No, unfortunately. I'm remiss in not posting this sooner, but John Lewis is still active as
Park East Press. I started getting reports and complaints in early 2010.
Park East's fees are a bit lower--averaging $7,500-8,500--but the basic M.O. is the same. No fees are mentioned on the company's website; writers who approach Park East find out that money is involved only after interest has been expressed in their manuscript. The fees are (supposedly) not for publication, but for marketing.
The seriously non-standard contract is more or less the same one Oakley has been using all along; among other things, it relieves the publisher of any obligation to actually publish, and pays royalties on net profit. Also, despite the fact that authors are paying for marketing, the contract stipulates only that the publisher "may" perform "one or more" of a list of marketing activities. The entire contract is loaded with language that gets the publisher off the hook for pretty much everything.
- Victoria