Strategic Book Group / Strategic Book Publishing / Eloquent Books / SBM

James D. Macdonald said:

What's the page, so folks can link to it?

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http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/alerts-for-writers/#Literary

- Victoria

[UPDATE: The link is now http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/alerts/#Literary -- JDM]

James D. Macdonald said:

"Robert Fletcher" -- using that name isn't helpful. Who are you, and how did you come by that document?

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+1

Being able to link that document to Fletcher would seemingly be of interest to the Florida AG, but is it illegal? It's certainly a disgust to the literary world, IMHO.

Robert Fletcher said:

Who I am doesn't matter. Where that document came from is here

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Who you are matters to me. Please PM me.

AEG Marketing Prowess

Here is their idea on marketing. They also seem to believe that the authors should set up their own book signings and marketing.
The more we post it on sites that expose AEG as a Vanity Publisher the more legitimate recognition it will get.
Point of reference
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/aeg-publishing-c240297.html


To: All

From: Robert

Re: Please help us reduce our dependence on Google
Advertising
by posting this blurb whenever appropriate.


Many of us surf the web and as we do, we might see opportunities to post the
following information about our company. If you see a place to "put us into
the list" would you please do so? (Adding a comment like, "this is the
company I work for and I am proud of what we are accomplishing" would be
nice. Of course, just posting it is fine too).


Here is the publishing version:

"Strategic Book Publishing (SBP) is a member of the Strategic Book Group
(www.StrategicBookGroup.com . Our imprints, Strategic Publishing and
Eloquent Books, have published over 1000 authors in the last twenty-four
months in all genres, including children's books. The Strategic Book Group
also includes a Literary Agency, Kindle and eBook Consulting, Writers
Services, a Book-To-Film Division, and a global foreign rights department.
When asked what Strategic does better than their competition, their CEO
states, "Frankly, our book marketing division is better than anyone's. We
are selling a ton of books for our authors in bookstores, in non-traditional
locations, and around the world. We attend the major trade shows in NY,
London, and Germany with our authors, and we are on top of all social media
and traditional marketing techniques". Our exhibit at the Book Expo in NY
was a resounding success! We had a double booth and numerous authors
attended with us. Here are some great pictures.
http://s639.photobucket.com/albums/uu112/aegpublishinggroup/?albumview=grid
For more information please visit www.StrategicBookGroup.com.

Here is the marketing version:
"Strategic Book Marketing (SBM) is a member of the Strategic Book Group
which has published over 1000 authors in the last 24 months in all genres,
including children's books. The Strategic Book Group also includes Kindle
and eBook Consulting, Writers Services, a Book-To-Film Division, and a
global foreign rights department. When asked what Strategic does better than
their competition, their CEO states, "Frankly, our book marketing division
is better than anyone's. We are selling a ton of books for our authors in
bookstores, in non-traditional locations, and around the world. We attend
the major trade shows in NY, London, and Germany with our authors, and we
are on top of all social media and traditional marketing techniques". Our
exhibit at the Book Expo in NY was a resounding success! We had a double
booth and numerous authors attended with us. Here are some great pictures.
http://s639.photobucket.com/albums/uu112/aegpublishinggroup/?albumview=grid
For more information please visit www.StrategicBookGroup.com.

Here is the Agency version.
The Literary Agency Group (www.WLwritersAgency.com,
www.WLchildrensagency.com, www.WLpoetsAgency.com,
www.WLscreenplayagency.com) is a member of the Strategic Book Group which
has published over 1000 authors in the last 24 months in all genres,
including children's books. The Strategic Book Group also includes Kindle
and eBook Consulting, Writers Services, a Book-To-Film Division, and a
global foreign rights department. When asked what Strategic does better than
their competition, their CEO states, "We are selling a ton of books for our
authors in bookstores, in non-traditional locations, and around the world.
We attend the major trade shows in NY, London, and Germany with our authors,
and we are on top of all social media and traditional marketing techniques
to spread the word about their work". Our exhibit at the Book Expo in NY was
a resounding success! We had a double booth and numerous authors attended
with us. Here are some great pictures.
http://s639.photobucket.com/albums/uu112/aegpublishinggroup/?albumview=grid
For more information please visit www.StrategicBookGroup.com.

----------------------------
Also, you will notice the move to Strategic Book Group. We are going to
slowly but surely move to that as a corporate holding company. We need a
better name than AEG, so that's where it is headed. My goal is to LOAD
GOOGLE WITH Strategic Book Group before it has a chance to get on the
negative message boards, so the more postings the better.

Ps. For every group of 5 places that you post us, we'll give you a thank you
bonus of $25. Send the URL list to [email protected] and
they will account for it there. If you want to post for hours to hundreds
of places and make a lot of extra money, that's fine with me, there are no
limits to this offer. This will be some of the best marketing money we will
spend.

Ps. If you have any other marketing or revenue producing ideas, please don't
hesitate to email me.. That's my job, revenue creation.
Rob

hmm

victoriastrauss said:

http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/alerts-for-writers/#Literary

- Victoria

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Why isn't this link active any more?

James D. Macdonald said:

Over at Eloquent Books' page, the lies start in their masthead, where they say "Eloquent Books New York, New York." All they have in New York is a mail-forwarding service. They're actually based in Boca Raton, Florida, in Bobby Fletcher's living room.

And check this out, from their page:

This is a straight up, flat out lie. It is meant to deceive and mislead. It is fraud.

Kerry, when you say,

This is another straight up, flat out lie. They looked you in the eye and lied to you. Go back to the beginnings of these threads to see the whole origin and history of Robert Fletcher, con man, and his literary scams. It's a lot of reading -- the threads here go back to 2003.

The reason Fletcher changes his company's name, and his own name, so frequently is to make it hard for you to research him.




The Hierophant.

Kerry, you're invited up to Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. We talk about a lot of things, including the business side of commercial fiction.

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There are people all over the country working for this company out of their house. They've used P.O. Addresses, home addresses and the such. Let's look at things just from that point. Yes there are reports of many employees still being owed money and reports claiming that all employees took a 50% pay cut for months because of Fletcher's advertising addiction.
He preys and capitalizes on the naive.

Posting on a complaint board is fine, but they have no power to do anything about it.

Writers who have paid good money for "services" that were never rendered should contact the AUTHORITIES and REPORT AEG/Strategic Book Publishing or Eloquent, or WL Literary Agency, or WL (whatever) Agency.

It's very simple. Go to Writer Beware. www.writerbeware.com (changes are being made to the SFWA website, so you may get "bounced" to the site, just be patient for a moment while you're transferred.)

On the first page of Writer Beware, click on the "Alert" link that is highlighted there.

This link will take you to complete contact information for the Florida Attorney General's Office. You may email them, fax them, or snail mail them. They will instruct you on what to do from there on. The investigator knows the case well, and will believe you about your experience.

That's it. Very simple. If you have lost money to this outfit, by all means follow the steps above.

-Ann C. Crispin
Chair, Writer Beware
www.writerbeware.com

The old link did work. And, rather than a 404, it should be redirected to the new page.

The latest article

Publishers weekly put this out.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6685394.html?industryid=47146

Is there a Wikipedia article on this business? I noticed there's one on PA.

From the Publishers Weekly article about AEG Publishing, Literary Agency Group, and Strategic Book Publishing :

Although PW was unable to reach Fletcher by phone, he responded to several e-mails. Fletcher defended himself, claiming that the lawsuit was “a waste of corporate resources so I killed it.” Fletcher agreed industry self-regulation is important, but asked, “What happens when a company or individual is wrongly tagged? It is... impossible to remove negative comments about a company, even if proved baseless.” According to Fletcher, his company has published more than 1,000 authors and sold 50,000 books, acting as a “blend of a traditional publisher and AuthorSolutions” wherein some manuscripts are published following a traditional model and others are published through a joint-venture subsidy program. He charges a flat rate of $895, and writers are told the cost up front.

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"Even if proved baseless"? How about "especially when well-founded"?

I notice that he's boasting of 1,000 authors and 50,000 books sold. That works out to around 50 books per author. Any real publisher would put a paper bag over their head and mumble if they had sales so abysmal. I personally have sold many more books than all of Fletcher's authors combined.

And I have reason to believe that $895 isn't all that authors generally pay.

Hmmm, at $895 per author, a thousand yields $895,000. Even after expenses to actually print some books to ship to the authors, that ought to leave some significant pocket change for Fletcher.

Oh yeah, I forgot. He has 50 alternate identities to pay.

...some manuscripts are published following a traditional model and others are published through a joint-venture subsidy program.

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The former would be Strategic Book Publishing, where the author is required to buy five copies per week at full retail price (yeah, that's real traditional...in the finest traditions of vanity presses everywhere). The latter would be Eloquent Books. Since "joint-venture" and "subsidy" are both euphemisms for "vanity," I guess that makes 'em vanity-squared.

In email to potential clients, WLA/AEG/whatever the heck its name is this week is STILL claiming that it's "working with lawyers" to counter "negative" information, and that it's confident it will "win."

- Victoria

The fans of AEG on Facebook are certainly blind to what's going on...

Fraud?

Isn't this true basis for fraud? I'm confident in the fact there are NO authors that get a free ride.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Strategic Book Publishing (SBP) is a traditional publisher for authors that have a strong marketing pitch. We pay all costs for those authors. SBP also offers innovative publishing partnership programs for authors that have published with other publishers, and for authors where the path to large sales numbers is not so clearly defined.


found right on the front page of http://www.strategicbookpublishing.com/
[/FONT]

Wait, I know this is a blatant lie. "If we choose to publish your work it will be available for sale in all major bookstores, "

They have had NO books in Barnes and Noble.. NONE Last time I checked B&N is a major bookstore...

Vanity Publisher said:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]

Wait, I know this is a blatant lie. "If we choose to publish your work it will be available for sale in all major bookstores, "

They have had NO books in Barnes and Noble.. NONE Last time I checked B&N is a major bookstore...

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That's the same weasel-wording that PublishAmerica uses. The books are available for sale. That is, if you step smartly over to the Special Order desk with the title, author, and ISBN in hand ... they'll take your credit card and order a copy for you.

"Available" isn't the same thing as "shelved," but the scammers rely on authors reading "available" and being confident that it means "shelved." Why do you think it's called a con game?

rejectME said:

The fans of AEG on Facebook are certainly blind to what's going on...

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The fans of AEG are a bunch of honeymooners. They'll figure it out, the same way the fans of PA figure it out.

Vanity Publisher said:

Isn't this true basis for fraud? I'm confident in the fact there are NO authors that get a free ride.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Strategic Book Publishing (SBP) is a traditional publisher for authors that have a strong marketing pitch. We pay all costs for those authors. [/FONT]

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That's further proof that SBP isn't really a publishing company. If you're a real publisher, a strong marketing pitch is what gets you to look at the manuscript. If the manuscript is good, you buy it.

At that point, the author's pitch ceases to matter (unless you cannibalize it for marketing copy). You're the publisher now, so you're the one doing the selling. What you'll sell is the book itself, and how good it is. What the author said when he pitched it to you could not be less relevant.

James D. Macdonald said:

The fans of AEG are a bunch of honeymooners. They'll figure it out, the same way the fans of PA figure it out.

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I can honestly say that their "Blogging Leader," Donnette Davis, did not think the truth should be shard with them. Whereas I don't know what a blogging leader is, I would be surprised if it is Mr. Fletcher himself, telling folks to spam blogs as was previously mentioned.

I really really really hope you three get your legal fees paid for, as ordered by the court.

Strategic Book Publishing (SBP) is a traditional publisher for authors that have a strong marketing pitch. We pay all costs for those authors.

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And in return for paying all costs for the author, the author agrees to buy five copies of his own book per week, at full retail. That's how that part of the scam goes.

Donnette Davis is probably a real person, a freelancer (like DeliriousGirl was), who's trying to pick up some spare cash. She'll find out too.

The people I pity are the Blogging Coaches. Unknowns, of unknown credentials and unknown skills. Bobby charges the authors money to get a Blogging Coach. Then supposedly passes on some fraction of that money to the "coach."

This is getting more interesting by the day.

The first thing that strikes me about that letter is that the writer's first language is not English. It's neater and cleaner, but reads a lot like the scam e-mails I have received from several Nigerian sources.

So a frind of mine had submitted a YA to SBP/EB, had been offered the joint venture $895 special, and kindly turned them down. She asked them to delete her mss and withdrew her submission. If not for this forum, she may very well have thought this was normal. Anyway, this was over a month ago and yesterday she got another email from "Liz" in acquisitions, which she says was a form email asking if everything is moving along as she would like with the publishing of her novel. Below is the line that I particuraly found interesting...

"If you are already working with us, please disregard this email."

Really? How sad is this?

Have your friend pass all the correspondence on to the Florida Attorney General.