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Author Identity Publishing (Authoridentity.com)

jamiehall

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Per Ingram's automated stock number (1 615 213 6803) The Palace of Wisdom has:

Total on hand: 0
Total on order: 0
Total on backorder: 0
This week's unadjusted demand: 0
Last week's adjusted demand: 0
Total sales this year: 0
Total sales last year: 11

Now for the AIP book, Shortcut:

On hand: 0
On order: 40
On backorder: 2
This week's unadjusted demand: 163
Last week's adjusted demand: 212
Total sales this year: 1,119
Total sales last year: 0

===============

I'm thinking that the problem reported by Seattle Mystery Bookshop and in PW may just be scratching the surface. 1,119 copies of an overpriced anthology that no one's ever heard of? Orders at the rate of 100-200 a week?

If even half of those were fraudulent, we're up in the dollar-loss area where law enforcement might take a serious interest.

That's a huge selling rate for what this book is. It does indeed sound like the scam was very successful. Hopefully, it was successful enough that law enforcement will be willing to look into it.

Sadly, this scam is making bookstores less willing to consider special orders and to stock books from obscure small presses. A lot of legitimate authors will suffer along with the scammer.
 

spike

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That's a huge selling rate for what this book is. It does indeed sound like the scam was very successful. Hopefully, it was successful enough that law enforcement will be willing to look into it.

Sadly, this scam is making bookstores less willing to consider special orders and to stock books from obscure small presses. A lot of legitimate authors will suffer along with the scammer.

And, unfortunately, a lot of readers. My local independent bookstore will no longer order anything without payment up front. Even though I've been ordering from them for years. They appologized, but just can't do it anymore.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Big List o' Links:

Publishers Weekly:

Writer Beware:

Trawling the 'Net:

Where the story broke
:

Various Blogs:




The book itself:

Author Identity:

Some authors whose work appeared in The Shortcut:

 
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jamiehall

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I just got a look at the cover.... eep! The photo used is nice, but the overall design is a disaster. The words are the wrong color, wrong font and placed badly too. It's just an eyesore.

Someone had enough taste to select a nice photo. They did nothing else right on the cover design.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Here's the Table of Contents:

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain


The Rising Star: The Beginning
Kevin A. Fabiano


Ghost Writer
Norm Tyrrell


Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë


The Warehouse
Amber Sperry & Alex Ocasio


Lilith in the Garden
Raven West


The Blue and the Gray
Louisa May Alcott


Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne


Growing Up
Cady Hayden


The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin


Blackness
Sabra Carpenter


The Outfielder's Crying One Last Time
Regina Henson


The Lamplighter
Dene Chaney


Permanent Twilight
Sayan Mukherjee


The Schoolboy's Story
Charles Dickens


A Glimpse of Freedom
Michele Rowlands & Annastasia McGrade


The Revolutionary
Jonathan Marcantoni


A Predicament
Edgar Allan Poe


Unconditional Love
Matt Waters


Dracula's Guest
Bram Stoker
 

James D. Macdonald

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Woo! Note:
He [Fabiano] is also one of three publishing partners who put up $250 each to buy an ISBN, create cover art, create Author Identity Press and print the book through Ingram’s Lightning Source.

So we were right, right from day one, about this guy being behind AIP. I wonder who the other two were?
 

victoriastrauss

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Another blog post from me.

I also turned up some interesting nuggets of information that strongly suggest this isn't Mr. Fabiano's first, uh, escapade. However, the connections aren't strongly enough documented for me to feel comfortable making them public.

- Victoria
 

AnneMarble

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Another blog post from me.
Thanks for the update. I've been following this story with fascination. I've posted about it on some lists I belong to in case any booksellers hadn't read of it. Just to cover all the bases...

I also turned up some interesting nuggets of information that strongly suggest this isn't Mr. Fabiano's first, uh, escapade. However, the connections aren't strongly enough documented for me to feel comfortable making them public.
You mean this story might be... stranger?!
:eek:
 

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Say it ain't so, Uncle Jim....

Mr Fabiano's guest book now has an entry from Mike Evers, who asks, "Why are you scamming bookstores across the country?" You know, when I hear writers say that their characters sometimes come to life and take over, running riot through their plots, I'm skeptical. But here it is, happening right before our eyes. Someone, quick, catch Evers and pin him down so we can all get a good look at this character-made-flesh. Or at least made virtual flesh.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Someone, quick, catch Evers and pin him down so we can all get a good look at this character-made-flesh.

Michael Evers, a striking, stylish attorney carries his New York air of self-assurance with him as he criss-crosses the countryside to formulate what will develop into a historic case.
 

Old Hack

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I just wish he'd post here....
 

James D. Macdonald

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The Shortcut, as of this morning, at Ingram:

On hand: 3
On order: 1
On backorder: 1
This week's unadjusted demand: 4
Last week's adjusted demand: 27
Total sales this year: 1,183
Total sales last year: 0
 

CaoPaux

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He/they renewed the domain, but there's no sign of the other anthologies or anything else new. Callin' it dead.