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Publish America suing Preditors and Editors

Started by Ed, March 02, 2008, 01:44:23 PM

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Ed

Strange as it may seem, Victor E. Cretella, a lawyer of the oft discredited and seemingly irredeemable (IMO) publishing industry joke, Publish America, is suing Preditors and Editors for, as far as I can see, telling the truth. To help stop P&E being gagged, please donate to the defence fund:

QuoteUnfortunately, there are those who do not like P&E or its editor because we give out information that they would prefer remain hidden from writers. Usually, they slink away, but not this time. P&E is being sued and we are asking for donations to mount a legal defense in court. Please click on the link below and give if you can to help protect P&E so it can continue to defend writers as it has for the past eleven years.

QuoteOkay, just to further clarify matters. P&E is being sued by Barbara Bauer and by Victor E. Cretella, III, Esq. in two separate courts.

Ms. Bauer is a literary agent who alleges I/P&E called her a scam and a scammer and is suing for libel.

Mr. Cretella is an attorney for PublishAmerica. He alleges I/P&E harmed his reputation by reporting him to the Maryland State Bar Association and his former employer for his actions against a member of Absolute Write and is suing for libel.

If anyone needs the code, you can email me and I'll email back the code needed for pasting the button on your site.

In the meantime, the link for the page with the donation button is http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/penulist.htm. Our mirror site at http://www.invirtuo.cc/prededitors also has the button.


Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Geoff_N

It gets weirder. I believe it is David L. Kuzminski who is being sued at Preditors & Editors. I often exchanged emails with him over various literary agent scam shams especially the Christopher Hill scandal that affected me. (I still run a forum for 50 former clients of CH) Dave K was active at http://www.speculations.com where I and Robert Blevins were very active among many other science fiction and fantasy writers. Today it closed! The reason is given by its creator, Kent Brewster, who helped me with my website, but I don't believe his reasons.

What is the world coming to?

Geoff

Ed

So why did Speculations close, Geoff? That place had a pretty big forum, didn't it? Strange :scratch:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

canadian

Pretty sad that 'free speech' is being frightened off by legal threats, isn't it?
If people stand in a circle long enough, they will eventually begin to dance. -- George Carlin

Geoff_N

#4
Officially, Speculations has 'temporarily' closed because Kent reckons he couldn't cope with so much spam. You can read his reasons here
http://www.speculations.com/

I don't believe it because months ago he'd set up a spam detection and diversion code, which we saw worked very well. Also it was a self-regulating forum such that we could vote on posts to count them as spam or offensive etc, and when a threshold score was reached it was hidden. Like many forums there were hundreds of members including some very responsible folk such as our own Robert Blevins. (SallyQ too, but no so active I think). It was a great place to promote and discuss our books and magazines.

I think the reason for its closure relates to Publish America. You all remember Atlanta Nights? It was Speculations members who consipired to compile that excellent trojan horse that PA fell for and published. The PA thread at Specs was quite active, but in my opinion quite balanced - there were PA authors defending PA as well as legal and other experts. Many PA experiences came to light in that thread, much of which was handy grist for Dave K to use in his defence of the legal action. Having said that perhaps it was too useful and Dave along with Kent Brewster, who own Specs, decided the revelations on Specs could jeopardise his court defence in some way.

I'll ask Robert to pop in later with his take on it. He's probably sleeping in Seattle :)

Geoff

Ed

Ah, thanks for filling in the blanks, Geoff - I had a look at that page yesterday and he doesn't appear to give any reasons there. As you say, it may well have something to do with the whole Atlanta Nights thing. That was amazingly funny, BTW. :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

neilmarr

Sad that the brouhaha isn't about PA's basic swill trough itself but about side issues. By the way, Geoff (***You all remember Atlanta Nights? It was Speculations members who consipired to compile that excellent trojan horse that PA fell for and published***) PA pulled out of the contract on AN when the scam/test was exposed in the Washington Post. The book was actually published through 'Lulu' and -- with all the publicity -- was among its best-sellers for some time. Neil

Sallyq

I was sent a novel 'published' at PA a few months ago. I have to be careful what I say here, though the writer doesn't move in these circles, but I know, even as a layperson, that it would never ever have found a mainstream publisher. It was really quite atrocious, and the subject matter would have been hilarious had it not been so disturbing. If anyone wants to know pm me and I'll tell you all about it but I daren't describe it here.

I am/was at Speculations but I always found it hard to get around as there was no central forum (that I ever found). Didn't Kent disappear for a long time a few years back?

It is sad that PA are having a go at Preditors, and Speculations though. Those organisations obviously won't have the money behind them to fight a big libel suit, whereas PA are rich off the backs of all writers. Oops, sorry Ed. Expect the writ in the post any day now. :D

Geoff_N

This is a list of some of those being sued by PA in the one action (there is another against P&E by a literary agent (so called).
ANN C. CRISPIN
CHRISTINA WALDEN
DAVID L. KUZMINSKI
JAMES D. MACDONALD
JENNA GLATZER
KENT BREWSTER
LESIA VALENTINE
MACALLIST E. STONE
MISS SNARK LITERARY AGENT
PATRICK NIELSEN-HAYDEN
SCIENCE FICTN/FW OF AM INC
SHWETA NARAYAN
STEPHAN SPENCER
TERESA NIELSEN-HAYDEN
THOMAS S. TULLY
VICTORIA C. STRAUSS
WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

Most folk involved in writing speculative fiction for the last few years will know most of those names and know them as fighters for the truth and honesty in this business.

If the case isn't laughed out of court there's no justice.

Geoff

Geoff_N

Sally Q said: "Didn't Kent disappear for a long time a few years back?"

He is the senior programmer for Yahoo.com and so is distracted for long perios from his hobby that was Speculations. The Rumor Mill was the forum part of Speculations and like this forum was split into the usual writers' threads - Markets, Ask the Expert, Accept/Rejections etc and we all had our own pages on which we could blow our own trumpets and of others.

Sorely missed

Geoff

delph_ambi

I... am... Spartacus.

By which I mean, not everything published by PA is a total load of shite. If you don't believe me, buy 'The Sand in the Painting' by Catherine Edmunds. Yes, I know that's shameless self-promotion, but why not? All publicity is good publicity  :cheesy:

Ed

It not being a total load of shite probably had more to do with your input than theirs, Cathy. You hear of some stuff they publish being full of errors and very poorly turned out (crap in, crap out), so the bad stuff ends up tarring everything with the same brush, that's one of the biggest problems with them, I think.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Geoff_N

I have met other PA authors. Most of them regret going to PA. And often it was early in their search for a publisher before knowing much about PA. There are some who say they've enjoyed their PA experience, and good luck to them. As Ed says, we know you are a good writer so you presented PA with the gift of a well-presented product. Did their editors do any work on it?

I remember your novel because I'd had a crime short published by Shots Mag called Fake Fake. It's based on the true incident about a painting by Van Gogh entitled The Sea at Scheveningen, painted in 1882, and then stolen in December 2002. Van Gogh painted it in situ on a windy day. Consequently, sand was embedded in the oil paint. I used that fact as part of the authentication of the painting in my story. Great coincidence that we both hitched into that idea for our stories  :cool:

Geoff

Geoff_N

I was wondering why so few people have raised hackles on this site over this scandal, but then realized it is inside the closed crit area? Is there a reason for this, Ed. Shouldn't it have been in the Lifes a Bitch thread for others to see? Can it be moved there?

Ed

No - it's just our old friend General Apathy (atteng-hun!), Geoff. Only parts of this part of the forum are closed to outsiders. This bit is open. I checked, to be sure, by logging out and seeing if I could get into it, and I could. :smiley:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]