Thugs and fallout

[pecunium]

It's a sad fact of life that there are people in the world who prey on others.

Some are honest thieves, they threaten you and take things. Others break into your house and take things.

Then there are the con-men, who exploit people's greed. Con artists console themselves with the idea that honest people can't be taken.

But there are also scam artists, those who prey on people who are ignorant, and vulnerable. My family owns a used bookstore. I've been active, more and less, in science-fiction fandom for almost 30 years. A number of my friends are writers, some are even authors. In the course of years I've seen (and heard about) a number of publishing scams.

They are, if one knows what's up, easy to avoid, because they violate, Yog's Law, "Money flows too the author." It really is that simple. If money is supposed to come from the author, it's a scam.

Which is not to say all "vanity press" is illegitimate. There are reasons to use one. Most people don't care about the "X" family history. Which means it's not likely to be something a publisher will pick up.

If you want a whole lot more details about how bad vanity presses work, you can find them at Making Light and here are some places to get started.

Follow the money

Yet another variant

The power of the press, sort of

For a rundown of various things to look out for, Writer Beware by Victoria Strauss is a good start.

So, to bring this to some sort of point, there are a fair number of people out there looking to keep would be authors from falling for such scams. Not only is shelling out thousands of dollars to get a book which isn't likely to ba salable, no matter it's merits, something to keep people from doing, it has the effect of probably causing a number of people who might get sold to never get sold.

A few weeks back the list of the 20 worst agents was published at Writer's Beware (the link is to Miss Snark) and blossomed around the web. One of the people listed, Barbara Bauer, got her knickers in a twist (to the point that someone else sent Miss Snark a note tellinh her she might not want to link to it, because there was a group of "agents" putting together a class action libel suit... Hunh?)

One of the places which republished that list was a BBS, Absolute Write. I can't link to it because it's gone. Barbara Bauer got their ISP to pull it by threatending all sorts of dire things (most, if not all of which, were misreprentations of the law).

The site is being reconstructed but the ISP is refusing to surrender the databases (which is where we finally come to the point of this whole thing).

Absolute Write needs money. This is already using lawyers, and may end up in court.

So if you 1: Dislike bullies.
2: Think that people who scam others ought not to be rewarded for being bullies
3: Would like to help see that such things as this aren't encouraged

Stroll on over here and click the paypal button.

For a more detailed rundown on all of this Teresa has a detailed rundonwn, with more links.

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