author

Kevin's story

In June of 2004, I decided to see if the rumor that PublishAmerica would accept anything they received was true. I took 30 pages of a new children's book I was working on, and copied it over and over until it was book length. I used a pseudonym of mine for the manuscript.

I sent in the story and waited. A few days later I received an email saying they wanted an author bio. I wrote one and sent it in. A day or two later I received an email saying they wanted the manuscript. They sent me a contract for Eli Smith and the Purple Pony. I went online to my message boards and told everybody what I had done. The contract was terminated the next day.

A few months went by and I didn't think anything about it anymore. I'd proved what I had heard, PublishAmerica will print anything. At the end of September I received a letter in the mail from PublishAmericas's attorney. The letter was sent to me, the FBI, and my local police station. The letter claimed that what I had done was fraud and that something should be done about it.

That night a cop showed up at my house. When my wife asked to see his badge, he refused and told her, "If you will open the door, you can see my whole uniform." She did and he asked for me. When I went out to talk to him, he stood off towards the shadows. He told me that "I had better fix things with PublishAmerica in a week or he was going to arrest me for Deceptive Practice." He had a copy of my manuscript as well as a few printed pages from the Absolute Write and Mindsight forums. He was also driving a non-descript car.

The next day I called an attorney and asked about this. What the attorney told me was that he could arrest me for Deceptive Practice; that they can arrest you for anything, but they wouldn't be able to make it stick. Since no money had exchanged hands, it could not be Deceptive Practice. I thanked him and went about my way. A lawyer who posts on Absolute Write also said that a fake manuscript cannot be considered fraud.

As of October 2005, the cop never came back and I haven't heard from the FBI.