Case Studies

Avalon Associates/Media Arts International/Robin Price (literary agency and production company)
Deering Literary Agency (literary agency and vanity publisher)
Edit Ink (editing service)
Helping Hand Literary Services (literary agency)
Martha Ivery, a.k.a. Kelly O’Donnell / Press-Tige Publishing (literary agency and vanity publisher)
Melanie Mills, a.k.a. Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Lisa Hackney (literary agent)
PageTurner Press and Media (publishing/marketing service provider)
PublishAmerica / America Star Books (vanity publisher)
SBPRA (Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Agency) / Publish On Demand Global (literary agency and vanity publisher)
Tate Publishing & Enterprises (Christian vanity publisher)

Avalon Associates/Media Arts International/Robin Price

On January 7, 2010, UK literary agent/film producer Robin Price appeared in court, accused of stealing more than half a million pounds from clients.

Price was alleged to have encouraged authors to pay exaggerated literary fees and invest in non-existent film deals, and was  charged with six counts of theft, most committed over the course of several years.

Writer Beware first heard of Robin Price in 2001, when we began receiving questions about a literary agency called Avalon Associates, which was asking writers for £150 upfront “to cover initial costs of representation.” The fees were an obvious red flag, as was the fact that the agency had no discoverable sales, either of books or scripts. Price, who made big promises to his clients and touted his industry connections, also owned a production company, Avalon Films, whose website boasted a huge roster of film and television projects planned or in production, many with well-known writers, actors, and/or directors attached.

There was just one problem: It was all a fabrication. The deals and the connections did not exist. Price never sent out the screenplays and manuscripts he claimed to be submitting on his clients’ behalf, and the meetings and phone calls he claimed to be receiving from film industry movers and shakers were all invented. Here’s one example, from Writer Beware’s files: a client was told by Price that the managing director of a major film studio was seeking funding for the client’s screenplay. When nothing came of it, the client herself contacted the individual, only to discover that he’d left the studio some time earlier. He’d never heard of the client’s screenplay–but he had heard of Price. “I have known about Price’s activities for some years,” he wrote in an email to the client, “through my former work at [the studio]. We had continual stories from him of financial, creative, and production involvements which turned out to be entirely fictitious.”

By all accounts, Price was extremely persuasive, at least initially. Several successful writers were caught up in his schemes (Price returned their trust by using their names to boost his credibility and ensnare more clients). But in 2001, after one writer went public with his experiences with Price, complaints began to surface, and Avalon Associates’ listing was removed from the The Writers’ Handbook, one of the major UK writers’ guides.

With word getting round, Price did what dodgy agents often do: he changed the company’s name. In 2002, Avalon vanished and Media Arts International took its place. The M.O. was basically the same: upfront representation fees for writers; a production website with suspiciously enormous numbers of projects, none of which, somehow, ever came to fruition; false claims of contacts, meetings, etc. This time, though, Price did send round a few manuscripts, and even managed to place several books with a publisher called First Century. Again, though, not everything was as it seemed. As Writer Beware later found out from one sadder-but-wiser ex-Price client, First Century was a vanity publisher.

More ominously, we began receiving reports that Price was soaking writers for large amounts of cash–persuading them to invest in the production of their own screenplays, or to pay thousands of pounds in setup or legal fees to release production funds. Similar complaints appeared online. Not surprisingly, the productions never got off the ground, and the funds never materialized.

In 2007, still trying to stay ahead of his poor reputation, Price changed the company’s name yet again, to Prospero Films. But by this time the police were on his trail. In late 2007, search warrants were served on Price and an associate, and computers, manuscripts, and other documentation were seized. Price was effectively out of business. Amazingly, however, some of his clients continued to give him money for a time, even after being interviewed by the police. As a friend of one of these clients told Writer Beware, “this was the incredible hold he had over people.”

So why the long delay–more than two years–between the seizure and the court appearance? We don’t know the answer to this. Possibly it took that much time to track down far-flung victims, disentangle Price’s fictions, and assemble evidence. Possibly the case got put on hold for a while. In the end, though, Price did eventually find himself in court. In March 2011, he pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to six years in prison.

• One of Price’s victims speaks out.
• More complaints about Price and his companies.

Deering Literary Agency/Sovereign Publications

The Deering Literary Agency, run by Charles and Dorothy Deering, was founded in 1989 as a fee-charging literary agency (reading fees plus representation fees) that promoted vanity publishing contracts to its authors. Among others, it dealt with Commonwealth Publications and Northwest Publishing, a pair of vanity publishers that provided kickbacks to literary agents willing to persuade clients to accept pay-to-publish contracts. The Deering Agency claimed it made book sales to commercial publishers, but there’s no evidence of this.

In 1997, entranced by the profit potential of vanity publishing (as demonstrated by Commonwealth and Northwest), the Deerings established their own vanity publishing company, Sovereign Publications. Deering clients could then be funneled right into Sovereign, and the Deerings could profit every step of the way. A Sovereign publishing contract cost anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000; often, a few months after the contract was signed, the Deerings would contact the writer with an offer to “upgrade” his or her book from a mass market paperback to a trade paperback, at an additional cost of $2,000. To sweeten the deal, writers were given a “coupon” good for $1,000 off their next Sovereign publication.

It’s estimated that as many as 250 writers paid Sovereign to publish their books. Most never saw their work in print. The few who did weren’t able to verify the number of books printed, or whether they ever reached bookstores. No Sovereign author ever received any royalties from sales.

Ultimately, the Deerings’ greed was their downfall. The amount of money being pulled out of the operation didn’t leave enough to fulfill publishing promises, and angry writers, offered one far-fetched excuse after another, began to smell a rat. In 1998, things got too hot for the Deerings, who announced (via a recorded message at their office phone number) their intent to file for bankruptcy. Callers were referred to the Deerings’ lawyer (who, writers reported, never responded to phone calls or letters), and to the “new” owner of the Deering Literary Agency, Daniel Craig of the Daniel Craig Literary Group–who was actually Daniel Craig Deering, the Deerings’ son.

In March 1999, a group of Deering authors filed a class action lawsuit against Deering/Sovereign for fraud, breach of contract, deceptive business practices, false advertising, and mental and emotional stress. The lawsuit contended that Deering/Sovereign never intended to fulfill its promises of publication and representation, and instead converted funds paid by writers for the personal use of the defendants.

A criminal investigation was also underway. On September 3, 1999, Charles and Dorothy Deering, Daniel Craig Deering, and Dorothy’s brother William Paul Watson (a.k.a. Bill Richardson) were indicted on mail fraud charges by a grand jury in a US District Court in Lexington, KY. All eventually pleaded guilty. In March 2000, sentences were handed down: Charles Deering received 41 months, Dorothy Deering 46 months, William Paul Watson 12 months and one day, and Daniel Craig Deering five years of probation.

Charles, Dorothy, and William were also subject to three years of supervised release following completion of their sentences, and Daniel was required to spend the first five months of his probation in home detention with electronic monitoring. While on supervised release, Dorothy and Charles Deering were required to participate in a mental health treatment program. William Paul Watson was ordered to surrender any literary rights he retained and was barred from owning or operating any business involving literary agenting.

An Order of Restitution was also signed, voiding all publishing contracts and returning rights to the respective authors, and requiring the defendants to make restitution totalling $1,179.782.30. As often is the case with literary fraudsters, this was a symbolic gesture. To Writer Beware’s knowledge, no restitution was ever paid.

An excellent account of the Deering scam is provided in Ten Percent of Nothing: The Case of the Literary Agent From Hell by former FBI agent Jim Fisher. This engrossing book tells the story of the byzantine con game run by the Deerings and their relatives, and sheds light on why writers get caught up in literary scams.

For more on literary agents, see Writer Beware’s Literary Agents page. For more on vanity publishing, see the Vanity and Subsidy Publishers page.

• Publishing Schemes Prove to be Pure Fiction, an article by Linton Weeks of the Washington Post.
• Writer Travis Heerman blogs about his awful experience with the Deerings.

Edit Ink

Founded by the husband and wife team of Bill Appel and Denise Sterrs, Edit Ink was a New York State-based editing service that engaged in a kickback referral scheme with a wide network of literary agents. Here’s how the scheme worked.

Participating agents sent letters to writers who’d submitted manuscripts the agents didn’t want to represent, saying that the writer’s work showed “promise” but “wasn’t quite ready for publication.” A useful service was recommended: Edit Ink, which for a fee would polish the ms. to make it more salable. Once the ms. had been edited, the agent would then be glad to reconsider it.

The agent then forwarded the writer’s name to Edit Ink, which sent off a solicitation letter claiming, among other things, that Edit Ink received referrals for only a “select few” manuscripts (false), and that most publishing houses insisted on receiving “professionally edited” work (falser). If the writer took the bait and paid for an edit, the referring agent received a kickback of 15%.

Writers who resubmitted their edited manuscripts to referring agents, per the referring agents’ suggestions, were given the brushoff. Either the market had “changed in the interim”, or the agency was “no longer representing that genre.”

Edit Ink charged $5 per page–exorbitant at the time even for a qualified editorial service, which Edit Ink very definitely was not. Its staff mostly consisted of recent college graduates with no publishing experience, working long hours for minimum wage. The typical Edit Ink edit was slipshod and superficial, consisting mainly of basic copy editing suggestions, and omitting the kind of in-depth analysis of plot, theme, character, and structure that might make a professional edit worthwhile.

Appel and Sterrs were smart. They worked principally with marginal agencies that were likely to overlook ethics in the interest of making an easy buck (though a few successful agents did get involved), and targeted beginning writers too inexperienced to figure out what was going on. At its height, dozens of literary agencies participated in the scheme. Edit Ink even set up its own bogus agencies and publishers to funnel more manuscripts its way. It’s estimated that the company made in excess of $5 million.

Mounting complaints from writers, and efforts by writers’ advocacy groups, at last spurred New York State to take action. In January 1998 the NYS Attorney General announced a lawsuit against Edit Ink for deceptive business practices, false advertising, and fraud. (In turn, Edit Ink attempted to sue at least two writers who spoke out against it.) Just two weeks after the suit was filed, the NYS Supreme Court ordered Edit Ink to pay an estimated $6 million in restitution to more than 3,600 authors, plus $500 for each deceptive act, plus $2 million in civil penalties, plus costs incurred by the State of New York.

Edit Ink was also required by permanent injunction to disclose that it paid referral fees, and referring agents were required to state that they benefited financially from successful referrals. Edit Ink was also banned from claiming that editing and/or referral fees were “standard industry practice,” and from implying that referral to Edit Ink was a sign of significant commercial potential. (Documentation gathered by Writer Beware indicates that in many cases Edit Ink didn’t follow this injunction, nor did many of the agents who continued to work with it.)

The Edit Ink defendants (William Appel, Denise Sterrs, Eduardo Gahona, Kelley Culmer, and Charles Neighbors) appealed the court’s decision. But in February 1999, the NYS Appeals Court issued a ruling upholding the defendants’ conviction. The court also upheld the $2 million in civil penalties, though the issue of restitution was postponed–in effect, indefinitely, since by law the defendants were allowed to satisfy fines and legal fees first.

Throughout the appeals process, Edit Ink continued to operate. Many questionable agents continued to refer manuscripts, and Aardvark Literary Agents (one of Edit Ink’s original bogus agencies) was taken over by co-defendant Kelley Culmer so it could go on functioning as a conduit for Edit Ink referrals. Business was dwindling, however–in part as a result of media attention, but largely because of spreading word in the then relatively new environment of the Internet. Once the appeal was denied, the thrill was gone. In August 1999, Appel and Sterrs closed Edit Ink’s doors for good.

For more on editors and editing services, see Writer Beware’s Independent Editors page.

• Author Diane Craver writes about her Edit Ink experience.
• Vanity Fare, an article from Jonathan Bing of the Village Voice, reports on Edit Ink and similar scams.

Helping Hand Literary Services/Janet Kay & Associates

Helping Hand Literary Services was run by husband-and-wife team George Harrison Titsworth and Janet Kay Titsworth in San Angelo, Texas. The agency, which operated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, sought clients by placing ads like this one in free weekly papers such as Pennysaver:

WRITERS WANTED by literary agent that specializes in getting unpublished writers published. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s. Free evaluation. Helping Hand Literary Services.

Writers who ignored the red flags (real agents don’t advertise; real agents don’t represent poetry) and submitted to Helping Hand got an offer of representation, complete with a glowing acceptance letter. “I don’t normally have this much to say about a submission,” the letter began. “You are a talented writer with a great deal of potential…Plus, it doesn’t hurt a bit that I found 117 [or 150, or 200, depending on the letter] publishers that buy material like yours.”

As with junk mail solicitations, there was a PS, and sometimes a PPS, to sink the hook: “There are two ways to break into the publishing industry: Follow the same paths as other successful writers and hope for the best, or write something totally unique and find your own path into the industry. I believe you have done the latter…and, in my opinion, have done it quite well.” Or, more briefly: “It appears to me that you have put a great deal of effort into this work. I look forward to hearing from you soon.”

There was just one catch. Writers had to pay an “expense reimbursement” of $100, $200, or $300, depending on how many publishers they wanted the agency to contact for them.

For this fee, they received a submission packet that included a set of pre-printed publisher address labels, a cover letter on agency letterhead (“Dear Editor, I am interested in placing my client’s manuscript with your company for publication…”), a return envelope addressed to Helping Hand, and a sheet of instructions. Writers were directed to stick a stamp on the return envelope, place the letter, envelope, and the writer’s own materials (query letter, synopsis, sample chapters) in a manila envelope, affix the pre-printed label and sufficient postage, and drop the packet in the mail. “Do not put your return address anywhere on the material,” the instruction sheet warned. “It makes the publisher think you are trying to circumvent us and upsets them.”

This wasn’t how it worked even in pre-digital days. There was also the fact that, like most fee-charging literary agencies, Helping Hand accepted anyone who was willing to pay the fee and invested little effort in researching appropriate publishers. The agency quickly became notorious among editors and their assistants thanks to a deluge of inappropriate, substandard material. Some editors went so far as to contact Helping Hand and forbid it to send any more submissions.

Helping Hand’s solicitations were targeted to the most inexperienced and ignorant writers. But its scam was so egregious that many of the victims eventually caught on. In 2002, to dodge mounting complaints, the Titsworths changed the agency’s name to Janet Kay & Associates. Eager for more easy cash, they also expanded into vanity publishing, setting up a company called JanGeo Ink and offering publication to agency clients after a few rounds of fruitless submissions.

Despite the name change, complaints continued to flood in. Eventually, the San Angelo, Texas police department took notice. An investigation was opened, culminating in February 2004 with a raid on the Titsworths’ home. Manuscripts and supporting materials, many in unopened envelopes, were seized and placed in evidence–enough of them to fill two 8′ x 11′ jail cells. Not seized: the Titsworths, who had fled just before the raid.

A warrant was issued. In September 2004 the Titsworths were finally captured–in part because, like many literary scammers, they were unable to resist a repeat performance. They set up a new fee-charging agency called Harrison & Co, whose website included some of the distinctive verbiage that had been on the Helping Hand/Janet Kay website, and whose intake materials were identical. Writer Beware and another watchdog group, Preditors & Editors, spotted the similarities and alerted the San Angelo police, who were able to track the Titsworths down and bring them in.

Incredibly, while released on bail, the Titsworths set up yet another fee-charging agency–At Your Service Literary Agency, this time with a New Mexico address–but once again, didn’t bother to change their intake materials. This led very shortly to exposure by Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors.

In December 2004, the Titsworths were indicted by a grand jury in Tom Green County, Texas. In April 2006, after several delays, a judgment was handed down: in exchange for pleas of guilty to one count of theft under $100,000, the Titsworths were spared prison time, receiving a sentence of ten years’ probation each and an order to pay restitution of $159,320.62.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t quite end here. On the heels of the Titsworths’ arrest, a former employee, Leann Murphy, established her own fee-charging agency, Desert Rose Literary Agency. The San Angelo police arrested Ms. Murphy in 2008.

Martha Ivery, a.k.a. Kelly O’Donnell / Press-Tige Publishing

Between 1998 and 2003, Writer Beware received scores of complaints about Martha Ivery, a.k.a. Kelly O’Donnell.

Under the Kelly O’Donnell alias, Ivery (her real name) ran several fee-charging literary agencies (Kelly O’Donnell Literary Agency, Inc., O’Donnell Literary Services, Inc., Writers Information USAgency). As Martha Ivery, she also helmed two vanity publishing operations (Press-Tige Publishing and New Millennium Publishing). It was a soup-to-nuts operation: writers came in through one of the agencies (which charged “marketing” fees and pressured clients to accept paid editing services) and were then passed on to one of the publishing companies (both of which charged several thousand dollars). The connection between the agencies and the publishers wasn’t revealed; to further the deception, clients were encouraged to believe that the Kelly O’Donnell who ran the agencies and the Martha Ivery who ran the publishers were two different people.

Writers who paid the fees–whether for agenting, book doctoring, or publishing–frequently didn’t receive the promised services. Manuscripts submitted for agenting were never sent to publishers, or were placed with vanity publishers (including the fraudulent Commonwealth Publishing, which paid kickbacks to agents who persuaded their clients to accept expensive vanity contracts). Promised editing was never completed or was poorly done. Books contracted for publication were never produced, or if produced, weren’t marketed. In addition to whatever fees had been agreed upon, Ivery bombarded authors with demands for even more money for nonexistent services: publicity, warehousing, even a Press-Tige cruise (not surprisingly, the cruise was canceled and authors never got refunds).

Ivery was notable for her attempts to intimidate dissatisfied clients and people who attempted to expose her activities. Authors were told that she would “blacklist” them so that publishers wouldn’t look at their manuscripts. Writer Beware staff received death threats (bizarrely, Ivery also claimed at various times to be our agent).

She was also adept at fabricating outlandish excuses to explain her habitual nonperformance. For instance, in the aftermath of 9/11 she variously claimed to have been “seriously burned” in the disaster, or to be in mourning for relatives who’d been killed. To explain nonpublication of paid-for books, she claimed that “dozens” of manuscripts had gone down with Flight 93. She had numerous heart attacks. She frequently got cancer. As both Martha and Kelly, she died several times. Of course, with so much to remember, once in a while she got her lies mixed up. One pesky author, shocked to learn of Martha’s sudden and tragic demise, was later taken aback to receive a phone call from her.

In 2001, as a result of a large number of author complaints (and lobbying by Writer Beware), a criminal investigation into Ivery’s activities was launched by the FBI. Writer Beware assisted the case agent in the investigation, sharing documentation and contacting victims. Ultimately, nearly 300 victims were identified.

Under pressure from the investigation and dogged by increasing public knowledge of her scammery, Ivery decided to fold Press-Tige Publishing. On June 19, 2002, she filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (if granted, a Chapter 7 petition results in liquidation). At her first bankruptcy hearing on July 26, Ivery testified under oath that all the authors listed on Schedule F of her bankruptcy petition had canceled their contracts with Press-Tige. This was a lie. Additionally, many authors’ names had been left off the creditors’ list.

She also admitted that her other publishing venture, New Millennium Publishing, had obtained contracts from Press-Tige, and that she was New Millennium’s sole employee. “Craig Roussan”, supposedly editor-in-chief of New Millennium, was yet another manifestation of her mania for aliases. Ivery claimed she’d met the real Craig Roussan on the Internet, and paid him $200 in cash for the right to use his name.

Ivery didn’t provide any of the documentation that she was directed to bring to the hearing. Ordered to present it at a second hearing on August 20, she again failed to produce the material, and again perjured herself on a number of issues. She also admitted that much of the testimony she’d offered at the previous hearing was perjury–including the story about Craig Roussan, which, it turns out, was complete fabrication. The name was Ivery’s own invention.

Not one to let a little thing like business liquidation get in the way of hoodwinking authors, Ivery continued to be active throughout the bankruptcy hearings and for some time afterward–sending release forms to Press-Tige authors, contacting authors to harass them and demand yet more money, and soliciting business under a number of aliases, including O’Donnell Literary Services, Creek Lane Literary Agency (for which she used the name of her daughter, Sheryl Montanye), and Joseph Wilson Associates (for which she used the name of a Press-Tige author who’d been especially vigorous in demanding accountability). She also dabbled in real estate scammery, and in a scheme involving racehorses (thankfully, without success).

By December 2003, however, when the judge in the bankruptcy case signed an order to close administration of the estate, abandon all property, and revert all authors’ rights, she had given up her attempts at self-employment, and taken a job as a signal flagger with the New York State Department of Transportation.

Meanwhile, the criminal investigation continued. On September 26, 2002, a federal search warrant was served on Ivery and the offices of Press-Tige. Many boxes of material were removed from the premises, but no arrest was made. There then followed a long and frustrating hiatus in which the case was repeatedly shunted aside. At last, in the fall of 2005, Ivery was indicted on 15 counts of mail fraud and acts against the United States as a principal in a conspiracy, one count of improper use of an electronic access device (legalese for “credit-card fraud not involving the mails”), and one count of false sworn testimony in a bankruptcy proceeding. In December 2005, she pleaded guilty to all 17 counts.

After several postponements, Ivery appeared for sentencing in Syracuse, New York on Thursday, November 29, 2006. Her lawyer argued for probation rather than jail time, pleading serious mental illness, but the prosecution’s psychiatrist, while acknowledging some degree of mental imbalance, did not agree that this prevented Ivery from distinguishing right from wrong.

The judge saw it the prosecution’s way, sentencing Ivery to 65 months in Federal prison, plus 3 years’ probation. Ivery was also required to pay restitution to her victims, at the rate of 10% of everything she earns or $100 per month, whichever is greater. Since the total restitution amount is $728,248.10 (representing her “take” from nearly 300 victims), this is more symbolic than anything else.

Ivery’s sentencing closed a chapter not just for her victims, but for Writer Beware. We’d been tracking Ivery since our inception, and were deeply involved in providing evidence and identifying victims. Our hope was that the investigation and conviction would serve as a precedent for the prosecution of other literary scammers; sadly, that has not turned out to be the case.

• Martha Ivery’s indictment. As usual with indictments of this sort, only a fraction of Ivery’s fraud is included: just sixteen of her nearly 300 victims, $55,000 of her take of three quarters of a million dollars, and one of nine documentable instances of false sworn testimony before the bankruptcy trustee. Even so, it’s worth reading, for a concise window into the way literary scams work.
• Writer Beware’s Ann Crispin attended Ivery’s sentencing, and blogged about it here and here.
• Writer Peggy Tibbets’ experience with Martha Ivery in both her identities.
• From the SeeingGreene blog: The Martha Chronicles, a fuller account of Ivery’s wacky shenanigans.

Melanie Mills, a.k.a.Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Lisa Hackney

In late 2000, Writer Beware began to receive reports of a new literary agency: M.W. Mills Literary Agent, of Myrtle Beach, SC, run by a woman named Melanie Mills. The agency charged a $350 upfront fee, and required clients to provide their own query letters (a marker for an unprofessional agent, even if not a fraudulent one). Later, it implemented a paid editing scheme, whereby Mills’s own editing services were offered to clients based on a false promise of publisher interest. Editing costs ranged from $800 to more than $1,500.

In 2003, Mills announced a writers’ conference to be held over Memorial Day weekend in Myrtle Beach. Writer Beware staff was not only invited, but offered an honorarium of $1,000 apiece–we found this pretty amusing, since Mills was well aware that we were watching her, and had several times written us angry letters denouncing our warnings.

In early May, the conference was abruptly canceled with no reason given. A reschedule date was promised, but never provided. Then, in June, clients of M.W. Mills were shocked and grieved to learn that their agent had been killed in a car crash in Germany. The agency was closed down; clients were released from all obligations.

Writer Beware was skeptical. There’d been signs that the agency was in trouble, and this wouldn’t be the first time a questionable agent had attempted to duck financial obligations and angry clients by faking her own death. Mills’s con games hadn’t been limited to literary scamming, either: according to the North Myrtle Beach Police Department, which Writer Beware contacted on a tip from an victim, she’d also been involved in eBay auction scams and real estate rental scams. Alive or dead, though, she’d bowed out of the scam agent biz, and we figured we’d heard the last of her.

We were wrong.

In August 2003, we began to receive reports of a writers’ conference scam in Banff, Alberta. The conference’s organizer, a woman named Elisabeth von Hullessem, had announced a lavish event, accepted money from would-be participants, then canceled the conference and absconded with the proceeds. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police caught up with her in British Columbia on Oct. 30, arresting her on seven counts of fraud, two counts of false pretenses, and one count of theft. She was hauled back to Alberta to stand trial.

When news of the Banff scam first broke, Writer Beware was struck by the similarities to Melanie Mills’s fake writers’ conference in North Carolina, and also by how similar the writing style of the solicitation letters sent out by Elisabeth von Hullessem were to correspondence we’d seen from Melanie Mills. After Hullessem was arrested, we contacted the RCMP to inform them of our suspicion that Hullessem and Mills were the same person. They were already investigating the South Carolina connection, but we were able to fill them in on Mills’s activities there and also to put them in touch with the North Myrtle Beach police detective in charge of Mills’s case.

In return, they told us that Mills’s/Hullessem’s real name was Lisa Hackney, and that she was wanted in Arkansas on six charges filed in 1999–including battery in the first degree, aggravated assault (Hackney allegedly attempted to run her mother over with a car), theft, possession of stolen property, passing bad checks, forgery, and failure to attend court. She’d spent 28 days in jail in Arkansas and then jumped bail, relocating first to Missouri and then to South Carolina, where she began her career as a literary scammer.

Lisa Hackney was able to broker a plea bargain in answering the charges in Canada, and was sentenced to time served (less than a month in custody awaiting her hearing) in exchange for a plea of guilty. She promptly went to ground, and–except for a bizarre posting on eBay, in which she attempted to auction off a copy of her vanity-published, semi-autobiographical novel Sins, plus “lunch with a fugitive author” for $10,000–appeared to have vanished for good.

But the saga continued. On March 23, 2004, Hackney was arrested in Victoria, British Columbia on an outstanding Canada-wide warrant of extradition. The arrest was accomplished by the Victoria Police Strike Force with the assistance of the RCMP Major Crime Unit, on a tip from a pair of Victoria realtors. Apparently Hackney had contacted the realtors, claiming to be best-selling author “Melanie Mills”, in town to purchase a multi-million-dollar estate. The realtors agreed to work with her, but were suspicious enough to do an Internet search, which turned up warnings about her on the Writer Beware website.

While in jail, Hackney made an apparent suicide attempt, and subsequently claimed amnesia. A brief psychiatric assessment was ordered, and the extradition hearing was held over until April 1. On that date, with Hackney still claiming not to know where or who she was, the judge ordered a full-scale psychiatric evaluation, which concluded (surprise!) that her amnesia wasn’t genuine.

On January 7, 2005, a Supreme Court judge in British Columbia ruled that Hackney should be extradited to Arkansas to stand trial on the charges she fled in 1999. Hackney fought extradition, but the following December she was delivered by US marshals to Arkansas and transported to Fayetteville, where she was officially booked into the Washington County Jail on Dec. 22, 2005, her 51st birthday.

She pleaded guilty to all six charges, and was sentenced to two prison terms in the Arkansas Department of Correction, one of 15 years and one of 10 years, to run concurrently. All but 23 months of the 15-year sentence was suspended, and all but 22 months of the 10-year sentence was suspended, and she was credited with the 23 months she served in Canadian jails awaiting extradition. She was deported back to Canada, where she held citizenship–but there was nothing barring her from returning to the USA, which she quickly did. The last Writer Beware heard of her, she was living on the West Coast and calling herself Roswitha Elisabeth Melanie (Remi) Mills-Hackney, and trying to market her memoirs.

The above only scratches the surface of this weird and twisted saga. There’s a much more detailed (and far more humorous) account at Writer Beware’s blog.

PublishAmerica / America Star Books

Maryland-based author mill PublishAmerica opened its doors in 1999. Over the course of the next fifteen years, Writer Beware received hundreds of complaints, reports, and advisories about PA/ASB. Hundreds–possibly thousands–of other complaints appeared online (you can see examples here and here), making the company notorious under both its names.

Bad experiences described by authors include page proofs and finished books full of errors, books bound in the wrong covers, books with chapters from other books interpolated, books that fell apart as they were being read, ordered books that never arrived or that took months to arrive, exorbitant book prices and shipping fees, production delays, royalty irregularities, and serious difficulty communicating with staff. Where communication did occur, PA/ASB was famous for its rude, condescending, bullying, and outright abusive responses to authors’ questions and concerns.

Though it boasted that it didn’t charge to publish, PA/ASB’s roots were deep in vanity publishing. A successor to Erica House, a pay-to-play publisher founded in the mid-1990’s by PA’s co-founder Willem Meiners, PA’s business model closely followed the vanity template, with minimal editorial gatekeeping, little or no editing or marketing, and a huge range of fees for “extras” like expedited processing, changes in proof, and useless (but expensive) promotional “opportunities” (many examples can be seen here). PA/ASB also often demanded payment from writers who requested termination of their contracts, and ceaselessly bombarded authors with solicitations and incentives to purchase their own books (here’s a particularly egregious example, in which PA/ASB claimed to be able to bring books to the attention of J.K. Rowling; this one actually got PA/ASB in trouble).

In 2014, possibly to get ahead of all the negative information online, PA changed its name to America Star Books and expanded into translations. A year later, PA/ASB spun off its pay-to-play publicity services into a sleazy new division called ASB Promotions. Writer Beware received many reports of out-of-the-blue solicitations by this entity, which also engaged in blog comment spam.

PA was the subject of a number of lawsuits by its authors, several arbitration proceedings, and two class action lawsuits (one dismissed, the other settled out of court). It also sued itself. In 2015, PA co-founder Larry Clopper sued ASB, co-founder Willem Meiners, company attorney Victor Cretella, and others for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, among other causes, with a petition for dissolution and appointment of a receiver.

After more than a year of legal wrangling, including subpoenas issued by Clopper, the parties reached a settlement, stipulating to dismissal with prejudice in July 2016. The lawsuit, however, was apparently the company’s death knell. In April 2017, PA/ASB stopped accepting new submissions and abandoned its translation program. August saw a brief last gasp, with PA/ASB abruptly announcing that it was “morphing” into a new company called Paperback Services (basically ASB Promotions under a different name, as it was owned by Willem Meiners). By mid-September, though, PA/ASB was done. The website disappeared. Authors reported bouncing emails and unanswered or disconnected phones. ASB’s print books began showing as out of stock or unavailable on retailers’ websites–though Kindle editions remained on sale.

Also in September, ASB co-founder Willem Meiners sold his house and decamped to Maine, where, as far as Writer Beware knows, he is still living.

No official announcement of ASB’s closing was ever made. Authors received no release of rights, and no payment of outstanding royalties. PA/ASB also left its creditors high and dry (among others, the State of Maryland, which had several outstanding liens on the company).

For a fuller account, with updates and many comments from ASB authors, see the Writer Beware blog.

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Writer Beware warned about PA/ASB almost from the company’s inception, and published numerous blog posts about the company. It threatened us a number of times over the years, but never followed through until March 2014, when it filed suit against Writer Beware and its staff, alleging defamation and conspiracy to disparage.

Although three staff members were named in the complaint, Victoria Strauss was the only one who was ever served, which suggests the suit’s real purpose: harassment and silencing of a notable critic.

In 2015, shortly after Writer Beware’s attorneys presented interrogatories and discovery requests, PA/ASB contacted us asking to settle. We didn’t know it at the time, but PA/ASB was being pulled apart by internal wrangles and Larry Clopper’s lawsuit, and we’re pretty sure that this, along with a disinclination to respond to our very tough questions, is why they wanted out.

In January 2016, all parties agreed to stipulate to dismissal with prejudice. There’s a fuller account at Writer Beware’s blog.

SBPRA (Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Agency) / Publish on Demand Global / Robert M. Fletcher

SBPRA–which, unlike the other companies featured on this page, is still in operation–is a predator of many faces.

Beginning life as a fee-charging literary agency in 2001, the company that now calls itself SBPRA has re-named itself multiple times,  spun off well over a dozen satellite businesses, and expanded into publishing and PR. Over the past 25 years, Writer Beware has received hundreds–perhaps thousands–of complaints and advisories of predatory business practices, including fees for literary agency services, fees for publishing, paid critique and editing referrals, and more. Other questionable practices include selling marketing services to authors, charging authors to attend book fairs, and referring clients to other branches of the business without revealing the connection.

A history:

In 2001, Robert M. Fletcher of Boca Raton, Florida began operating a fee-charging literary agency under the name Sydra-Techniques. Around 2003, the name was changed to ST Literary Agency, and then, briefly, to Stylus Agency. An editing service was added, called My Editor Is A Saint; agency clients were referred for editing to what, they were encouraged to believe, was an independent service.

Around 2005, the business became The Literary Agency Group, and the editing service was also renamed, becoming Writers’ Literary and Publishing Services Company. This name change coincided with an expansion of the company’s fee-charging agency activities, with several satellite agencies set up under the following names:

• Children’s Literary Agency
• Christian Literary Agency
• New York Literary Agency
• Poet’s Literary Agency
• The Screenplay Agency

In early 2007, the business re-christened itself once more, to Writers’ Literary Agency and Marketing Company (a.k.a. WLA or WL Writers’ Agency). Even more satellite agencies were added:

• Writers’ Book Publishing Agency
• WL Children’s Agency
• Children’s Book Publishing Agency
• WL Poet’s Agency
• Poetry Book Publishing Agency
• WL Screenplay Agency
• Screenplay Writers’ Agency
• Global Book Agency

2008 rang in yet another name change: to AEG Publishing Group. At the same time, the business expanded into vanity publishing, with two new “imprints” and a pay-to-play marketing service:

• Strategic Book Publishing
• Eloquent Books
• Strategic Book Club, a.k.a. Authors’ Edge
• Strategic Book Marketing

In 2009 the business finally abandoned its long-standing pretense that the agencies, editing service, and publishers were unaffiliated, consolidating all operations as Strategic Book Group, while continuing to use the other names more or less interchangeably.

Fast forward to 2011, and yet another name change. The business was re-titled Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, a.k.a. SBPRA (the name it still retains). It also added an “international” arm called Publish On Demand Global, a.k.a. PODG, and its editing service got a new moniker as well: Best Quality Editing Services. On web searches, most of the former names/websites were set to default to current ones, though some of the old names still appeared to be in use.

Sometime in 2013, Best Quality Editing Services disappeared, and paid editing operations were quietly folded into SBPRA itself.

SBPRA’s ambitions–if not the quality of its services–continued to grow. By 2015, PODG had cloned itself into various overseas markets (or claimed to have done so), and SBPRA was moving in on the education and translation markets, with a gaggle of websites aimed at teachers and students. In alphabetical order:

• Author Marketing Ideas (authormarketingideas.com)
• Author Services International (authorservicesinternational.com)
• Best Selling Books Rights Agency (bestsellingbooksrightsagency.com)
• Cookbook Marketing Agency (cookbookmarketingagency.com)
• ePubCo (epubco.com)
• Inquiry Connection (inquiryconnection.com)
• Inquiry Ed (inquiryed.com)
• Memoir Publishing (memoirpublishing.com)
• Professional Publishing Press (professionalpublishingpress.com)
• Publish On Demand Global Africa (publishondemandglobal.africa.html)
• Publish On Demand Global Australia (publishondemandglobal.australia.html)
• Publish On Demand Global China (publishondemandglobal.china.html)
• Publish on Demand Global India (publishondemandglobal.india.html)
• Publish On Demand Global Japan (publishondemandglobal.japan.html)
• Publish on Demand Global Korea (publishondemandglobal.korea.html)
• Publish On Demand Global Latin America (publishondemandglobal.latin-america.html)
• Publish On Demand Global Nigeria (publishondemandglobal.nigeria.html)
• Publish on Demand Global Philippines (publishondemandglobal.philippines.html)
• Publish on Demand Global Singapore (publishondemandglobal.singapore.html)
• Publish On Demand Global South Africa ((publishondemandglobal.south-africa.html)
• Rapid Illustrations (rapidillustrations.com)
• SBPKidsBooks (sbpkidsbooks.com)
• Sight Word Ebooks (sightwordebooks.com)
• The Education Publisher (theeducationpublisher.com)
• The IB Library (theiblibrary.com)
• The PYP Student (thepypstudent.com)
• The Translation Teacher (thetranslationteacher.com)

Reality seems to have caught up with these enterprises. As of 2021, most of the websites are either gone or default to the main SBPRA website. The PODG websites remain, but are badly outdated. Currently, the only active branches of the business seem to be SBPRA’s book and ebook publishing operations, and its two PR companies (Author Marketing Ideas and Author Services International).

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Warning about publishing industry predators can be risky business. On the other hand, preying on writers can get you into trouble.

In February 2008, Robert Fletcher and his company (under its then-current name The Literary Agency Group) filed a retaliatory lawsuit against Writer Beware, alleging defamation, loss of business, and emotional distress. Like the PublishAmerica lawsuit described above (as well as other legal threats aimed at Writer Beware), the intent wasn’t to proceed, but to intimidate us into shutting up.

It didn’t work. On March 18, 2009, the suit was dismissed with prejudice by the Massachusetts Superior Court, due to Fletcher’s failure to to show up for two scheduled depositions, respond to discovery, or otherwise prosecute the lawsuit.

We filed a motion to recover our legal fees and expenses. On July 31, 2009, the Court granted our motion, ruling Fletcher/TLAG’s claims insubstantial, frivolous, and not advanced in good faith (the ruling can be seen here; it’s short, but worth reading. Also see SFWA’s official press release).

In September 2009, the shoe was on the other foot when, as a result of a public consumer-related investigation, the Florida Attorney General filed suit against Fletcher, Writers’ Literary Agency and associated businesses, and several staff members, alleging deceptive business practices.

After much wrangling and numerous delays, the suit was settled in April 2014 (the judgment can be seen here). While Fletcher and the other defendants did not admit guilt, they did agree to submit to a series of conditions relating to the business practices identified in the suit, to hire an Independent Compliance Monitor to oversee implementation of the conditions, and to pay $135,000 in court costs and author reparations (an amount increased to $145,000 when they missed one of their payment deadlines).

As yet, Writer Beware has not heard from any writers who’ve received reparations, which, as far as we know, Fletcher has never paid.

There’s a full account at Writer Beware’s blog.

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