for the answer to my email from the agent (who obviously is different from the publisher ), I got the following advertising from the publisher. Mind you, at this point, I haven't sent the publisher anything other than an email saying the manuscript was going to be delayed.

We are sending you this email because we want you to see our commitment to the authors we have published. We do everything we can to market our authors and their books!
We sincerely want to publish your book and market it in the US and around the world.

Join us now and be ready for the London Bookshow.


We hope that your writing career is proceeding successfully, and that you will choose us for any of your publishing needs.

*******



One of the deals we are MOST PROUD OF, IS A DEAL TO SELL OUR AUTHORS' BOOKS IN CHINA.
Here is a page from our partner's catalog when they go to the Beijing Book Show this year.

At the world's largest book event, Book Expo USA, New York - xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Publishing exhibited their authors' work to an enthusiastic crowd and great success. To see pictures of our participation in the the event, please visit
http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com/

We had a dozen authors perform book signings and we are happy to say that none of the authors went home with any left over books! Deals were made and it was a great show!

http://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/sbm-frankfurt-2009.html shows our exhibit in Frankfurt where many relationships were built and deals are in process.

We plan to be there next year with more authors.. And we hope you are there with us!

Sincerely,

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx - Acquisitions Team

If you would like to speak with someone, please call xxxx at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Ps. You can trust that we will produce your book. OVER 1000 authors have published with us in the last few years. They can be viewed at www.xxxxx.com. If you sign up with us, we will deliver!

To see how we handle the production and marketing aspects of our business you might visit www.xxxxxxxxxx.com/ We are committed to efficiency.

To see more about our world class marketing company please visit www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com

Let us publish and market your book. Our marketing department is better than our competition!

***************************************
To get started, simply reply to this email and send us your work for evaluation.

If we like your work and your pitch there is no cost to publish your book. If we see that there is more risk than we are comfortable with, we will let you know and either decline to publish it, or try to find a middle ground and share the risk with you. We just don't know until we see your work and evaluate it.

Click to expand...

As seems to happen with the agent, and now the publisher, they actually send out two different emails at roughly the same time (within minutes of each other). I'll get to the other advertising in a bit. It's more interesting.


Best of luck,


Jim Clark-Dawe

And the following is the last of the canned messages that I've received to date. This is the marketing plan. WARNING: Reading this may induce vomiting.

**** You are receiving this email because you are a writer that queried the literary agency which is a sister company to our publishing company. If you sent us your work, then you have already received this email and we apologize for the duplication. Please ignore/delete it if that is the case. Your email is at the very bottom of this email for reference. ********

Would You Like to Know More About The Publishing Industry?
--------------------------------------------------------------
As a writer seeking to become published, we think that you might enjoy learning more about what a publishing company is doing (or should be doing) in today's rapidly changing environment.

The book marketing and publishing information below will be valuable to you no matter who you choose to publish with.

The following email is our "end of year" communication with our clients. It is being sent to our authors as we speak. As you consider working with us to publish your book, we think you will be suitably impressed by all of our activities on our authors' behalf.

Please send us your work if you have not. We are growing and our 1500+ published authors are succeeding! If you would like to send us your work, simply reply to this email and attach your work.

If we like your work and your pitch there is no cost to publish your book. If we see that there is more risk than we are comfortable with, we will let you know and either decline to publish it, or try to find a middle ground and share the risk with you. We just don't know until we see your work and evaluate it.

If you were to ask us, "why should I choose you?", our answer would be "we market for our authors better than anyone". See the info below.

-------------------------------

To: All Authors working with xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Re: 2009 and 2010; Here's To Our Mutual Success!

We are writing now to discuss the last year and to plan ahead with you for the new year. We plan to increase our communications with you and this letter will set the stage for that and explain a bit more about how we can help each other.

Looking Back at 2009
--------------------------------
Wow! What a topsy-turvy year for us and the book publishing industry.

We employ about 125 people in various capacities. We have employees all over the world, including the Philippines, Ecuador, India, and pretty much every state in the US. We hope you appreciate that we do answer every email within a couple of days and we do our best every day. Please keep that in mind as you either praise us or chastise us (smile). We are proud of our people and proud of the fact that most of our people stay with us for years. They like us and we like them. We like our authors and we hope that we will be working together for decades. We take the long-term view and we hope you do too.

Here are a few other statistics. We've published over 1,500 authors now. We've sold over 100,000 books and the number of books sold each month is rising nicely. (You CANNOT divide Authors/Books to get an average because most of our releases are quite new and they haven't hit the shelves yet).

We have a number of authors with sales over 1,000 books and their sales are climbing rapidly. We are averaging selling 2,500 books a week and that jumped to 6,500 in one of the Christmas weeks! We have a few books that are tracking on becoming New York Times bestsellers. We will keep you informed as those progress.

International expansion is going well. We have formed partnerships in Australia and China, and we are marketing around the world for our authors. We think China is going to be a "land grab," which means the first companies to get there will grab the gold so we will be at the Beijing book show in August. About one-third of our business and authors are international.

Looking Ahead at 2010
-----------------------------------------
The international expansion that you are hearing about is quite real. We have books on every imaginable subject and the international buyers love a "one-stop shop." We will be attending the big book shows in London, United States, Beijing, and Germany. We will be emailing you about those as we plan. It is only with your participation that we can go, and we appreciate your assistance more than you know.

Production - For those of you still in the "production" phase, we are committed to more constant communication. We are taking steps to increase our communications with you throughout the process. We are going to move to a "single point of contact" for your questions and we think that will help, too. If we could ask your assistance in any one area, it would be to be patient as we come out of the holidays.

*********************************
Book Marketing IS KEY!!!!!!!
*********************************
This is a quick overview about the marketing department and our philosophy.
The following ideas, products, and services are described more fully at www.xxxxxx.com.

We are very excited about a number of marketing initiatives that are rolling out. Here is a brief overview of all of the efforts we are putting forth on your behalf.

--------------------

In general there are two main focus areas for marketing,

1. Saturate the Internet
2. Find brick-and-mortar outlets

Amazon - We are going be really concentrating on being the best Amazon marketing and book publishing company in the world next year.

Author to Author Book Review Club - Book reviews are great to have and hard to get. Amazon book reviews are even more so. We are going to make it easy to facilitate book reviews between our clients. We want you to get an account in Amazon and to start playing around with the Amazon author community. We are almost going to be so bold as to say that Social Media is good, but Amazon Media is better. More on this later.

Library Ordering: This is guerilla marketing at it's finest. It is a little-known fact that if you, or a friend, go to a public library in the United States and ask for a book, they will order/buy it. If we can get even 500 of our books per month into the library system, that's a victory. Get your library card, get to know your librarian, and get him or her to order a
book for you.

Free Ideas: We continue to look for ways to help you that are free. "Help A Reporter Out" and Meetup are just two examples. Whenever we find a new book marketing idea, we will share it with you.

Article Submissions - If you can write an article about your industry, your book, your historical period, children's developmental cycles, etc., let us know. Anything that is of good quality, we want to post that for you.

Author Displays - If you have physical locations selling your book we can provide displays and more to help.

Author Posters and Printed Materials - we can add bookmarks, postcards, mailers, etc. to your marketing efforts.

Author Video Trailers - One more great way to saturate the Internet. We create wonderful author video trailers.

Blogging - Are you blogging? It's a great way to load the Internet. We have a wonderful, handholding system that we have built for authors who are intimidated by technology.

Book Signing - We will assist you with getting book signings. This is a tougher business than we thought it would be.

Coaching & Personal Assistant Services - If you are a busy person, it is cheaper for you to hire someone to market your book than to do it yourself. We see "personal assistants" for authors as a nice service for some authors.

Contacting Local Media: Get that press release out to your local media. This page on the SBM site has the links to find your local media.

Contests: Are you entering contests? You should be entering your writing into a couple each year.

Ebooks and Kindle: We have now produced about 50 or more Kindle books, and more and more ebook sites like www.xxxxxxxx.com. We are committed to staying on the leading edge of the ebook marketplace.

Electronic Press Kits (EPK): For those of you considering hiring a PR professional, the EPK is a great way to facilitate that work. The EPK is basically a press release on steroids.

Enhanced Author Websites - We think all authors should have as much presence as possible, and an enhanced Web site is a great way to market yourself and present yourself as an author. This is in addition to your existing “selling page” that we build for you.

Exhibits at Book Shows - This is one of our main initiatives. Join us in London, New York, Frankfurt, or Beijing. We are also willing to support our authors in local and regional shows by paying half the costs. Inquire if that is an option for you.

Google Alerts - One great way to get into communities that are discussing your genre.

Internet Radio - Another great way to reach people and saturate the Internet. Our radio announcer will interview you in a very professional manner.

Press Releases - Get your press release out. Enhance it to an EPK. You can't have too good of a press release.

Public Relations - Hiring a PR professional isn't for everyone, but nothing beats having a hired gun to work national and local media for you.

Recommended Marketing Books - Buy a book to sell your book! Are you reading about how to market your book? You should be. Please, buy at least one book every couple of months about how to market your book.

Search Engine Optimization - Do you have an enhanced Web site? If so, is it Search Engine Optimized?

Social Media - Are you active in at least one online community?

Book Reviews - Find other authors, review theirs if they review yours. Concentrate on Amazon reviews. Reviews help!

Whew! We are adding new marketing ideas every month. We LOVE finding new ways to help you market your work. And we love hearing your success stories, so keep them coming!

What Else Are We Working On?
---------------------------------------------
Shipping charges and Printing: Right now we both love and hate Print on Demand (POD) from Lightning Source / Ingram. We love it because it allows authors to get started without a huge investment in 500 books. We hate it because xxxxxxxx has a lock on the market and they too are experiencing their own growth pains. In general though, we expect shipping costs to decrease and their speed on filling orders to increase. We should see better response times in 2010.

Printing in Australia and China: We are very close to partnering with a printing facility in Australia to cut down on shipping costs. We are also finalizing a deal to print large quantities of books in China.

Online Royalty System: This system is getting better and more timely. Right now we see a 30-day lag on some data input. We are squeezing that down with the addition of some Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) programmers that we have hired. Here is the link to the Royalty database. It takes about 30 days to update, so if you know there is a sale, but you don't see it there, then that's why. If you don't remember your login instructions, there is a link to get help. (IF YOUR BOOK IS NOT RELEASED THEN YOUR BOOK IS NOT IN THE ROYALTY SYSTEM, so please don't ask why you can't see your book).

Book Stores: We continue to work to get our authors into the chain bookstores. Ultimately, the decision about whether to carry your book at the store boils down to an overworked manager. Some are nice, some are accommodating, and some are downright rude. Keep in mind that a “no” is just a lazy objection. We overcome them all the time, so don't consider the “no” as a final answer about whether a store or a chain will carry your book.

And of course, 2010 will include more marketing, marketing, and marketing!

Conclusion:
---------------
What can you do? Here are a few suggestions about what you can do right now, regardless of where your book is in the publishing process. (Some of these ideas will not apply to our international authors and those authors still in production).

* Be sure you have an Amazon account. This means you must buy one thing. Start making reviews of everything you read. The more reviews you have, the more weight your reviews will carry. We will be rolling out something called the "Amazon Author To Author Book Review Club." Start posting in discussion forums. We will have more on this later.

* Get your library card. Get a librarian to order your book. Then go to www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com and find another book you want and get them to order that. Try to ask for one book a month. If you order books from our authors, they will order your books.

* Buy a book about how to market your book. Choose one idea and go with it.

* Become ACTIVE in at least one social media community. Amazon, Goodreads, or Shelfari are great ones.

* As you drive around, look for smaller retail stores that might carry your work. We can help you get setup with them on consignment basis.

* Get more press about yourself. "Local Author" is always good filler for media. Don’t be afraid to stop into a bookstore, or a unique store and ask them to carry your book on consignment. That's a no-risk way to test the market.

Once again, we look forward to our mutual success.

The Strategic & Eloquent team

And ps.. This email recently floated in from one of our authors. We think it nicely presents what we love to hear and the type of authors that we have emailing us every day.

Dear Strategic:

I'd like to thank you and everyone at xxxxxxxx for making my dream reality, for publishing xxxxxxxxx. 2009 has been a stunningly momentous year for me as a writer and I appreciate the risk that your organization has taken with me as an unknown writer with my work. I have been really pleased with the production, distribution and support for the first xxxxxxxxxx book. It's on sale all over the planet from Italy to India, Seattle to Settle. And it is selling, my local book store in Seattle, sold out his stock and has sold out his re order! I know the numbers are still small but the trend is positive.

This month I embarked on school visits in the north of England to promote the book, and the number of confirmed vests for January is fifteen so far! In January and February I'm going to give readings to youth groups. The book is going into libraries too. In the last month I've contacted independent book stores by the dozen and in the new year we will be writing to every single Waterstone's book store in the UK. I've done local and regional newspaper interviews and photo shoots and have two regional radio interviews lined up for January too.

There are positive reviews going onto online book stores around the globe as well.

I'd love to submit the second xxxxxxxxxx book, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx direct to xxxxxxxxx and see book number two published and on sale. Are xxxxxxxx interested in the second book and if so what kind of contract can we look at? Who should I submit the manuscript to?

Finally, I'd like to thank you for everything this year, especially for your patience and for resolving almost everything!

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

-------------
Conclusion: We hope you enjoyed reading our internal communications with the proud authors that we represent. Please join our team. We will do our best for you and your book.

If you like what you have seen, please email us your work for evaluation. You can just reply to this email and attach your work.

If we like your work and your pitch there is no cost to publish your book. If we see that there is more risk than we are comfortable with, we will let you know and either decline to publish it, or try to find a middle ground and share the risk with you. We just don't know until we see your work and evaluate it.

Click to expand...

Best of luck,


Jim Clark-Dawe

It's always interesting in these types of situations seeing where the answers to questions go. To my request for help on the incomplete manuscript HORSE PROBLEMS, I received the following:

Sorry, but we can only work with 1 submission at a time so you will have to hold onto this for now

Click to expand...

Of course, the agent isn't doing any work on the manuscript, as that's at the publisher, which has been described as separate, although a sister entity, whatever that means.

But I sent the following response:

How long do I need to hold onto this? Until VENOM is accepted for publication? Hopefully it's sooner because I'd really like to have HORSE PROBLEMS ready and able to go to follow up on the success of VENOM.

Please let me know when I can send it to you.

Click to expand...

And the games continue.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe