Entries Tagged 'Scams & Hoaxes' ↓

     Vampirates! (Kudos to author Justin Somper for thinking up the coolest concept ever).

But I don’t mean the sort of vampirates that roam the seas of Captain Somper’s imagination. I mean the ones that roam the world of publishing, leaving a trail of exsanguinated writers in their wake. We all know about poetry.com (note I do not include a hotlink to their site), where, as jb puts it, every kiddie wins a prize.

An AWMonline subscriber narrowly escaped the grasping talons of a publishing vampirate this week. In attempting to contact a reputable Australian literary agent online, with one slip of the keyboard they found themself (yes, I’m taking liberties with the singular they, but it’s so handily gender-neutral and anonymous) being lured down a dark alley towards a dastardly deal. Fortunately they kept their wits about them, and bolted once they realised the offer was all just too easy… like slipping into a dreamworld where a writer’s fond wish to be published can be made real in a blink, and for such a reasonable fee…

Just to be clear: austlit.com is highly reputable, but auslit.com (without the first "t") is a link farm that may direct you to places inhabited by fanged beasties in tricorn hats, (whereas austlit.edu.au is awesome). Check before you click, my friends, check before you click. It’s best to investigate the bona fides of any literary agent before dealing with them.

Fortunately, there are heroes are in our midst, brandishing long stakes carved from the planks of wisdom’s ghostships. Look up an agent’s code of practice at the Australian Literary Agents Association. Check the listings at Preditors & Editors. Follow the link in our blogroll to Writer Beware. Contact your local community legal centre. (Btw, QWC is still collecting your letters of support to assist the Arts Law Centre in getting an audience with the Queensland Premier to put their case).

I’ve also had recent cause to grrrrrrrrr at cybersquatters. Laws are developing to evict people who are maliciously profiteering by holding on to your perfect domain name, but the laws are just too complex (= expensive) for us mere mortals to implement.

Ever been bitten by a publishing vampirate? Step inside this candlelit room, sit upon our dusty velvet armchair, and tell us your tale…

According to Publisher’s Weekly, via Making Light, Indiana’s Attorney General has started suing a fraudulent publisher on behalf of the authors it ripped off. Airleaf Publishing, which also went by the name Bookman Marketing, has been accused of bilking 120 authors out of thousands of dollars, of "accepting payment from authors and not following through on its promises to provide book publishing, royalty reimbursement and promotional services". Writer Beware has the number of authors closer to 434, and they’ve been tracking Airleaf for years, noting complaints from writers about everything from email spam campaigns to substandard publishing and marketing serivices. According to the Writer Beware blog, Airleaf has finally been forced to close it’s doors, but unfortunately may have spawned similar enterprises run by ex-staff.

Australia doesn’t have quite the same problem with scam literary organisations as the US, where, if Writer Beware is anything to go by, it seems you can’t swing a novel without hitting a fraudster. I expect it’s partly because we don’t have the population to make schemes like that worthwhile, and also that since our literary industry is so small, word would travel too fast.

Not that we don’t have our share of shady operators. There are a few companies around operate as literary agencies and manuscript appraisal agencies. Maybe some of these places are perfectly legitimate, you have to ask yourself if it isn’t a conflict of interest. Why would someone work hard to sell your book to a publisher, when they can make more money off you with appraisal after appraisal? The same applies to businesses that offer agenting and publishing. Why on earth would they work to sell your book to a trade publisher, if they’re also running a self-publishing outfit and they’ve got you there on the hook?

You have to keep your eyes open. Do the research, and find a business that’s reputable. Check for past sales, or past products. If they’re an agent, have they sold any other books to trade publishers? If it’s a publishing outfit, are the books they’ve produced professionally done? Don’t be afraid to ask to see proof of their skills. Shop around and ask for quotes, compare prices. Ask your local writers’ centre whether they’ve heard anything bad. Look them up online, to see if anyone has ranted about a bad experience with the business you’re looking at.

It’s great when someone promises to publish your book, but try to look beyond the flattery at what you’re going to get for your money.

Reminiscent of the halcyon days of late 2005, when the James Frey and JT Leroy hoax stories broke within a few weeks of each other, two new hoaxes have come to light in the past few days, and we just couldn’t resist adding them to the blog.

Firstly, the story of a woman in America who claimed to run drugs for the infamous LA Bloods was denounced in the New York Times when the faux-author’s sister saw a NY Times article about the supposed gangbanger, rang the publisher and dobbed her in. Seltzer claims her book was based on the true stories of several people she knows, to which we respond, ‘that makes it NOT A MEMOIR.’

Second, 71-year-old Misha Defonseca has admitted that her 1997 Holocaust memoir, in which she claimed her parents were abducted by Nazis and she was raised by wolves, is fake. She now claims that her parents were Belgian resistance fighters who were killed by Nazis, and that the book contains her ‘emotional truth’. In a interesting bit of additional info, we found out she was awarded millions in damages a few years ago, from a lawsuit against her publisher for breach of contract. The breach involved marketing the book in America, but one has to wonder if the publisher has grounds to demand their $22.5 million back?

Anyway, these two come after a spate of falsies: James Frey, JT Leroy, and Norma Khouri in the memoir crowd, Kaavya Viswanathan in fiction. I’m sure there’s been others lately… The LA Times has a pretty good round-up of memorable literary hoaxes, and The Guardian’s published an older, more ‘literary’ set.

You have to wonder why people bother these days. With the internet, the massive circulation of information, the proliferation of interviews and photographs, the determination of hackers and investigatory websites like the Smoking Gun, and the bunches of folks with too much time on their hands and unlimited Broadband, wouldn’t you expect to get caught?

Also, why it’s pretty pointless to blame the publishers.

In a bizarre twist on all the author-fakes-life-story-and-or-plagiarises scandals that have popped up recently, journalist and foreign correspondant Robert Fisk has recently suffered a different kind of forgery. According to this article, a biography of Saddam Hussein was published in Egypt, naming him as the author. But he’s never written a biography of Saddam Hussein.

In the article, Fisk recounts the trip he took to Cairo to try and track down whoever was selling this book under his name, and it struck me that he didn’t seem particularly angered by the appropriation of his name. Perhaps it was just the article (all the expletives were edited out?), but I know I would find it really difficult to deal with this if I was in his position. Especially this:

[The book] took a very lenient view of the brutality of Saddam, it didn’t seem to care much about the gassed civilians of Halabja – and it was full of the kind of purple passages which I loathe.

Imagine it. The thougth makes me shudder.

The Australian newspaper has reportedly uncovered another case of an author stretching the truth and passing it off as fact.

The controversy centres around Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone. In the book Beah tells of his years spent fighting in the civil war from the age of 13. Investigations by The Australian alledge that Beah didn’t join the army until he was 15, meaning his account of his time as a refugee and then a solider was actually only 12 months, rather than the 3 years he suggests.

The book has sold more than 650,000 copies to date helped by a Starbucks promotional campaign and has been widely praised.

Beah and his US publisher are standing by the book, with Beah insisting in a letter to the editor of The Australian, "I am right about the dates. This is not something one gets wrong".

The acadamic who helped with the first draft, suggests that any flaws should be put down to poetic license: "If it turns out there are factual errors, I wouldn’t necessarily be all that concerned about it," said Professor Chaon of Ohio’s Oberlin College. "I don’t think the book is being presented as a piece of journalism. It’s being presented as a memoir."

It makes for interesting reading though with accusation and counter-accusation a-plenty. Read the original story from The Australian plus some international comment from The Guardian UK.

This week’s big story is Cassie Edwards, a romance writer who’s been accused of plagiarism. She’s allegedly lifted whole paragraphs out of various articles on nature, anthropology, and apparently a 1930s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Her publisher seems to be standing by her for the moment, but the Romance Writers of America looks pretty uneasy about the whole situation.

The best bit, I think, is that the whole story was brought to light in a fairly accidental way by some folks over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. It started in this post, and then there was this one, this one, and later this one. Now, the story has been picked up by the New York Times.

Apart from the obvious ethical considerations about plagiarism, and the irritation at how much money this woman has made off her novels, I’m actually more tempted to wax lyrical about the media involved. The original post on smartbitchestrashybooks.com went up on January 7, and the New York Times article is dated January 12. A whole five days between the first inklings of a story, and coverage in an internationally distributed newspaper. And now I’m blogging about it, here in Oz.

Of course, it could have been picked up just because a NYT staffer happened to be reading the blog on her lunch break, but I choose to see it as online communication at it’s finest.

There’s also something to be said here for accountability. With so much information so accessible all the time, it’s that much harder to get away with this sort of thing. Even ten years ago, Smartbitches probably couldn’t have Googled whole passages of Edwards’ books to see if they matched anything, and might not have made the effort to look further. Ethical enforcement like this is an interesting and perhaps unexpected benefit of online material. Yes, it makes plagiarism easier, but it makes it much, much easier to catch, too.