The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

I've gotten several alerts over the past week about a pirate site that's new to me (though not new: this warning was first published in September 2017): Kiss Library, where many authors are finding unauthorized electronic versions of their books.

Kiss Library differs from the typical pirate site in a couple of ways. Unlike, say, Ebook Bike, run by serial copyright thief and "information wants to be free" ideologue Travis McCrea, it doesn't simply offer pirated books for free download, but appears actually to be selling them. Also unlike Ebook Bike and other pirate sites, it seems to promptly respond to DMCA notices.

I found two of my own books listed.

I filled out the form on Kiss's DMCA page, and within minutes my books vanished from the site. I also received this email:

Awwww. How nice. They're contrite! It's not their fault! They'll pay back the illicit profits! They are so transparent about the whole thing!

Except...it's bullshit. They send the exact same response to everyone. Here's someone who got it in July:


A friend of mine got it in March. Someone else got it in 2018. Kiss seems to have concluded that it's better to lose a few listings (which can always be reinstated later) than to make waves by ignoring authors or telling them to f*ck off. It's a different strategy from the "fight everything" stance of many pirates, or those that send takedown notices into oblivion--and it's probably why Kiss, with its huge, monetized catalog of pirated books, hasn't sparked the uproar other pirate sites have.

It's been suggested that Kiss doesn't actually take down disputed books: it simply blocks the IP addresses of anyone who sends a DMCA request so they can't see that the books are still on offer. I've no idea if this is true.

Also, there's the question of whether Kiss really offers the books at all--whether it's nothing more than an elaborate phishing scheme that uses books as bait. I followed purchase links all the way to the point of providing credit card info, but I didn't dare do more. This anti-piracy service, however, did:

An interesting fact is that they actually don't even have the books they are selling! The catalog is automatically generated from indexing Amazon author pages.
We know this because we tried to buy a clients ebook out of curiosity..

— DMCA | Anti-Piracy Service | Pirat.io (@pirat_io) August 8, 2019

Exactly! This why we tried to purchase one of our authors eBooks to see if they could deliver the content.
We never received anything. -Eric

— DMCA | Anti-Piracy Service | Pirat.io (@pirat_io) August 8, 2019

So if you visit the site, be careful. Send the DMCA if you find your books, but don't try to test the system by buying anything.

Kiss's About page features a photo of smiling millennials and a Canada address. Kiss originally had a .com domain, registered in 2017 by a Gibraltar-based registrar that was shut down by ICANN this past March. Its current .net domain, which is just 6 months old, is registered to Legato LLC, a Russian company. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: An update from the anti-piracy service:

Hi Victoria, sorry for the late reply. I wanted to ask the dev and legal dpt. regarding this. The website didn't seem to be hosting any phishing or malware. Its just an elaborate scheme profiting from pirated content. We also used a dummy PayPal account for this testing. -Eric

— DMCA | Anti-Piracy Service | Pirat.io (@pirat_io) August 9, 2019

So maybe there's no content on the site--just book covers--and all they're doing is taking the money and running.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Per this Facebook post from Tamara Thorne, the Authors Guild is aware of Kiss Library and is preparing a statement on the status of the matter and steps they are taking. I'll link to or post it here when it's released.

UPDATE 8/10/19: Well, that didn't take long. Thanks to an alert commenter, I visited Kiss Library this evening and found this:


Not only have they reinstated the two books I DMCA'd (with different covers; they're both backlist books that I re-published with Open Road Media), they've added my two other Open Road backlist books, and a pair of fake books put up by a Writer Beware-hating troll a few years ago as part of a harassment campaign. Think the Kiss Library folks know about this post?

UPDATE 8/11/19: Oops, gone again (except for the two fake books that use my name). Someone is following Writer Beware!

In mid-2016, I wrote about YA publisher Month9 Books' abrupt decision to scale back its list, reverting rights to as many as 50 authors across all its imprints. Explaining the culling, Month9 founder and CEO Georgia McBride cited her own health problems, along with staffing issues and the company's "substantial growing pains" over the past six to nine months.

McBride's announcement triggered a surge of complaints from Month9 authors, who described a host of serious problems at the company, including late or missing payments (for staff as well as authors), problems with royalty accounting, delayed pub dates, broken marketing promises, overcrowded publication schedules, communications breakdowns, and harsh treatment and bullying by McBride.

According to authors and staff, these problems were not new or even recent, but had been ongoing for a long time. Why had authors kept silent? Almost every writer who contacted me mentioned their fear of retaliation--along with the draconian NDA included in Month9's contracts. I've rarely encountered a situation where authors seemed so fearful of their publisher.

Things quieted down after the initial flood of revelations, as they often do. Month9 survived and kept on publishing, though its list continued to shrink: between a high point in 2016 and now, the number of titles appears to have fallen about 50%. Apart from a handful of additional complaints in late 2016 and early 2017 (similar to this one), I didn't hear much about Month9 in the years following.

Until now. Over the past few weeks, I've been contacted by multiple writers who say they are still suffering from the same problems that surfaced in 2016: primarily, late (sometimes very late) royalty and subrights advance payments and statements (in many cases received only after persistent prodding by authors and their agents), and allegations of irregularities in royalty reporting.

The intimidation level, too, seems not to have changed. Most of the authors told me that they feared reprisal for coming forward, and asked me specifically not to mention their names or book titles. (Writer Beware never reveals names or other unique identifying information, unless we receive specific permission from the individual. That disclaimer is included on our website and in our correspondence.)

If you've been following the recent ChiZine scandal, you may be feeling some deja vu--notably, in the alleged existence of a toxic culture within the publisher that makes authors fearful and and helps to keep them silent. It's disappointing to learn that even if the issues that thrust Month9 into the spotlight three years ago have gone quiet, they don't seem to have eased. Writers be warned.


I wrote about Black Rose Writing in 2009, in connection with its requirement that authors buy their own books. Writers who submitted were asked how many of their own books they planned to buy; their response was then written into their contracts. (Book purchase requirements are back-end vanity publishing: even if writers aren't being asked to pay for production and distribution, they still must hand over money in order to see their work in print.)

Black Rose got rid of the book purchase requirement a few years later, and claimed to be a completely fee-free publisher. I had my suspicions that money might still somehow be involved, though...and as it turns out, I wasn't wrong.

I've recently learned that new Black Rose authors receive a Cooperative Marketing Catalog that sells a range of pay-to-play marketing and promotional services, with costs ranging from a few hundred dollars to four figures. For instance:


It's true that purchase is optional (though I would guess that authors are heavily solicited to buy). But reputable publishers don't sell marketing services to their authors--and in any case, much of what's on offer are things that other publishers, even very small ones, do for their authors free of charge, as part of the publication process.

That's not the only way in which Black Rose authors are encouraged to pay their publisher. Owner Reagan Rothe is a self-described "financial partner" in two additional businesses: the Maxy Awards, a high entry fee book competition that donates "a large part of every entry" to a charity (how large? No idea; that information is not provided); and Sublime Book Review, a paid review service.

Though Mr. Rothe's financial interest in these businesses is not disclosed on the business's websites, both businesses are clearly energetically promoted to Black Rose authors. On Sublime's website, nineteen of the first 20 book reviews are for Black Rose books. There's also this, from the marketing catalog (note the lack of disclaimer):


As for the Maxys, thirteen of the 17 winners and runners-up for 2019 are Black Rose books.

Mr. Rothe does admit his relationship with the businesses in this recent email to Black Rose authors--though only to afford them yet another opportunity to give him money:

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®


A couple of weeks ago, my Twitter warning about an amateur literary agent received a fairly curmudgeonly response.


Mistaking it for a serious (if misguided) comment, I responded with a thread about why it's, well, bad for an agent to lie about their credentials. Which prompted this:

Ooookayyyy then.

After a couple more exchanges in a similar vein, plus a not-so-subtle threat (I do give this person credit for knowing the difference between slander and libel), "Dr. Mudgett" flounced.


Soon after, several alert individuals messaged me to let me know that "Dr. Mudgett" isn't just a rando with an inflated sense of self-worth and a profile named after an infamous American serial killer, but one of the sockpuppets of an astonishingly prolific Twitter troll possessed of awesome vitriol and seemingly unlimited free time to indulge it.


The troll's full name is Gary S. Kadet--and though I'd never heard of him before he decided to call me out, he is well known in the Twitter writing community as someone who, via large numbers of fake accounts (most of which have been suspended by Twitter), hijacks popular hashtags like #amquerying, #mswl, and #WritingCommunity to launch vicious unprovoked attacks against writing and publishing people of all kinds, especially new writers and literary agents. So copious is his output--we're talking daily, even hourly tweets--that sometimes he runs out of new insults and has to recycle them. (Sample, if you can stomach it, the stream-of-invective narrative of his Dr. Mudgett Twitter feed.)

I'm always interested in the bizarro side of writing and publishing, and Mr. Kadet certainly seemed to fit the bill. So I put out a call for contact.


I got a perfect flood of responses. I heard from agents and agency interns whom Mr. Kadet had targeted for insults, mockery, and general harassment--especially if they were women, and in some cases after they rejected one of his manuscripts (Mr. Kadet is a [currently] frustrated novelist). I heard from writers he'd savaged for nothing more than posting positive comments about something, or announcing a book sale, or just for talking about writing. Much of his trolling seems to be of the drive-by variety, but I also heard from writers for whom he has conceived a deeper grudge--some of whom he has been stalking and attacking for years, and not just with nasty tweets, either. Some of these individuals told me that he has doxxed them, and made public things about their personal lives they would have preferred not to share. One of his targets was forced to seek help from the police.

Several people have written about their encounters with him (prompting him, in at least one case, to send a laughably bogus cease-and-desist). More personal accounts of Kadet encounters are here. Also here. In fact, he's so famous--at least, as a troll--that he has inspired a parody Twitter account. I guess that's some form of validation, right?

Sockpuppet accounts Mr. Kadet has used in the past (all deleted or suspended): @JohnnyRacetrack, @JimboRockfordPI, @JacktheTrippe11, @JacktheTrippe12, @GaryKDarkLord, @GaryKadet, @RealGarySKadet, @CastleMurder,  @MudgettMania, @MudgettRedux, @FrugSigmund, @Joe_Nesmith. @JoeChristmas6, @ImmortalGSK.

Socks he's using currently (that I know of): @JackMcVea, @KatzProserpine.

Mr. Kadet loathes a lot of people, but for one agent in particular, his hatred burns with a white-hot flame: Gina Paniettieri of Talcott Notch Literary Services. In 2018, Talcott Notch rejected one of Mr. Kadet's manuscripts, to which Mr. Kadet took extreme offense, and he has been targeting the agency and its agents ever since. In addition to a veritable tsunami of noxious tweets, promises to sue, accusations of violating his "IP confidentiality" (apparently because Gina revealed the rejected ms.), and bogus bad reviews wherever he can place them (not always successfully, since they are so demented that they get flagged), Gina tells me that he has called her home to harass her, and that he's currently demanding that she "settle" with him--i.e., pay him off--so that he'll stop.


Here's an interview with Talcott Notch agent Tia Mele about toxic writers in general and Mr. Kadet in particular.

So who is Gary S. Kadet IRL? There's not a great deal to be found on a websearch, but he did publish a novel in 2000 with Forge, and was apparently an editor with the Boston Book Review. He has lived in Cambridge, MA and Providence, R.I. Twitter isn't the only place where he has been accused of stalking.

Soon after my call for contact, Mr. Kadet's @KatzProserpine sock account DM'd me this:


Ooooh, scary! Not to be outdone by his alter ego, Mr. Kadet reached out to SFWA under his own name. Of course, he couldn't resist mentioning Talcott Notch. Also note the date: more than a week before I put this post online.


Mystery Writers of America, one of Writer Beware's supporters, received an identical "complaint" on the same date. Fortunately, both SFWA and MWA know how to handle trolls.

So what's the bottom line here--other than the bigger issue of the toxicity that flourishes on social media and the inevitability of encountering it if you're active online? I guess it's really just the familiar advice: "Don't feed trolls". Starve the energy monster. The thing with trolls is that, for the most part, it's really not personal. They don't care about you; it's your reaction they need. They thrive on your distress, and draw strength from your response. Depriving them of these things may not shut them up--they can't really control themselves--but it is probably the single most frustrating thing you can do to them.

So if you find yourself targeted by Mr. Kadet--or, indeed, if any random tweet of yours receives a nasty or belittling response from an account you've never heard of--the best possible comeback is simply to block the account and move on.

UPDATE: I learned this evening that Mr. Kadet today sent his "bad writer Strauss" message to Horror Writers Association, another of Writer Beware's supporters--and for good measure, sent it to MWA a second time. He has also weighed in in the comments here.

UPDATE 4/10/20: Sockpuppet account @KatzProserpine has reached out again on Twitter, alleging, as it often does, that Mr. Kadet has no Twitter presence...


...and claiming that it is not Mr. Kadet's sockpuppet account...

...while exhibiting Mr. Kadet's twin obsessions (Talcott Notch, nefarious "IP practices"--see Mr. Kadet's complaint about me, above).

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

When is a literary contest not a literary contest?

When its purpose is to make money for the contest sponsor. Alternatively: when its purpose is to assemble a list of likely customers.

Take the online book competition (or book literary contest, or books competition--it doesn't seem to have an actual name) recently announced by Legaia Books, a publishing and marketing scam I've featured on this blog. Here's one of the solicitation emails that are going out:


Sound tempting? Here are all the reasons to kick this "contest" to the curb.

1. Legaia is a scam. This company--which claims a North Carolina address but really operates out of the Philippines--exists to rip off authors. That's really all the reason you need to give this contest a miss...but let's move on.

2. It's a scam within a scam. Legaia's contest has all the elements of a profiteering awards program--a different kind of scam, whose template Legaia is borrowing as a way to make some quick bucks and boost its customer list. Here are the markers:

• Solicitation. See the email above.
• A fat entry fee. You have to dig into the contest guidelines to find this: $40 for entries now, $70 for entries after May 11.
• Policies designed to maximize entries. Most profiteering awards programs offer dozens or scores of entry categories, in order to attract the largest number of entrants and thus the biggest pot of entry fees. Legaia's contest doesn't have categories--but it's "open to all aspiring and established authors", which, combined with what is doubtless a sizeable email solicitation campaign (Legaia is a prolific spammer), is basically the same thing.
• Mystery judging. The prestige of a literary competition is tied, in part, to the reputability of its judges. If the judges' identities aren't revealed, you have no way to know whether they have any credits or experience that would qualify them to be judges. They could be just the contest sponsor's own staff--or no one at all. Legaia's guidelines include multiple mentions of "judges" but, in true scam contest style, no names.
• Opportunities to spend more money. This is where entrants' email addresses--which are required for entry--come in handy; non-winners will almost certainly be solicited to buy Legaia's publishing packages and other services. (Contest guidelines also invite entrants without a book cover to "call us for a professional book cover.")
• Worthless prizes. Profiteering contest sponsors avoid cutting into entry fee income by offering "prizes" that cost them little or nothing to provide. Legaia is no exception. Given that its services are overpriced and substandard, a "Free Book Publication Coupon" is more like a lump of coal than a Christmas present. The "Seal Awards" aren't actual seals--just digital images. Winners are promised a "pitch program" that will expose them to "literary offices and film productions"--despite the fact that Legaia can't cite a single "literary office" or film studio that has ever picked up a book thanks to its (likely nonexistent) efforts. As for the "Marketing Platform worth $15,000"...Legaia offers only junk marketing ("marketing" that's cheap to provide, can be sold for giant markups, and is not effective for book promotion), so the actual worth is closer to zero. 

3. You have to work. In addition to submitting "your (a) manuscript, (b) synopsis, (c) book cover (front and full)" the contest guidelines indicate that there will be a public voting phase (see #7 and #8), which means you will have to bug your friends and family and annoy your social media followers with multiple vote-grubbing posts and announcements. Additionally, you must create a "pitch to the judges" which is "one of the criteria in the second phase of the contest as indicated in Rule 8". You have the option of making a video or using Legaia's "Free Pitch Template," whatever that is; the guidelines offer no guidance on length, content, or anything else.

4. Nobody has heard of it. The supposed benefits of a contest win or placement are often touted by sketchy contests or awards as one of the benefits of entering (not to mention a justification of a big entry fee). You'll be able to tag your book as an "award-winning book" and yourself as an "award-winning author". It'll impress agents and editors! It'll bring visibility to your work! It'll increase sales!

Most contests, however, don't have the prestige or name recognition to accomplish any of that. Agents and editors are well aware of how many dodgy contests are out there competing for writers' money; "I won Grand Prize in this contest you never heard of!" is unlikely to impress them. As for readers and book buyers, how much they care about award and contest wins is an open question--especially, again, where they've never heard of the award or contest. Is it worth $40 (or $70) to you to test that question?

5. A serious lack of literacy. Both the email solicitation reproduced above and the contest pages on the Legaia website are littered with grammatical and other errors (like its many brethren--see the sidebar--Legaia is based overseas). This really shouldn't need saying, but the sponsors of an English-language contest for English-language books should be able to demonstrate a good command of English.

Any one of these factors should be enough to at least cause you to give this contest the side-eye. Taken all together, they add up to a giant, screaming red flag.

My own feeling about literary contests is that they are mostly a waste of time (even if not of money). Scams and exploitation abound in this space (if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how many posts I write about problem contests). Even where the contest is legit and doesn't have "gotchas" in its guidelines, those that can genuinely benefit your writing resume are a tiny minority. Again in my opinion, writers' time is better spent on publishing or submitting for publication.

That said...if you still are attracted by contests, there are resources on the Contests and Awards page of Writer Beware to help you research ones that won't rip you off. Also be sure to use the search box in the sidebar to search this blog for any contests I may have written about, and feel free to email me with questions.

Here’s a new holiday card design for this year! I have only a limited supply of them, but the choices on offer for Wondermark holiday cards are myriad. This year, I am not making a printed 2020 calendar. What I have done, though, is re-issued four of my previous calendars (from 2013, 2014, 2015, and […]

Although there is no 2020 Wondermark calendar per se, observant Marksman Gary T. let me know that dedicated calendar fans can make a 2020 calendar at home with the aid of: • January–February: The 2014 Wondermark calendar • March–December: Either the 2009 or 2015 Wondermark calendar It’s Leap Day this year that throws things off. SO, […]

In last week’s midterm elections, Democratic and progressive political candidates flipped red House districts, key state legislative bodies, governors’ offices, and even Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona. We’ve elected one of the most diverse Congressional classes in history, with historic numbers of women and LGBTQ representatives, including the first Muslim and Native American women […]

Gerson Monje holds up his cellphone to proudly show off his online sex shop. A red banner reading "sold out!" is plastered across half of the products.

American Revolution 2.0, which presents itself as bipartisan, has been assisted by far-right individuals – some with extremist links

Leaked audio recordings and online materials obtained by the Guardian reveal that one of the most prominent anti-lockdown protest groups, American Revolution 2.0 (AR2), has received extensive assistance from well-established far-right actors, some with extremist connections.

Related: Armed protesters demonstrate against Covid-19 lockdown at Michigan capitol

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Ryō Tsukamoto, Yuzuki Hoshimoto also join cast

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sells 11.77 million units in 1st 11 days for "best start ever"

The Magnificent KOTOBUKI film's dialogue recording completed

It's amazing that people still think that it should be common practice to demand work from artists and not have to pay them, but luckily there are times like this when they get called on their BS. The crazy entitlement and unreasonable demands just make them out to be more and more of an utter jerk that no one wants to deal with.

We try to stick to our “no more than once a week” posting pattern out of respect for your overstuffed inboxes, but I think you’ll see why we had to deviate. Jim’s publisher has revealed Chris McGrath’s gorgeous cover art for the second of the two Dresden novels coming out this year, Battle Ground! Battle [...]

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/kalendervorschau

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/kalendervorschau