The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

Status
Not open for further replies.

Duncan J Macdonald

Plotting! Not Plodding!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
1,882
Reaction score
455
Age
66
Location
Northern Virginia
AnneMarble said:
You go, Dave!

BTW is anyone familiar with Kevin Ahearn (the guy below your letter)?
Is this the agent Kevin Ahearn, who is with "NY Creative Management"? The guy who wrote an article about is experiences as an agent that was published at Bewildering Stories? http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue89/ahearn_letter.html
Checking Google for NetPub (part of Kevin's signature line) shows the same address that he gives. If so, then he currently works for a vanity press. NetPub's vanity imprint seems to be Hudson House Publishing. See www.hudsonhousepub.com
 

Sher2

Auroraless ExPAtriate
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
1,400
Reaction score
396
Website
freewebs.com
Sheryl Nantus said:
"Nevertheless, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy group calling itself "Travis Tea" are trying to get whatever mileage they can out of this. They are trying to get people to buy their bad book. They are trying to call attention to their "exposé" of the wicked PA. And now, because they apparently have more time than talent, they are trying to embarrass PA by posting stupid, bad reviews of its authors on Amazon.com. This last shows the moral character that they have (or lack), because it is rude and unprofessional to attack a fellow writer. Constructive criticism regarding art is one thing, but these are personal attacks aimed, not at the writer's product, but at the writer's publisher, of all things! I find it hard to believe the SFWA, as a professional organization, continues to allow this to happen in its name.

Another thing: If you look at "Travis Tea"'s other reviews, every last one of them contains a slam against PA and a plea for people to buy this "Atlanta Nights."


wonder how long this'll stay up.

Probably not too long now. It would be a community service if someone who isn't banned from PA's boards could post a clue about who this travesty of Travis Tea actually is. :tongue
 

Ed Williams

Banned
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
1,079
Reaction score
686
Age
67
Location
Georgia
Website
www.ed-williams.com
The PA authors who are talking about Mr. Tea...

...either have not fully researched the entire story behind "Atlanta Nights," or else they are in full fledged denial. And then some...
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
If Mr. Ahearn were familiar with publishing, he would know that SF/F accounts for around 11% of the market (and has, consistently, for years). He would also recognize some of the names associated with the hoax.

I wonder... you know, I'm not familiar with any books sold by, or authors represented by, NY Creative Managment. Probably working at too rarified a level for me....

So yes, Mr. Ahearn, perhaps you ought to worry that someday a sting manuscript will land in your mailbox.

Meanwhile, I had a chance to talk today with the manager of one of the major independent bookstores in Connecticut. She told me that she gets two or three calls or visits per week from PublishAmerica authors ... and she's fully aware that PA is a vanity press and treats their books as such.
 

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,922
Reaction score
3,044
Location
MD
Website
gorokandwulf.blogspot.com
Duncan J Macdonald said:
Checking Google for NetPub (part of Kevin's signature line) shows the same address that he gives. If so, then he currently works for a vanity press. NetPub's vanity imprint seems to be Hudson House Publishing. See [url="http://www.hudsonhousepub.com"]www.hudsonhousepub.com[/url]

Ack, that is the same guy. I just thought of checking the e-mail address on the letter to the editor. Duh, Anne! And I guess that explains why he said "Having worked in the "vanity" and "real" realms of the kingdom for quite a while..." in his letter. Double Duh, Anne!

I wonder if his opinions on SF novels are based on his experience in vanity publishing? Isn't that like basing your opinions of landscapes on visits to one of those "Starving Artist" sales in the Holiday Inn?

Anyway, he's obviously not very good with research if he didn't know whether or not any of the SF authors in the book had made a dent in "the 'real' publishing market."
 

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,922
Reaction score
3,044
Location
MD
Website
gorokandwulf.blogspot.com
Kevin Ahearn and NYC Creative Management

James D. Macdonald said:
If Mr. Ahearn were familiar with publishing, he would know that SF/F accounts for around 11% of the market (and has, consistently, for years). He would also recognize some of the names associated with the hoax.

If he were familiar with publishing, he wouldn't toss around phrases like "Technology has revolutionized the publishing business." :sleepy: Heck, if he were familiar with technology, he might have, oh I don't know, looked them up on Amazon or Google?

James D. Macdonald said:
I wonder... you know, I'm not familiar with any books sold by, or authors represented by, NY Creative Managment. Probably working at too rarified a level for me....

I think they're too busy trying to "the embodiment of an entirely new concept in literary business" to actually make many sales. For example, on their site, they say "In addition to the agency's active promotion of clients' manuscripts, our website provides a forum for submitting and displaying works as well as showing available properties for purchase." Wow. They've managed to combine a display site with a literary agency. They've got smoked salmon in my peanut butter. :wag:

James D. Macdonald said:
So yes, Mr. Ahearn, perhaps you ought to worry that someday a sting manuscript will land in your mailbox.....

I hope that one will be available on Lulu.com as well.

I have a couple of novels I wrote in high school that could probably qualify as sting manuscripts, except that they were written in wire-bound notebooks. If they had been typed, I might have sent them to certain publishers just to see the result. ;)
 

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,922
Reaction score
3,044
Location
MD
Website
gorokandwulf.blogspot.com
Sheryl Nantus said:
wonder how long this'll stay up.

So far, it's still up, and it has responses.

How long will it take people to figure out that the Amazon Travis Tea is not the same "person" as the nonexistent person on the cover of Atlanta Nights?! Think about it! How could more than 30 writers be posting nasty reviews on Amazon? What? Do they all visit one person's home, crowd around the computer, and each write three words of the nasty reviews?

By the way, in one of the responses, someone said, "First of all, I think it speaks poorly of writers who would write badly on purpose." Obviously he has never heard of the Bulwer-Lytton conest: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
 

mdin

The late, the great XThe NavigatorX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,376
Reaction score
539
Location
Seattle, WA
Website
www.mattdinniman.com
An investigative reporter in their midst

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/7916.htm

It never ceases to amaze me how people will ignore facts that don't suit them but will still point to the same source and treat certain passages as scripture. So now, there isn't one Amazon Slammer. It's a shadow wing of the SFWA.

I can just see them now. Robin Hobb sitting in a dark room, wearing a Harry Potter hat, and laughing manically as she posts yet another bad review.
 

DeadlyAccurate

Absolutely Fazed
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
2,536
Reaction score
522
Location
Fort Worth, Texas
Website
www.carlaharker.com
Sheryl Nantus said:
http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/7916.htm

Message:
I took a look at this "Travis Tea" and the book, "Atlanta Nights," through Google, and it took me to the Lulu.com website. Lulu is a POD that publishes books for free using POD technology, and charges for "special" items, such as cover art, hardcovers, etc. (Please don't mistake this for criticism of Lulu, as I believe if a book is good, it deserves to be published and there happen to be many avenues to that end, running the gamut from whopping-advance publishers to do-it-yourself vanities.)

<middle cut to keep quote from being too much bigger than response>

Chins up and pens poised!
**********
:rolleyes:

obviously none of these people read the paper...

wonder how long this'll stay up.

Message:
Good job, Kim
Thanks for the information..always need to know the enemy...

::sigh::


P.S. I found out I have a relative who has a book on PA, but she's aware of their problems and has found an agent and is trying to sell her book through the traditional route. I hope she's able to get her book out of PA's grasp.
 

T42

Herb Lady
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
1,112
Reaction score
371
Location
TEXAS
Website
p097.ezboard.com
Chris,
I was just wondering if #30 applies if they have the post office address as the return address? Since my contract was sent from that address or at least listed as the address will it count? Get my drift?
I will check back in the morning:)
Night all...
 

DeadlyAccurate

Absolutely Fazed
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
2,536
Reaction score
522
Location
Fort Worth, Texas
Website
www.carlaharker.com
XThe NavigatorX said:
I can just see them now. Robin Hobb sitting in a dark room, wearing a Harry Potter hat, and laughing manically as she posts yet another bad review.

Did Robin Hobb contribute to Atlanta Nights? If so, what chapter(s)? She is, without a doubt, my favorite fantasy writer. Fool's Fate was the only book I ever ordered in hardback from England, because I couldn't wait for its release here.
 

JennaGlatzer

wishes you happiness
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 9, 2005
Messages
9,703
Reaction score
3,460
Website
www.jennaglatzer.com
Dear Fake Travis Tea

I know who you are.

You are so misguided. What you're doing helps NO ONE, especially you. Lashing out at PA authors is not just wrong, it's asinine. Pretending you're Travis Tea is a blatant attempt to polarize this and make PA'ers believe that we hate them and want to see their books fail.

It's gone too far.

Remove all your reviews by tomorrow or I will soon make sure that everyone else knows who you are, too.

Note to all: this is NOT someone who is welcome here in any way, and not a PA principal or PA booster. This IS someone who desperately needs a psychiatrist.

--
Chris, your "reviews" of PA books are no better. Don't lose track of the goal. I can't support you here if you do things like that.
 
Last edited:

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
Anne mentioned one of my favorite publishing activities—the Bulwer-Lytton contest. Perhaps I like it too much, as perhaps the following quotation from my blawg, Scrivener's Error, last summer, tends to show.

In the midst of a dark and stormy afternoon on the seemingly endless prairies of Central Illinois, which in reality extend only to the nearest Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, the intrepid blawgger gazed longingly at his computer display — which, despite all of its component semiconductors' aspirations, was not a product of the HAL plant so thoughtfully located a couple of blocks away in a famous science fiction novel — and hoped that, unlike this year, the Bulwer-Lytton contest would in the foreseeable future include a category for reflexive sentences, or legal writing, or perhaps — just perhaps — self-parody, and thereby bring enlightenment to generations of law students to come, particularly those unsuspecting souls embarking upon a career in the law who somehow — after three years of law school — remain under the misapprehension that lawyers can write simple, declarative sentences in English without once including a word derived from Latin, French, or any other dead or moribund language; nor including multiple dependent clauses; nor relating to or arising from a patent application; nor including qualifiers that render the simple declaration at the heart of the sentence either merely ambiguous or an exercise in covering the writer's arse in the event of future litigation or nomination hearings in the Senate; nor, in the worst case, referring to any previously specified thing or person using the term "said."
What's really frightening is that I tossed that off in about two minutes under the influence of various muscle relaxants.

Oh. Another thing. Unlike too many PA books, the grammar is correct… even in my second language. (If you don't have the patience for the verb to wait, you should not my native language attempt to read.)
 
Last edited:

mdin

The late, the great XThe NavigatorX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,376
Reaction score
539
Location
Seattle, WA
Website
www.mattdinniman.com
DeadlyAccurate said:
Did Robin Hobb contribute to Atlanta Nights? If so, what chapter(s)? She is, without a doubt, my favorite fantasy writer. Fool's Fate was the only book I ever ordered in hardback from England, because I couldn't wait for its release here.

I'm a huge fan also.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Nights <--- lists the Atlanta
Nights authors.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
Since it needs to be said:

The point of Atlanta Nights was to see if PublishAmerica would offer a contract to anything they got, no matter how badly written.

The experiment was successful: They would.

It was necessary to make the text public, to show the world that the text was as truly wretched as we claimed. It's available for a fee, because the printer requires money to pay for the paper. It's also available many places (including, but not limited to, www.embiid.net) for free.

Ask yourself if you want your book, that you worked on so long and hard, to appear in the catalog of a company that will offer a contract to something as bad as Atlanta Nights. If your answer is "yes," so be it.

We are not your enemy. Your enemy is your publisher, the ones who lied to you about how "picky" they are, the ones who imply that they care about quality. They're the ones who are keeping you out of bookstores with their policies.

The person posting the false reviews on Amazon has nothing whatever to do with the merry pranksters who hoaxed PA.

===============

For our friends at PA who are looking for more information on Atlanta Nights, see this link.
 
Last edited:

lucyishome

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
124
Reaction score
47
Location
Oregon
What a kick to read the posts by the fake Travis. I always enjoy a good laugh :roll: .I am thinking he is definately a little :crazy:

Anne
 

reph

Fig of authority
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
5,160
Reaction score
971
Location
On a fig tree, presumably
Bulwer-Lytton

Aw, shucks, guys. Thanks for the publicity, but now anyone who doesn't like something I post can find me.

Hello, PA? Are you watching? I've never sent you any manuscripts! Really! Not so much as a page, not a single solitary paragraph! You don't need to take extra time to read anything on my account. Or shred anything.
 
Last edited:

reph

Fig of authority
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
5,160
Reaction score
971
Location
On a fig tree, presumably
Some posts in this thread imply that more test manuscripts, on the order of Atlanta Nights, lurk in PA's pipeline. Suppose PA accepts such a manuscript and the acceptance is offered as evidence that PA has no editorial standards. What can PA say in its defense: "We thought this was a fine book. Look here, an independent panel of experts says it's as good as these 10 (or 20 or 100) books we published last year"? Wouldn't that be embarrassing?
 

Ed Williams

Banned
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
1,079
Reaction score
686
Age
67
Location
Georgia
Website
www.ed-williams.com
I think the fake "Travis"....

....needs somebody to put their shoe up his or her heiny just as far as it can go. Deliberately slamming anyone's books for the sheer sake of doing so is wrong, simply wrong. I despise PA, but I would never advocate taking it out on their authors - they have huge obstacles sitting out in front of them anyway, and for someone to do something like this is simply disgusting. PA will gain sympathy from actions like these, not be taken down, whoever you are, wise up! I sincerely hope that it's not someone from our boards who's responsible, and I don't think that's the case - if it proves out otherwise, they need to be banned forever, as our stance on something like this should be uncompromising.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.