Hello folks,
I am an established writer with a (legit) bestseller and book contracts with big publishing houses. Several years ago I discussed the possibility of ghostwriting a book through the Penn Group. What can I say--times were rough and I needed a few extra bucks. I could go on for hours about the Penn group, but I'll try to stick to the basics. (Full disclosure: After they attempted to ruin my life, I got a little obsessive and I have to admit to knowing way, way too much about their shady operation.)
The Penn Group is the vanity project of the Bailyn brothers. Evan fancies himself a writer and would like to have some literary cred rub off on him. His brother Brad is a lawyer who had little luck with his own firm, and is now in-house with the Penn Group. The third brother, Russell, is a financial planner and the author of Navigating the Financial Blogosphere. They make their real money from Cartoon Doll Emporium--and I do mean real money. They live the high life in New York due to the profits from their creepy tween website. The ghostwriting operation is not a huge money maker, but it's where Evan can go to imagine himself a legitimate part of the NY publishing scene.
I'll spare you the details of my own ordeal, in part because I don't want to get sued yet again. Evan and Brad served me with papers twice. These cases were entirely baseless and went exactly nowhere. Since Brad is a lawyer, filing lawsuits costs these boys nothing, and they use lawsuits as a means of extortion and blackmail. Brad is enamored of the power of his own law degree and thinks that he can bully anyone around with the threat of lawsuits. They used lawsuits to try and get me to sign a grossly ridiculous contract, and they also suggested that I might be able to buy my way out of a lawsuit for a few thousand bucks. On the merits their cases were ridiculous; poor writers without great access to lawyers are in danger of being steamrolled by them.
Evan uses a number of pseudonyms. It's been a few years since I had any contact with them, but at the time he was going by Sandy Resnick. He also claims to be Dr. Robert Sparrow, a world renowned, Yale-educated child psychologist. I checked with Yale and they have never graduated anybody by that name.
I visited their offices in New York. They are modest and have only a few people working there, not the buzzing hive that Penn would like to suggest. Evan is charming and persuasive. Their website is slick and well-linked, coming up high in Google searches. I'm embarrassed to admit that the clean design of their website tricked me into believing that they were a legit enterprise.
Through their essay writing and college admissions websites they prey on the fear and naivete of youngsters. Through Penn group they prey on the hopes of wannabe writers, and also established writers looking for a little extra income. I'm not trying to toot my own typewriter here, but I realized quickly that I was a much bigger fish than they were accustomed to landing. When I declined to work for them under exploitative conditions, they sued me. Pay close attention to that sequence: I did no work for them and I never so much as began contract negotiations with them, and still they sued me.
I have a big, fancy NY agent, and this fact was one of the most attractive things about me in Penn's eyes. Penn has no pull with agents and publishers, and they were counting on me to pimp projects out to my agent and publisher. They do not run in legit literary circles by any stretch. Please trust me when I say that no good writer works for them for for long, if ever. They most emphatically do not have a stable of quality writers at their disposal. (And on the subject of Rosie's book: that ghostwriter had a longstanding relationship with Rosie and had written for her BEFORE making the acquaintance of Penn Group. The Rosie books did not flow from Penn in any way.)
The lawsuits eventually resolved in my favor and I made the Bailyn boys look foolish, however it was far from painless. I had legal expenses, and more importantly I had a lot of sleepless nights and elevated blood pressure readings. The hardest thing to swallow is how well they're doing with their tween dress-up site; if only good was rewarded and evil punished...Ah well, maybe there is something cosmic that will come around and snap them in the behind one day.
These are young, greedy, amoral boys. They are children. I have spoken with enough people who have been burned by them to know that working with them will only result in pain. I wouldn't be surprised if Evan responded here; he's smooth talking and he comes across as eminently reasonable. I wouldn't wish him on anyone. There is no reason to get mixed up with him and I wish you all the best of luck on your own projects. Cheers.