Supernatural Fiction Readers discussion

Sooner or later (usually sooner) anyone who writes for publication becomes aware that there are scam artists out there who prey on writers: "publishers" and "agents" who want to be paid for "services" they don't offer in good faith, editing services that pay kickbacks to publishers that recommend them, etc. This is a thread where we can post warnings to each other about scams we encounter or hear about. (There are also some Internet sites that provide similar info, such as Preditors and Editors (http://pred-ed.com .)

One individual of particular interest to horror writers, since he preys particular on this genre, is the notorious David Boyer (a.k.a. "Iron Dave," David Byron, Doc Byron, Kelli Ross Kelso, Jack Burnett, Leo Wolfe, Jack Sawyer, Christian Loche, and probably other aliases.) At least two members of our group (including myself) have had personal experience with him. His main M.O. (besides for-fee "services") is getting hold of writer's manuscripts and marketing them elsewhere as his own; specific cases of this kind of plagiarism have been documented in writing by Amazon, Lulu, the Horror Writers Assn., and others. He's also known or alleged to have been guilty of breach of contract, pocketing payments for books he never delivered, signing contracts with fake names, and using e-mail for fraud (among other things). Two of his front "companies" are Darkened Doorways and Inked in Blood. (The latter may now be out of business; at least, its website no longer exists.)

Some Internet sites with documentation on his activities are: http://b-thoughtful.blogspot.com/ , http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/10... , http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewn... , http://shocklinesforum.yuku.com/topic... , http://thewriterandthewhitecat.blogsp... , and http://samsdotpublishing.com/atthedot... . Preditors and Editors lists all of his known front companies as "not recommended."

Great topic, Werner. It's a shame you got bit, but it's good to warn others. The Internet makes these scams so easy.

That's true about the Internet, Jim! On the other hand, though, Internet technology also makes it easier to warn others, and easier to search for and obtain reliable information about nice-sounding "editors" --provided one is prudent enough to look for it. (That didn't describe me, unfortunately, but I'm learning! :-) )

Thanks alot, Werner!
Also, I hope you don't mind if i post this to other sites, to spread the knowledge of frauds out there.

You're welcome, Ankit; and no, I don't mind a bit!

This article really helped; I collect articles of school shootings, frauds, and paranormal sightings. This was like comic gold to me--the first publishing fraud I've seen, but EVERYONE PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY! FRAUDS ARE NOT A JOKE!

Omigod. Couldn't he be sued and made to live in jail all his life? (I'm sorry if I don't know a thing about these laws.)

It's a good thing we got this warning.

Joan, he IS currently being sued (though not by me). Of course, not all authors can afford the legal costs to sue --which is one thing that con artists count on to stay in business.

Civil suits by authors are just that - civil law - not criminal. He could be brought up on any number of criminal charges, if enough complaints were filed to bring it to the attorney general's attention. It could be the state of those he ripped off or where he lives, but Federal would probably be best. Possibly the worst sentence would be mail fraud since he's taken money & hasn't shipped the goods.

He's probably pinched enough money to afford himself a 1st-rate lawyer if anyone sued him anyways

Once he got on the Fed's radar, I think his life would be pretty miserable & his activities curtailed. I would highly suggest that anyone who gets ripped off to file a complaint. Here's a good place to start:
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org...

Jim, great link, thanks (I'll put it to use!).

Complaints to state authorities about consumer fraud, unfortunately, often aren't taken very seriously; some of them take the attitude that it's too "small potatoes" for them to bother with, and that a civil suit ought to be the perfect handy-dandy recourse for everybody that's aggrieved. (Of course, in the real world, it isn't.) My wife and I both have run into examples of this mindset,though not in connection with publishing scams.

I agree, Werner. That's why I encourage everyone to file a complaint. 1 complaint is easy to lose, but a few complaints & the matter might get moved up high enough. You never know, but at least it is on file. I think that can help if/when anyone puts in a civil suit, too.

When I was looking for a car recently, I had to look into warranties. Too many aren't worth anything. I found one that was very bad. They weren't a member of the BBB, but they still had a lot of complaints filed against them with specific enough information that it helped me avoid them. That might be something else to do. Just make sure to list all the aliases & business names so they'll come up on a search.

Good advice, Jim! Will do.

Dear Werner,

Ouch! I can't imagine what kind of hell you are going through right now. So did you get the manuscript back, including the rights? Can you re-publish? You have seen Lulu, which through Ingram's distribution gets you onto Amazon, B&N, and many other bookseller sites, but have you looked into Lightning Source?

What kind of plans do you have for getting your book back out there? New ISBN? New Copyright? New printer / distributor?

We ended up forming our own publishing company for our series, after the publishing company that was going to publish our first book went out of business. We have had to learn how to lay out the book, set up printing and distribution, and how to market it; though the learning continues.

It's not such a bad thing these days publishing yourself. Lots of things you can do yourself and probably do a good job at it. For me, however, I need to hire an editor, a proofreader, and a graphic artist to produce a book, and the people I work with were friends before they started working with me. Most everything else I can do a decent job myself. One other area where I would consider hiring someone is publicity.

BTW, we generally carry stock at home for book signings and other events, though if someone remote wants to buy a signed copy, we use flat-rate shipping and send them one from our stock, and we also charge them for the shipping.

Good luck getting things back on track.

Cheers!

Christopher

Thanks, Christopher; good questions there! Yes, I can re-publish; I didn't confer any rights to Boyer, because he signed his "contract" with an alias. (He didn't try to argue that point.) There was no manuscript to return, since I had sent the text to him electronically. He says it's now deleted from his computer. (Yeah, I know --like, I can trust him --NOT! But I'll be subjecting his new site to continued monitoring, and notify Amazon and Lulu about him.)

What I'm hoping to do now is find a legitimate small press to publish a reprint edition. If that happens, the new edition of the book will have it's own ISBN; that's standard industry practice. The Lulu edition that I self-published in 2009, however, did NOT have an ISBN; that only comes with their for-fee package, which also includes access to Ingram's, Amazon, etc. I got the free (or rather, no-money-up-front) deal, which is just printing and order fulfillment service with a listing on their webstore. (That's a poor person's route to self-publishing. :-) )

Whether or not to self-publish, and how, is a choice that depends on the individual author, and sometimes on the individual book. Usually, I don't encourage new authors to self-publish, first because the book trade attaches a stigma to it, since the books don't go through any type of vetting for quality; and second, because apart from the stigma, I think many new authors NEED the vetting process --I know I did; Lifeblood was a better book because of changes my original publisher suggested. When I went the self-publishing route with my novel, it had already had the vetting of a real (though now defunct) publisher, which I thought might ease the stigma a bit. But one defect of that approach, at least with Lulu, is that they offer no discount to libraries and bookstores. It's hard enough to get a book into those venues -if you have to demand that they pay list price, you may as well forget it! And no, I haven't looked into Lightning Source myself. But one of my Goodreads author friends used it for her book, and declares that it's a terrible company to work with in terms of typos, etc.; she said words to the effect that once they get your money, they don't give a care about product quality at all. (Of course, that's just one author's impression.)

I wish you all the best with your self-publishing venture, Christopher, and thanks for the encouragement!

Jeani Rector, editor of The Horror Zine, asked me to publicize the link below, which provides info on David Boyer's latest scandal. He's been caught trying to plagiarize a story by Dean Koontz (legal ramifications are probably likely to ensue).

http://www.thehorrorzine.com/Beware/B... .

Sheesh!

this is an absoulty fabulous thread. I'm a new publisher and doing everything i can to be good one. I was severly ripped off by Author House with my first book, there was an error with the manuscript type setting and six lines in the book were wrong and the words were too spaced out. Because i didnt spot it on the proof and even though it was absolutly their fault, and they admitted this, they told me the charge to fix it would be £300 OR AROUND $500, i couldnt afford to do this as I'd shelled out £800 to publish it with them, and the cover they designed was shit to put it mildly and i had to buy my own cover image and design it myself. There was an email not sent which meant my publication date was a month behind.

As a result of this i thought i would research into doing it myself. It's damn hard work im not denying it, but we now have around 12 authors, i keep intouch with them daily.
They have an input into cover design and they dont have to pay a pennie upfront.
I'm totally honest and say, look i dont have a wad of cash for promo but every pennie ebooks make goes into promo and materials for paperbacks.

The feedback is heartwarming beacuse a few of my authors are in simalr situation to what i was in, one of them having paid $2000 dollars to a publisher with one of her books only to be told a month before release date that there was no money for advertising! shocking.

Great thread werner!

Do we have a self-publishing topic or category? I keep digging up stuff on it. We could repost the stuff we put in Joy's group. What do you think, Werner?

Thanks, Nicola. And best wishes with your publishing venture! I'm sorry you got ripped off by the creeps you dealt with before, but glad it had such a positive outcome. (If any of your authors write supernatural fiction, let them know about this group!)

Jim, that's a good idea; I just started that thread! If you'd post the links you originally posted in Joy's group, and share some of your insights, that'd be great.

i have a couple of supernatural stuff coming out in the next few months so i thought id get stuck in and not just plug books willy nilly :D same applies if any of your members have books they would like to submit id be happy to look,

and werner i would be happy to help you with your manuscipt im buying my isbn block at the end of the month as well as more cover art, let me know if i can help,

www.vamptasypublishing.co.uk

Thanks, Nicola! Actually, I've been fortunate enough to have already signed a contract with a publisher, earlier this year (Trestle Press), to reprint my novel. But I sure appreciate the offer!

no problem, you bear me in mind for any of your members D:

Will do, Nicola!

An update I've been asked to post: two more fronts for the notorious David Boyer, both e-zines, have been identified. One is a revived New Voices in Horror (http://newvoicesinhorrormagazine.weeb... ) and the other mimics the name of the legitimate Lost Souls Magazine. The bogus LSM has the URL http://lostsoulsmagazine.weebly.com ("Grant Dean" is a new Boyer alias); the real one is at http://lostsoulsmag.tripod.com. Webs.com shut down the original New Voices in Horror (also under Boyer management) some time ago for plagiarized content.

Just can't keep a rotten scam down, eh? That sucks. Thanks for the update.

I know a couple of folks who were bit by Boyer. What an ass.

Brian Keene does a nice job posting about scum like this, on his website, FB, and Twitter.

Do you have a URL for that, Chris?

I was referred to this thread by a fried in another group. great post, Werner. I've heard of Boyer and Inked in Blood, but not sure where. Maybe I've submitted work to him in the past. Ugh.

Thanks, Jason! (I figured maybe my bad experience could at least serve as a warning to save other writers from the same thing.)

Jim, go to briankeene.com.

Or recently posted:
http://www.briankeene.com/2013/08/30/...