"F" is for today's word -- False.
A lot of false information goes around the Internet every day. How is one to know what is false and what is true? There is no pat answer. It's just ... hard. I suppose the simplest rule of thumb is, use your common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If it sounds too bizarre to be true, it could go either way. If someone is hollering with too much (self)righteous indignation about something, protesting their innocence waaaay too loudly, chances are pretty good that they have something to hide.
The best defense to an offense, real or perceived, is a classy silence. Or a brief, carefully worded rejoinder if you simply can't hold your tongue.
And how does the "F" word apply to PublishAmerica? Oh, let me count the ways.
False, misleading, and deliberately deceptive advertising -- weasel wording -- rules PublishAmerica's Web site. They will tell you they will but they do not:
- Carefully consider all submissions and reject the trash
- Market/promote/support authors
- Lift a finger to distribute books to retail outlets
- Maintain a professional, one-on-one relationship with authors
- Answer authors' questions in a forthright, professional fashion
- Competitively price books
- Offer an industry-standard discount to retailers
- Have any intention of selling books to the public on any scale over and above the names on the lists provided to PublishAmerica by authors
- Have any type of rescission clause built into their weasel-worded contract -- 7-YEAR contracts
Try to get a straight answer out of this outfit and you, too, may receive one of those amazing "tone letters" accusing you of being in the throes of a dramatic escapade. You might possibly feel just a little better about it if you consider whence the snotty tone missives come. Find your handy-dandy list of PublishAmerica employees. Then go to the site archiving the State of Maryland court records. Enter the names of some of the people off the list. You'll be amazed at the results. There's either a common denominator among PublishAmerica employees -- or an uncommon lot of them have feloniously inclined doppelgangers running around.
Miss Begotten is one of my pet names for myself, for Southern Gothic reasons best kept to myself. Miss Begotten tries to speak plainly, but sometimes she tends to babble -- parenthetically, of course. It's never my intention to offend (and usually that's true - except on those [maybe not so] rare occasions when I mean it very friggin' much) but it sometimes happens, so if you're unusually easily offended...
1 comment:
Interesting website with a lot of resources and detailed explanations.
»
Post a Comment