Lanico Enterprise / Lanico Media House (formerly Living Waters Publishing Co.)

allabouttheindustry said:

I was emailed a copy of this order... not an injunction as she stated, but it was exactly what she said.

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It can't be exactly as she said, can it now? She lied when she claimed to have an injunction, no?

Her attorney, Mr. Fletcher, has drawn up her official paperwork, and further paperwork has been drawn up and prepared to file legal action.

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Is she planning to revisit the Internet to correct her lies or is it okay that she claims to have an injunction when she didn't have one and knew it all along? Including the lie that her company is not a vanity press?

But, we are not a vanity press!

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Your last post in this thread claimed to be quoting her exactly and she says this.

Living Waters does do vanity publishing.

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Because most of her angst seems to stem from the discussions about her company being labeled a vanity press, I thought I’d ask what she claims today?

This woman has more than 100 emails from people who support her, reporting back to her about these groups, etc. In the letter, she doesn't necessarily request their be no discussion. It says that all the facts be discussed.

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And those facts are being discussed and will continue to be discussed so long as she operates a publishing company. Or companies, in her case. That's what these threads are for, Terry.

It's a letter or is it a cease and desist request?

<snip> I've already volunteered to be a witness for her against some of the things I personally witnessed that were false accusations, things that were supposedly written by her but were not.

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If she goes before a judge and he finds merit in a case for issuing a preliminary injunction, right? Just making it very clear what you are saying, because she has already stated on the Internet that she already has an injunction. Which, according to you is not true, right? In other words, she lied.

ALL of her clients are ready to stand up.

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Every single one? You've got documentation to back this, of course?

It saddens me that you guys are not discussing anything that would help a new author. You are confusing them. I've gotten emails from 17 people who've been to this site and are just confused. They don't see how you guys can call the business a scam and show no proof of anyone they've ever defrauded.

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Once again, you are making things up as you go along. Re-read this thread.

<snip> One last thing: to bring up her past with being raped and molested was very LOW. You guys lost credibility when you did that.

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I believe I am the only one that mentioned her being raped. I said nothing about her being molested but as usual, you just make things up as you go along. This is what I said.

I realize and respect that she has had a troubled past, that she was raped, had her son at 17, and then found God. And that her faith sustains her. But this doesn’t alleviate the fact that she is running a business that could ruin some very good books and cause the writers of those books to stop writing.

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Where do you see the word molested? It quite clearly shows I respected her troubled past and that I respected her faith. This is being low?

She uses her past and her faith to try to provide credibility for her company. Having a good heart and strong foundation of faith are not things that top the list of reasons why a writer should sub to a publishing company. However, she doesn’t provide any information as to her credentials and experience in the publishing world. Why is that?

She has quite a few emails behind that. This forum has always been about facts. Now, it's a witch-hunt. There are two people, from my research, that I know shouldn't want any parts of a witch-hunt: Victoria and Terie. Also, Aidana did try to come back into the room. Lacresha never did.

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It isn’t a witch hunt. LWPC is being treated the same way any other new, unknown publisher is treated in these threads. They are scrutinized in order to determine what their business model is and what they can offer writers. Why? So writers can make informed decisions as to whether or not they wish to be published by the company. Quite simple, no?

Aidana is a member of AW? When did she try to come back? When did she ever post?

Cease-and-desist letters
A cease-and-desist letter is a letter… <snip>

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If you had read this thread, you would realize we know what a cease and desist letter is. Apparently, that is what LWPC has sent to P&E, no? Again, will she return to the sites and correct her lies about the injunction or will she just ignore the lies?

Unfortunately, Terry, you continue to make things worse for this publisher. If that is possible. It’s apparent you know little about the real world of publishing and are defending this company because you have a positive personal relationship with the owner and you have a book being published by LWPC. Understandable, but it doesn’t negate the facts.

allabouttheindustry said:

Thanks for pointing out a fee when you have no clue what you are talking about. She paid nothing. Brenda is a welfare mom and all of her manuscripts were accepted freely, sponsored by a volunteer, not with money, but by signing. Do your research before you WRITE!

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So they charge some people but not others? How do they determine this and why doesn't it say that on their website? And what does "sponsored by a voluteer, not with money, but by signing" mean? Signing what? Sponsoring what?

allabouttheindustry said:

This forum has always been about facts. Now, it's a witch-hunt. There are two people, from my research, that I know shouldn't want any parts of a witch-hunt: Victoria and Terie. Also, Aidana did try to come back into the room. Lacresha never did.

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Gosh, I missed this before. Must've got lost in Terry's verbiage. (Yeah, the dictionary definition, not colloquial usage.)

Lacresha has publically implied that I am a liar and privately called me one for my statement to the Yahoo group I moderate that at least one of the representatives of LW rejoined the group under a different identity. (I do, BTW, have hard evidence of the fact.) And now here's Terry stating that what I said was true.

Interesting, ain't it?

Terie said:

Gosh, I missed this before. Must've got lost in Terry's verbiage. (Yeah, the dictionary definition, not colloquial usage.)

Lacresha has publically implied that I am a liar and privately called me one for my statement to the Yahoo group I moderate that at least one of the representatives of LW rejoined the group under a different identity. (I do, BTW, have hard evidence of the fact.) And now here's Terry stating that what I said was true.

Interesting, ain't it?

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Okay, now I understand. When he referred to Aidana trying to come back into the room, he wasn't talking about AW. He was referring to your Yahoo group.

Clear as mud, it was.

Allabout. . .,

If you want to help this lady create a real publishing company then convince her to drop the subsidy program. It is only harmful to her. It will affect the quality of manuscripts submitted as published authors will have no interest in submitting.

How deep are the lady's pockets? Is she using author payments to fund her no-fee publishing? Printing a book is one thing--selling that book by the hundred-count is another.

If she is going to print many-many different titles too fast it is going to bankrupt her.

Regards,
Scott

I agree with Popeye. If this lady wants to create a Christian publishing company, great, I applaud that effort. But the subsidy publishing will only harm the company and it's reputation. A vanity publisher merely prints books the author paid for. A real or "traditional" publisher makes their profit when the bookstores pay to stock those books.

I don't believe this lady started this company with intentions to hurt anyone. I believe it's merely a lack of knowledge about how the publishing industry works.

Terry, a great deal of the problem is based on the fact that you don’t always speak the truth. As an example, when you first joined AW you said this.

One of the children's books they released in September has already sold more than 5000 copies.

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When I questioned you on this, you stated the book was this one.

The children's book I mentioned was Benjamin P. Blizzard: Welcome to Christmastown. They have meetings with 2 studios to have the book made into a Christmas special. Lacresha actually gave me the contact info so that I could verify that info.

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In checking Amazon, I find that there was only one book released in November 2007 by a Karen Nivens. This book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/097981541X/?tag=absolutewritedm-20

In checking LWPC’s scroll list of authors, I find only one author named Karen. Karen Nivens.

http://www.livingwaterspc.com/BehindtheCompany.html

But Karen says this on LWPC's blog.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5581018721746166068&postID=6864001947690471053

When I came to Living Waters in 2006, I had nearly 50 rejection slips. They accepted me into their traditional program. Now, my little baby has moved nearly 800 copies in a year. Some months are slower than others, but we don't stop pushing.

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That’s a far cry less than 5,000 copies and is very misleading to new writers looking at LWPC as a possible publisher.

Welcome to Christmastown, isn't making all those sales on Amazon. It's ranking today is about 1.7 million, that's one or two books sold since last year this time.

Regards,
Scott

Popeyesays said:

Welcome to Christmastown, isn't making all those sales on Amazon. It's ranking today is about 1.7 million, that's one or two books sold since last year this time.

Regards,
Scott

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The point being that Terry lied (or was not presented the facts) when he said the book had sold 5,000 copies. Or Karen doesn't know how many copies her book has sold. I tend to believe Karen Nivens knows she has sold "nearly 800 copies" and that Terry was exaggerating the truth in order to make LWPC look good.

allabouttheindustry said:

Thanks for pointing out a fee when you have no clue what you are talking about. She paid nothing. Brenda is a welfare mom and all of her manuscripts were accepted freely, sponsored by a volunteer, not with money, but by signing. Do your research before you WRITE!

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I was quoting someone else's statement. Perhaps you should note such things before you go about chastising someone?

allabouttheindustry said:

Victoria, she is willing to deal with you. I contacted her about it today. I've been doing further research. So, Victoria, I ask that you contact me, and I'll give you her personal email address. She said she'd answer whatever questions you have. I've already volunteered to be a witness for her against some of the things I personally witnessed that were false accusations, things that were supposedly written by her but were not. ALL of her clients are ready to stand up. It saddens me that you guys are not discussing anything that would help a new author. You are confusing them. I've gotten emails from 17 people who've been to this site and are just confused. They don't see how you guys can call the business a scam and show no proof of anyone they've ever defrauded.

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I'm sick of explaining that Absolute Write--and myself--have NOT identified Living Waters as a scam, or said that anyone was defrauded. Identifying Living Waters as an less-than-professional publishing company run by amateurs, and pointing out where its practices differ from industry norms, is not the same thing.

My contact information is extremely easy to find. If Lacresha wants to correspond with me, she is free to do so. I note, however, that when she posted in a newsgroup that I'm a member of, and I responded, she ignored me. So let's say I'm a bit skeptical about this apparent desire for dialog.

I re-opened this thread so we could talk about new developments at Living Waters, but once again, discussion is going off track. I'm giving the thread a time-out again.

- Victoria

Once again, I'm re-opening this thread for an update.

I've heard from several people that Living Waters has undertaken another posting blitz in order to promote its services--here's one example, posted by Aidana WillowRaven (who is also the subject of a thread here).

According to Aidana, "A variety of deals will be available from traditional to subsidy to self-published..." (what was that about not being a vanity publisher?) but would-be authors must act fast.

"Although I am an independent agent, but I am not soliciting for clients right now... I have been given the authority to sign up to 75 new contracts with either company in the next 24 hours."

I love the muddle of conflicts of interest, not to mention the late-night TV infomercial-style sales pressure, in this paragraph.

Aidana's posts have appeared not just in various writers' forums, but were spammed to Usenet this past weekend.

- Victoria

Woof!

- Victoria

In addition to changing their website (the vanity/subsidy charges are no longer displayed) they have also renamed their “InspireKids Network.” It is now called, “Water Lilies Network.”

http://inspirekids.weebly.com/our-magazine.html

And they're trying to take the curse off the reading fee by re-styling the publishing program as a contest.

- Victoria

The entry fee for this contest is $50 for the first submission, $25 each additional submission in any calendar year....

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Reaons #10,987 why I say "Don't bother with contests."

I am getting really pissy about reading fees being dressed up as contests. Or even just slush piles (no reading fee, no prize) being dressed up as contests. [mutter]

They are also calling for -volunteers- (!) to help them get this program off the ground-- saying they expect to be able to hire people later this year! And who is going to do this 'training' they say is available? (and will they charge for the training?)

"We are seeking 20 volunteer readers, recruiters, editors, and marketing
assistants. Training is available. During the first six months, we don't expect
the program will bring in much revenue, but we believe that it is a much needed
program for children today. We do expect to be able to hire 10 of the 20 on full
time by July, and the rest part-time by September."


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/livingwaterspublishing/message/85

Now, think about this people.

Do you want your book, something you spent all this time working on, preparing it to be the best that you could possibly make it . . .

. . . edited by a trainee volunteer editor?

If that doesn't answer some questions, I don't know what else will.

There used to be a publishing company called Imperium Proviso that charged a $95 reading fee for submissions. They had a staff of a dozen editors who made their living from those fees.

Think about that, in terms of volunteer readers and bringing in revenue.

- Victoria

James D. Macdonald said:

Reaons #10,987 why I say "Don't bother with contests."

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Contest: a fight, a struggle, or a conflict.

Each query letter is an author's own personal contest. When an agent is interested, the personal contest goes on until an author gets his/her book published. Then it is a personal contest to see how well it does against the other books that are out there. Why pay for the process by entering a made up contest?

victoriastrauss said:

Even if there were no other issues, they are expanding much too fast. They've barely put out their first books, and already they've added this kids' program and now a SF/fantasy line. This is one of the most common small press errors: they overcommit, get overwhelmed or into financial trouble--and boom! They're gone. I'll be surprised if Living Waters is still around a year from now.

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Nobody has mentioned the glaringly obvious question: who finds the time to even spend twenty hours apiece on seventy-five new authors?

Twenty hours is my *very very optimistic* estimate for the minimum time it would take to get a vanity manuscript to the printers/POD catalogue: you deal with the first contact, contract, and all the administrative stuff, you make sure the book is logged correctly, you read it though once to make sure you've got all the right pages in the right order and that you're not printing something under your name that will reflect badly on you (you might have a 'it isn't us' disclaimer, but if you put your good Christian name to some horrible filth it will *still* annoy potential customers), you plug in the writer's name and backblurb onto your predesigned cover template, you create pdfs of it and your front/end matter, you preview your files, you do book-relevant paperwork like registering the ISBN number, and you have a certain amount of author contact inbetween because you've promised to give them full control. This is the model with a minimal acquisition process (no dealing with a hundred manuscripts before finding one you want to publish), no substantial editing, copyediting, or proofreading, no interior designer that needs to be briefed, no cover designer who will produce concepts and needs to be dealt with; just a plain 'you give us the pdf and we'll get it to print' thing.

Where do they get the staff? If one person is doing this (while another is doing the acquisition and marketing and all the business-related stuff which Eats Time), a two-man team will still be busy with the new intake until some time in late 2008 - and who is going to deal with the existing authors who have needs, too? (Maybe they want a second printing, with amendments. Or they're unhappy about production quality, or distribution, they want to discuss their royalties, whatever.)

My point is that nobody, however well intentioned, can possibly justify a 75 author intake in one go unless they're a large cooperation with appropriate staffing levels, and that alone should mean that any hopeful writer eyeing them should quickly realise that this business model can't fly.

victoriastrauss said:

And they're trying to take the curse off the reading fee by re-styling the publishing program as a contest.

- Victoria

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IIRC, they've been saying that right along.

What I want to know is, are these the volunteers who will be mentoring the kids while they edit the books? After all, they do claim it will be entirely 'by kids, for kids'.

And the 75 MS? I wonder if they are hoping they'll all be vanity so they can raise money.

someone who claims to have signed with LW (and received an advance) says on this group that they think Aidana Willowraven has been 'fired'.....

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....ad/e885bb6822c31c74/01e0f97246a738b1?lnk=raot