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Aug. 26, 2005 One of the more sinister by-products of Willem Meiners' corrupt vanity house PublishAmerica is the way his author/cult members have infiltrated bookseller's websites disguised as reviewers. The scam, wholeheartedly endorsed by their printer (PublishAmerica is not a real publisher), involves posting five star reviews of fellow PublishAmerica authors' overpriced, unedited (http://critters.critique.org/sting/) books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Although the majority of seasoned readers may have already decided on their purchases before ordering on the Internet, it does make you question acceptable ethical standards. Many of those books have religious themes and are written by people professing to be devout Christians. Meiners the cynical psychologist is also a failed but persistent writer who solved his rejection slip problem by setting up his own vanity press. His latest book, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1413790968/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_5/103-3311474-9284657?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) is little more than a rehash of the blatant lies displayed on his PublishAmerica website, a higgledy-piggledy assortment of self-congratulatory meanderings shamelessly padded out with a long list of his author victims. Aware of the damaging effect such a book can have on novice writers, many PublishAmerica authors, myself included, have posted reviews of Meiners' book on Amazon.com comparing the author's claims with the costly reality of the PublishAmerica experience. At one stage negative reviews outnumbered positive by about ten to one, some of those from readers who had never heard of PublishAmerica yet took exception to Meiners' deliberate manipulation of the truth and the abysmal standard of his writing. Amazon deletes all negative reviews of this scammer's handbook before or just after they appear on the page. At the time of writing only one review remains, that by a PublishAmerica author who would give a five-star rating to an account of paint drying if it is credited to PublishAmerica. The same "critic" has given the five-star treatment to fifteen books on Amazon written by fellow authors. When you "Google" this company and conclude as I did that they are mainly churning out badly edited manuscripts rejected from genuine publishers' slush piles, you cease to marvel at the depths of desperation their authors plummet to. But deceiving readers into buying largely badly written and shoddily produced books by unknown authors, printed by a now notorious vanity book mill must border on criminal conspiracy. And what does it say about this well-known Internet bookseller? How high were Amazon's moral standards before they started sharing a bed with PublishAmerica? Is it company policy to delete all book reviews that might have a negative effect on sales or are they making an exception for the boss of a company that contributes, however modestly, to their profits? Readers need to know. Finally the so-called guardians of justice, The Better Business Bureau, Maryland Attorney General's Office, Britain's Trading Standards Service, The Advertising Standards Authority, CRS, The Federal Trades Commission... the list goes on. Just how many hundreds of complaints from cheated authors do these authorities need to instigate an investigation? Yes, I am one of the 14,000 authors Meiners claims to have signed. Yes, I have an axe to grind about having my collection of short stories hijacked by PublishAmerica for seven years through lies and deception. No, I am not a born-again Christian, nor do I subscribe to any cult. I don't think my moral standards are higher than what I believe to be standard, but if I allow my principles to slide to the level of those mentioned above I hope someone will be compassionate enough to take me out and shoot me. ------------ About the author: Eddie Bruce is the author of A Drifter's Legacy, a collection of Scottish and English short stories. He is currently involved in a bitter dispute with PublishAmerica, seeking to be released from his seven-year contract but refusing to sign a gagging agreement. Although he no longer wishes to promote his overpriced book, he has made most of the book's contents available to read at his website http://www.adrifterslegacy.co.uk Email: EBruceFUIMUS@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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