POD and Book Scams

A little off topic today, but scammers who utilize POD irritate me, as it just makes it more difficult for legit publishers to gain credibility. It's bad enough that there are publishers who directly reprint Google-scanned books without regard to all the errors Google makes (missing pages, poorly scanned images, etc.), but now there's a publisher who claims to "publish more than 10,000 new titles" every year, and to "specialize in publishing copyleft projects." In other words, they reprint Wikipedia articles. A few details from one guy who got scammed. (Interestingly, this publisher is "in" Mauritius. Tax haven, anyone?)

Hiatus Almost Over

I've been on a forced hiatus for about two weeks due to a computer problem, with minimal internet access until the last few days. My computer is still at the shop, but should be back up and running normally by tomorrow. Biggest concern was that one shop who was fixing a bug and reinstalling XP neglected to save my files... and weren't able to recover them. (And, of course, while I had a few books, mostly by other authors, backed up, several of my own and some reprints were not...) Fortunately, found another shop with data recovery experience, and it looks like I should have everything back. Will know by this weekend.

Looks like I'm going to need to order some new ISBNs, also. Those are expensive; was planning to buy a thousand this next time, which will last me as long as I'll ever need, but may have to stick to 100 depending on how much this computer issue is going to cost me.

Ordered an upgrade to my page layout software... Finally leaping to InDesign (years after everyone else switched over, admittedly). Hopefully will result in more professional layouts in the books.

The Heroic Milton

Sent to the printer. Collects Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

Tourmalines

Sent to the printer: The Tourmaline / The History of Mount Mica of Maine, U.S.A. Two book reprint collection (short books, comes out to about 194 pages at 5.5 x 8.5) with full color drawings of variously colored tourmalines. Color books always take a bit longer to put out, as LSI requires I get a proof copy before approving. Should be available mid-August.

On a related note, I'm trying to cut down on green cover books (as that color is supposed to be poor for sales, go figure), but I went with the mint green with pink circle, as a nod towards "watermelon" tourmaline, a very interesting mineral.