This is reminiscent of the famous Naked Came the Stranger hoax of the 1960s.
(This humble Freeper was not in on the hoax but sure wishes he had been)
Posted on 02/18/2005 4:30:45 AM PST by atomic conspiracy
Science Fiction Authors Hoax Vanity Publisher "Atlanta Nights," by Travis Tea, was offered a publishing contract by PublishAmerica of Frederick, Maryland.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) January 28, 2005 -- Over a holiday weekend last year, some thirty-odd science fiction writers banged out a chapter or two apiece of "Atlanta Nights," a novel about hot times in Atlanta high society. Their objective: to write a deeply awful novel to submit to PublishAmerica, a self-described "traditional publisher" located in Frederick, Maryland.
The project began after PublishAmerica posted an attack on science fiction authors at one of its websites (http://www.authorsmarket.net/). PublishAmerica claimed "As a rule of thumb, the quality bar for sci-fi and fantasy is a lot lower than for all other fiction.... [Science fiction authors] have no clue about what it is to write real-life stories, and how to find them a home." It described them as "writers who erroneously believe that SciFi, because it is set in a distant future, does not require believable storylines, or that Fantasy, because it is set in conditions that have never existed, does not need believable every-day characters."
The writers wanted to see where PublishAmerica puts its own quality bar; if the publisher really is selective, as the company claims, or if it is a vanity press that will accept almost anything, as publishing professionals assert.
"Atlanta Nights" was completed, any sign of literary competence was blue-penciled, and the resulting manuscript was submitted.
PublishAmerica accepted it.
From: PublishAmerica Aquisitions [e-mail protected from spam bots] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 Subject: Atlanta NightsAs this is an important piece of email regarding your book, please read it completely from start to finish. I am happy to inform you that PublishAmerica has decided to give "Atlanta Nights" the chance it deserves....Welcome to PublishAmerica, and congratulations on what promises to be an exciting time ahead.
Sincerely, Meg Phillips Acquisitions Editor PublishAmerica
The hoax was publicly revealed on January 23, 2005. PublishAmerica withdrew their offer shortly afterward:
From: "PublishAmerica Acquisitions" Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 Subject: Your Submission to PublishAmericaWe must withdraw our offer to publish "Atlanta Nights". Upon further review it appears that your work is not ready to be published. There are portions of nonsensical text in the manuscript that were caught by our editing staff as they previewed the text for editing time assessment pending your acceptance of our offer.
On the positive side, maybe you want to consider contracting the book with a vanity publisher such as iUniverse or Author House. They will certainly publish your book at a fee.
Thank you. PublishAmerica Acquisitions Department
Those who wish to see the novel, "Atlanta Nights" by Travis Tea, for themselves can find it at http://www.lulu.com/travis-tea
Publication at Lulu.com is free.
For more information about PublishAmerica and vanity presses, see: http://www.sfwa.org/beware/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25187-2005Jan20.html
This is reminiscent of the famous Naked Came the Stranger hoax of the 1960s.
(This humble Freeper was not in on the hoax but sure wishes he had been)
I've read the PDF. It is fall-out-of-your-chair funny if you're a connoisseur of bad cliches and worse writing.
Bwahahahaha ping!
These guys should have waited until the ink was on paper and the book was getting blasted in the New York Times Book Review.
Maybe they would be interested in John Kerry's memoirs.
Seems like L. Ron Hubbard and the church (little c) of Scientology began under similar circumstances.
If Publish America has ever had a title reviewed by the NYT I'll eat my hat. It's a pseudo-vanity press.
I have some National Guard memos they might be interested in...
This is up your alley.
I hope you and your readers will be as interested and perhaps amused by Alan Sokal's essay, 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' published in Social Text in the mid-Nineties and that very much engendered a literary genre epitomized by Gross and Levitt's 'Higher Superstition' and 'Flight from Science and Reason'.
Yep. Every time. And blame everyone else for the smell.
Ping
I will try some of the writers listed on your page.
I do think when they started lumping SF, Fantasy and Horror books on the same area, they made it hard to find hard SF.
Anybody care to try diagramming that sentence?
Small stuff. The real trick is to get a non=existant book recognised as a lauded best seller.
Then you can write it I, Libertine
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.