Ripofi i ostala drpanja...

[PTY]

Pogledam juče Source Code i šokiram se koliko je to ripof Eganovog  Distresa i prosto ne mogu da verujem da se moglo nezavisnim putem doći do tako specifične reanimacije kakvu je Egan tamo dao. I da ne pričam sad kako je film totalno banalizovao i debilizovao ceo taj koncept, ništa nije objasnio a ono kobajagi "objašnjenje" koje je dao je običan izdrčak, ali sam koncept je svejedno lako prepoznatljiv, i to ne samo zbog famoznog vremenskog limita (8 minuta u filmu, nije nego  ) nego i zato što na internetu uopšte ne nailazim ni na kakve kontroverze po tom pitanju.


Izgleda mi da jedno baja Elison sa 4 oka pazi da mu ne marnu ni interpunkciju pod kopirajtnom.   


Obaška što Source Code ima 7.6 na IMDbu    , pa ljudi moji, The Jacket ima manje od toga a beskrajno je SF-pošteniji uradak, i to ne samo zato što tamo ne prepoznajem išta marnuto, nego zato što je stvarno SF-poštenije urađen, i pored katastofalne glume one anoreksične sirotice...    


Tek u slučaju da mi je promaklo - ima li ikakvog pljuckanja na Source Code vezanog za ripof problem?

[Milosh]

The Jacket ima manje od toga a beskrajno je SF-pošteniji uradak, i to ne samo zato što tamo ne prepoznajem išta marnuto...

The Star Rover (Zvezdana lutalica) Džeka Londona

"The 2005 movie The Jacket has a story credited to Marc Rocco and Tom Bleecker. Jack London is not mentioned. However, the director has said that the film is 'loosely based on a true story that became a Jack London story.' "

btw Nisam znao to za Source Code, niti sam primetio da je to iko pominjao.... Nego, ima li koga da je čitao Ellisonovu priču Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman i da je pogledao film In Time?

[PTY]

Pa dobro, ne znam za tu Zvezdanu lutalicu, ali ako je režiser sam pomenuo uticaj, onda mi to i ne spada u ripofe, mada je fer da se takvim uticajima dadne priznanje makar u odjavnoj špici, a ne samo u izjavama.


Ali ideja reanimacije iz Eganovog Distresa je maltene celokupna postavka na kojoj film počiva. U Distresu se to radi samo na žrtvama nasilne smrti za koje je medicinski ustanovljeno da su klinički mrtve; takvi leševi se priključuju na veštačka pluća i srce i pumpaju se veštačkom krvlju koja nosi mikroekologiju nano-senzora i surogat enzima koji na kratko vreme proizvedu efekat "oživljenosti" leša, ali to samo na vrlo limitovan period u kom su neuroni u mozgu još uvek aktivni. Kod Egana se to koristi samo u iznimnim slučajevima kada žrtve trebaju da imenuju svoje ubice i sam proces te reanimacije dotuče tkivo u roku od nekoliko minuta, ali u tih par minuta leš zaista misli da je živ. Imaq još nekih finesa, ali u principu, to je stvarno lako prepoznatljivo.   

[Melkor]

Best-selling author says Fringe 'ripped off' his shapeshifter story

A famous sci-fi and horror author claims that Hollywood has ripped him off. And his name isn't even Harlan Ellison.

  Best-selling author F. Paul Wilson, known for books like The Keep and the Repairman Jack series, posted in a forum at the Repairman Jack website that Fringe has stolen the plotline from a book he published in 1998 with co-author Matthew Costello, called Masque.

Wilson claims that the Nov. 4 episode of the Fox series, titled "Novation," lifted the concept from his and Costello's book wholesale. He wrote:
>In case you missed it, Fringe is developing a story line about beings from alternate Earth called shapeshifters who possess a special cellular structure. With the help of an implanted disc, they can sample anyone's DNA and become a perfect copy (down to the base-pair level) of that other person. The disk stores the various genomes and can switch between them. Flashback to 1998: Warner Aspect publishes a novel by Matt Costello and me called Masque. It centers around secret agents called "mimes" who have a special mimetic DNA (mDNA) that can be programmed to copy anyone else's DNA. All they have to do is slip in a template disk encoded with that genome and their bodies change into a perfect copy of that person down to the molecular level. They also have blank programmable disks that can copy a DNA sample, allowing them to "steal" anyone's genome on the fly.

Notice any similarity? Come on. Just a little? While Wilson agrees that you "can't copyright an idea," he points out that the episode seems to have lifted not just an idea, but the exact same technology and more or less the same plot as the 13-year-old novel. He continues:

>And it's not as if Hollywood has never seen Masque. It's been floating around since Tom Cruise's production company (Cruise-Wagner) optioned it for Polygram Pictures immediately after publication. When Polygram folded, so did the deal, but numerous game companies have been interested in adapting it to interactive form (which was how we'd originally conceived it). Wilson says he's not angry but instead "disheartened," adding, "Where I come from, writers honor each other's work. But the second-raters are always with us. They'll rip you off without so much as a by-your-leave because odds are they'll get away with it." He also says that while most of the writers on the Fringe staff might not be aware of the original material. "Whoever introduced it into the story conferences had to have read Masque. It's too...damn...close."
Wilson concludes by saying that he has no intention to sue, but directs readers to see the episode here and check out an e-version of the book (under the name DNA Wars) here, so that they can judge for themselves.

Do you think Wilson has a case? Did one of the writers on staff at Fringe deliberately rip off his book, or did they do it without realizing that they had read the story years ago?

[PTY]

   U Japanu se čitaju Rajski vodoskoci...






According to The Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo construction company, Obayashi Corporation, hopes to erect a space elevator by 2050. As a doff of the cap to our British readers, the space lift would ferry passengers and cargo along a carbon nanotube ribbon from a terrestrial terminal to a spaceport nearly a quarter of the way to the moon.























At the end of a 59,652-mile-long, carbon-nanotube cable, there would be a counterweight floating in space and anchoring the assembly connected to the ground terminal. Passengers would travel from terra firma to a spaceport research center equipped with residential facilities located 22,369 miles above the Earth's surface.
Interested in beaming yourself up? Well, make sure you pack your toothbrush and an few changes of clothes because even though the elevator will zoom up the ribbon at 124 miles per hour, it's still going to take a week to get there. Those who have ever undertaken a cross-country trip on a Greyhound bus know how pleasant a journey that can be.
Obayashi is keeping mum about the estimated cost of the project, but once it's off the ground, the company hopes to shuttle 30 passengers at a time along the cable, potentially with magnetic linear motors.
BLOG: Space Bacteria Boost Cell Power
No location has been revealed yet, but because the assembly would rely on centrifugal force to keep the ribbon taut, the base station needs to be located near the equator. Here's looking at you, Pontianak, Indonesia.
An ambitious project indeed, sure to have many ups and downs.
via Gizmag
Credit: NASA (top); Obayashi Corp. (left)

[PTY]

 
Philip K. Dick estate sues (again!) over Adjustment Bureau movie!!!


Just two months ago, the Philip K. Dick estate seemed to be admitting defeat by dropping its lawsuit against the producers of the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau. But it turns out they're not done yet.
The $500,000 lawsuit has just been re-filed, and the producers will have to try to prove all over again that they don't owe the Dick estate anything.Justin Goldstein, the estate's attorney, filed the lawsuit Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. He told The Hollywood Reporter that the Dick family expects a different result this time around.

"The Philip K. Dick Trust continued its litigation today against producer Media Rights Capital in Los Angeles County Superior Court, filing a complaint to enforce its agreement related to the motion picture

The Adjustment Bureau. We had hoped to avoid having to take this step, but are left with no choice because Media Rights Capital continues to ignore its contractual obligations.  We are confident that the court will find that Philip K. Dick's heirs are entitled to receive what they were promised in return for the right to use their father's work and name in producing and distributing The Adjustment Bureau."

This particular legal mess started back in 2001, when director George Nolfi secured permission from the estate to adapt Dick's story "The Adjustment Team" for the big screen, with the understanding that he would make "substantial payments" to the estate if the film ever happened.
Nolfi and his partner company Media Rights Capital paid $1.6 million to the estate for the option to produce the film, but the estate claims that further payment was still owed based on the film's earnings. Nolfi and MRC refused to pay more, claiming that "The Adjustment Team" had actually been in the public domain all along, and that therefore they shouldn't have paid the estate a dime.

The question of whether the story is a public-domain property is still a matter of debate. Nofli and MRC claim "The Adjustment Team" first appeared in Orbit Science Fiction in 1954. The estate claims that the first official publication of the story actually came a year later. The year's difference is important, because if "The Adjustment Team" did appear first in 1954, that would mean it fell into the public domain before the estate filed a copyright renewal in 1983.

The Dick estate dropped their federal lawsuit against Nolfi and MRC back in February after the judge hearing the case threw out several key elements of their argument. The same judge also claimed that state court was the "appropriate venue" for the dispute. It seems the estate agrees with that assessment, hence the new lawsuit.

So will the Dick estate prevail the second time around? Stay tuned.

http://blastr.com/2012/04/philip-k-dick-estate-sues.php

[PTY]

okej, ovde se mozda i ne radi o klasicnom drpanju, ali kontroverza je ipak bliska, pa da ne otvaram novi topik:

Guillermo del Toro Says 'Prometheus' Has Effectively Killed 'At the Mountains of Madness'

By Matt Cardin |Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 10:00 am       


A couple of weeks ago, I used this space to speculate about the possibility that director Ridley Scott's forthcoming Prometheus may prove to be a kind of heady hybridizing of 2001: A Space Odyssey with Lovecraftian horror. Now comes the news that the Lovecraftian elements of Prometheus may be so close to certain key aspects of Guillermo del Toro's long-planned and long-anticipated adaptation of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness that they may have killed the project. And this comes straight from the mouth, or rather the keyboard, of the man himself.


By now, I probably don't need to rehash the long and winding saga of del Toro's plan, currently approaching two decades old, to bring Lovecraft's Madness to life as a lavish, big-budget movie with all of the monsters, horror, and gore intact, since it seems to have entered the horror and science fiction wings of contemporary pop culture as a kind of living urban lore. One of the best accounts of the whole thing was published last year by The New Yorker in a feature article/essay/profile that presented del Toro as a genuine auteur and creative genius with a defining bent for the dark fantastic. The bulk of the piece hinges on his efforts to get Madness made. In case you haven't seen it, here are key passages that convey both the nature of del Toro's struggle through the Hollywood minefield and the nature of the movie he hoped to make:

He had begun sketching images for an adaptation in 1993 and had completed a
script in 1998. But the project had seemed too daunting; digital effects weren't
yet good enough to render creatures that changed shape far more radically than
Transformers. Then, while del Toro was in Wellington, "Avatar" was released, and
its landmark effects made "Madness" seem plausible. Crucially, James Cameron, a
friend, had agreed to be a producer for "Madness," sharing his expertise in
designing strange worlds.



...The movie would not be an easy sell, though. Del Toro envisaged "Madness" as
a "hard R" epic, shot in 3-D, with a blockbuster budget. Creating dozens of
morphing creatures would be expensive, and much of the film needed to be shot
somewhere that approximated Antarctica; one of the most disquieting aspects of
Lovecraft's novella is that the explorers are being pursued by monsters in a
vast frozen void, and del Toro wanted to make the first horror movie on the
scale of a David Lean production.



...Del Toro thought that nearly all his previous movies had conveyed "sympathy
for the monsters." With "Madness," he said, he would terrify the audience with
their malignancy. First, though, he needed to make Universal executives feel
that, in allowing del Toro to design a creature-filled world, they weren't being
reckless — rather, they were commissioning a variation on "Avatar," the most
successful film in history.

– Daniel Zalewski, "Show the Monster," The New Yorker, February 7,
2011

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS MOVIE PREVIEW (August 3, 2010):


In a supreme irony of timing, only a month after this piece conveyed a very hopeful impression of a long-awaited movie finally gaining momentum, the news circulated that del Toro and Universal Studios had experienced a parting of the ways over the film's projected $150 million price tag, and also over the director's insistence on making Madness as a "hard R" film with all of the violence and darkness intact. Outlets everywhere ran the story, and Mark Zalewski, who wrote the New Yorker piece, reported that del Toro had sent him "a short, mournful email" stating simply, "Madness has gone dark. The 'R' did us in."

DEL TORO'S 'AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS' GETS AXED (March 10, 2011):

Still, as late as last summer del Toro continued to express hope that the project would get made. In June he told the Los Angeles Times,

[/q]

"I'm not giving up. Mountains of Madness
has been with me for 13, 14 years and I really don't want to give up on it.
Look, the movies I do, I stick with them when I think, well, if I don't do it,
nobody will...Hellboy, if I hadn't done it, I don't think anyone would
have. Pan's Labyrinth, same thing. Mountains of Madness, the
way I plan to do it is a very peculiar take, and I think if I don't stick with
it the version I would like to see would never get made.

– "Guillermo del Toro on 'Mountains of Madness': 'I'm Not Giving
Up,'" Hero Complex, The Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2011

  [/l]

But that was ten months ago. Today, alas, it appears that del Toro has indeed given up, and that the project has gone not just dark but dormant, and perhaps even dead, and that the (inadvertent) culprit may be Prometheus. On April 30, a week after my column about Prometheus, 2001, and Lovecraftian ancient aliens appeared here, del Toro posted a message to his official fansite, DelToroFilms.com. It was titled "Prometheus/Mountains of Madness," and it said the following:

>

[/q]

I have been interviewed about this lately and
wanted to post my two cents about this: PROMETHEUS started filming a while ago —
right at the time we were in preproduction on PACIFIC RIM. The title itself gave
me pause — knowing that ALIEN was heavily influenced by Lovecraft and his
novella. This time, decades later with the budget and place Ridley Scott
occupied, I assumed the greek [sic] metaphor alluded at the creation aspects of
the HPL book. I believe I am right and if so, as a fan, I am delighted to see a
new RS science fiction film, but this will probably mark a long pause — if not
the demise — of ATMOM. The sad part is — I have been pursuing ATMOM for over a
decade now — and, well, fter [sic] Hellboy II two projects I dearly loved were
not brought to fruition for me.

– Guillermo del Toro, "Prometheus/Mountains of Madness," DelToroFilms.com, April
30, 2012

  [/l]

In response to some reader comments, del Toro added further information to clarify the nature of the perceived conflict between the two films, stating, "Same premise. Scenes that would be almost identical. Both movies seem to share identical set pieces and the exact same BIG REVELATION (twist) at the end. I won't spoil it."

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/05/guillermo-del-toro-says-prometheus-has-effectively-killed-at-the-mountains-of-madness/#more-55011] Ostatak je ovde.

[Mme Chauchat]

Siroma čovek. Kad čujem ovako nešto, uvek se setim Terija Gilijema...

[Ghoul]

u idealnom univerzumu videli bismo oba ova filma.

međutim, ako bih morao da biram ILI/ILI između toga da ILI del toro banalizuje lavkrafta (što je pravac u kome je išao njegov scenario: podsećam na moj rivju -  http://templeofghoul.blogspot.com/2010/08/at-mountains-of-madness-script-review.html ) ILI da ridli proširi granice svemira koji je ranije već uspešno kreirao, ja snažno i bez dvojbe glasam za ridlija!

a ova priča nije na pravom topiku, jer 'drpanja' ovde nema ni u kom ozbiljnom smislu, sem što i ridli i del toro 'drpaju' od lavkrafta kao što je on 'drpao' od drevnih mitova koje je prerađivao.

[PTY]

znam da nije ni ripof ni drpanje, nego me mrzelo da otvaram novi topik... a sto se mene tice, i ja preferisem ovakvo stanje stvari, kad vec nismo u idealnom univerzumu pa da dobijemo oba filma. Mislim, cenim ja del tora, samo nisam bog zna kakav fan iracionalne fantastike.

[Usul]

Veoma interesantan clanak. Izvinjavam se ako je neko vec slao.
http://dearauthor.com/features/industry-news/master-of-the-universe-versus-fifty-shades-by-e-l-james-comparison/

[PTY]

Najinteresantnije u svemu tome je što sam naišla na dosta online rivjua od ljudi koji su čitali (ili bar tako tvrde) obe knjige i to konkretno pitanje uopšte nisu potegli u rivjuima. E sad, da li je to zato što obe knjige tipuju na istu ciljnu grupu koja ima ili očiglednu agnoziju ili uživa da čita (i sklupo plaća) uvek jednu te istu knjigu ili je u pitanju nešto treće... stvarno ne znam. Ali dobro, fanfikšn je i nastao zbog takve ciljne grupe, a ona je zauzvrat od fanfikšna napravila profitabilnu industriju i eto, na kraju je svima lepo. A teško je kritikovati fenomen koji usrećuje tako mnogo ljudi... 

[zakk]

Mhm, al eno u pdf odlomku iz Laguninog izdanja,

Naslov originala
E L James
Fifty Shades of Grey
Copyright © 2011, by Fifty Shades Ltd.

The author published an earlier serialized version of this story online with differnet characters as Master of the Universe under the pseudonym Snowqueen's Icedragon.

Translation Copyright © 2012 za srpsko izdanje, LAGUNA

Dakle to je to. Menjano svakako, ali to je u biti to.

[PTY]

 Pa da, ali taj disklajmer je značajno nepotpun, jer izbegava da pomene kako je MOTU zapravo FanFic Sumraka, a to već samo po sebi podrazumeva da MOTU nema originalnu strukturu, nego onu iz Sumraka, sve zajedno sa specifičnim protagonistima, a time i sekundarnim zapletima. A ako se vidi koliki je znak jednakosti između 50SOG i MOTU, onda se lako može pretpostaviti da je struktura 50SOG zapravo vrlo slična onoj iz Sumraka, tojest, uzeti su protagonisti sa specifičnim biografijama a time i sekundarni zapleti. To što je autor promenio imena protagonista ne znači bog zna šta, ako su ostali njihovi specifični odnosi, a izgleda da jesu, ako je verovati onom postu koji upoređuje biografske podatke likova iz Sumraka i 50SOG.

Naravno, to za poreklo 50SOG nije nikakva tajna, to se makar ovlaš pominje u svakom ozbiljnijem rivjuu, ali zanimljivo mi je da se vrlo, vrlo retko pominje u rivjuima konzumenata, pa čak i onih koji 50SOG izrazito negativno ocenjuju. Oni uglavnom pljuju sve ostale nedostatke, ali retko se nailazi na rivju koji otvoreno kaže da je 50SOG čisti ripof Sumraka. A kad smo već kod konzumenata, 50SOG ima vaistinu zanimljivo čitalaštvo, komentatori joj daju ili jednu ili pet zvezdica, što će reći da niti jedne niti druge čovek ne može po difoltu uzeti za ozbiljno. Lično imam više averzije prema pljuvačima, bože moj, kakav li je to mentalni sklop koji zpravo pročita ni manje ni više nego trilogiju za koju tako ozbiljno tvrdi da je od prvog pasusa bila čisto sranje i ništa više... slutim da takvim ljudima fali par cenera od celog šteka, tako da je sama knjiga tu još i najmanji problem.   

[Melkor]

Reflected in You magnifies Fifty Shades erotica boom Sylvia Day
– another star of self-published erotica – scores huge hit for Penguin at the tills -  Alison Flood   

   
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 October 2012 17.07 GMT

Sylvia Day set to assert her shelf in Fifty Shades market. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/Rex    Move over Fifty Shades of Grey: there's a new erotic fiction bestseller in town, and it's taking the book charts by storm. Japanese-American author Sylvia Day's Reflected in You, featuring its very own tortured billionaire and beautiful heroine, has sold over 80,000 paperbacks in just six days on shelves in the UK – more than EL James' record-breaking novel did in its first week on sale.

The follow-up to Day's smash hit Bared to You, a novel which was originally self-published in April this year and acquired by Penguin in May, Reflected in You tells of the love affair between Eva and Gideon: "He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I'd never been to anything or anyone in my life". Originally entitled Deeper in You, but changed because some booksellers "felt the title was too suggestive", it sold 82,759 copies in the UK in the last week, according to Nielsen BookScan. Only two novels have had stronger opening-week sales since Nielsen's records began in 1998, according to the Bookseller: JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

The Bookseller's charts editor Philip Stone also points out that more money – £420,000 – was spent on Day's novels last week than on the works of Iain Banks, Ian McEwan, Philippa Gregory, Marian Keyes, Sebastian Faulks, Philip Pullman, Cathy Kelly, Jackie Collins, Tom Clancy, Henning Mankell, Yann Martel, Alexander McCall Smith, Harlan Coben, Linwood Barclay, Victoria Hislop, PD James, Pierre Dukan, Stieg Larsson, Ian Rankin, Zadie Smith, Karin Slaughter, Paulo Coelho, and Salman Rushdie combined.

"It's Penguin's biggest ever paperback sale (since official records began), which I think is quite incredible given Penguin is the house of Jeremy Clarkson, Jamie Oliver and Jeff Kinney," said Stone. "I think its mega-sale proves two things: one, that the erotica boom is here to stay, and two, that there's still life in the printed book. Reflected in You has been on sale in digital formats for a month already and has topped the Amazon.co.uk Kindle chart for almost as long. Despite this, the paperback edition still enjoyed one of the strongest ever opening-week sales for a printed book since records began."

Reviews of the novel from readers on Amazon.co.uk are rapturous. "Reading Reflected in You is like going on an emotional roller coaster; there is drama and angst; there are secrets and misunderstandings; there are arguments and punishment screws but then you also have the hot sweaty make- up sex and some incredibly sweet moments between them!" writes one reviewer, pointing to some of her favourite quotes: "I'd rather argue with you, angel, than laugh with anyone else", and "I am obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything I've ever wanted or needed, everything I've dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you."

Although Day's Amazon reviews suggest her books are better than James' – Reflected in You has an average rating of 4.7 out of five, while Fifty Shades of Grey gets just 3.2 - Day still has some way to go before she catches up with the British author's sales. The first book in James' trilogy ,Fifty Shades of Grey, became Britain's bestselling book ever earlier this summer, with sales of 5.3m copies in print and ebook.
   

[PTY]

Ovo je malko starija kontroverza i sad je vec glavnina spornih linkova uklonjena ali fascinira me koliko su naivni ljudi koji u danasnje gugl doba veruju da ce im uspeti plasiranje plagijata...




Ligotti Plagiarized?   

While doing a Google search on a quote from "Conversations in a Dead Language" in the hope that someone had transcribed a particular section so I wouldn't have to, I came across this PDF magazine from last year, which includes a story entitled "Halloween in Heaven" that is, plainly, a version of "Conversations in a Dead Language" that has been reworded (consistently to its detriment, I might add) but not changed in substance. Although the PDF version of the magazine is a free download from Lulu, there's also a print version available for a price, which means that some people may, unintentionally in most cases I'm sure, be making a profit on the use of Ligotti's work.

"Halloween in Heaven" is credited to one "Steve Marshall." This webpage for "Steven Marshall" lists "Halloween in Heaven" as having been published in a different magazine in 2008. The same page of that site lists The Nightmare Factory as one of Marshall's "top picks" for novels (yes, I know), and "The Frolic" as a top pick among short stories. Elsewhere on his site is a story called "Eve of Autumn", which, while it's been altered and expanded much more substantially, is obviously and indefensibly derived from Ligotti's prose sketch "Autumnal." There are a couple other stories on Marshall's site, but to my eye neither seems inappropriately based on work by Ligotti. Another page labeled "Philosophy" begins, with no acknowledgement that it's a quote, by informing us that "We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror." The best part, though, is a further quote from that picks page. Among recommended links for aspiring writers is the Library of Congress, of which he says, with an inaccuracy and an irony for the ages, "Get your copyright here before submitting any work. It's your only protection from having others who are less talented plagiarizing or stealing your work. It's a writer's condom!"


I don't know if Ligotti would care enough to do anything about this, but I thought those here who are in touch with him might want to bring it to his attention. And the rest of us can certainly get a laugh out of what is either blatant theft, or someone who takes inspiration far more directly than he ought to.

   http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=5756

[Melkor]

Ti, bre, predvide najnoviji trend!

[PTY]

 

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/12/06/the-albee-agency-using-testimonials-from-authors-the-authors-did-not-give/

The Albee Agency Using Testimonials From Authors the Authors Did Not Give!




The Albee Agency purports to be a book publicity agency that will get you and your book in and on all manner of media outlets, including TV, magazines and newspapers. To bolster those claims, it includes testimonials from authors, like these:




The problem? Chuck Wendig didn't give that testimonial.

Neither did Myke Cole.

Neither did Maureen Johnson.


There's a word for falsely attributing words to someone else in order to convince people to use your business: It's called "fraud."

I think if you're a writer looking for a publicist, you might want to avoid the Albee Agency.

Update, 4:30pm: The quotes from Myke and Maureen and Chuck have magically disappeared from the Albee Agency site! Good thing I took screenshots!

Update, 8pm: Promoting this comment from Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware:


More detail on this mess at Writer Beware: http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-albee-agency-book-publicity-faked.html.

One important point to make: even if there had been no testimonial fakery, this would still be an outfit to beware of. Red flags aplenty.