JustFiction! Edition / Lambert Academic Publishing / Verlag Dr. Müller

[Locusta]

My husband was contacted by this company regarding publishing his graduate thesis. I'm aware that they are POD, but they claim to provide review, printing, and an ISBN free of charge plus a small royalty to the author (although the likelihood of that ever adding up to much is really slim). Has anyone else ever worked with them? We'd like to give it a good look over before agreeing to anything.

Here's the website: http://www.vdm-publishing.com

EDIT: Nevermind. After some additional research, we've decided this is a no go.

 

[Cyia]

Be wary anytime the "publisher" initiates contact out of the blue.

 

[CaoPaux]

FYI - Writer Beware has blogged about Dr. Muller and VDM: http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/09/victoria-strauss-vdm-verlag-dr-mueller.html

 

[Writer14]

JustFiction! Edition / Lambert Academic Publishing

I signed on to facebook today and saw they had MESSAGED ME. Here is the message I was sent:

"Dear Ms Montana,

I am writing on behalf of a brand new international publishing house, JustFiction! Edition.

In the course of a web-research I came across a reference of your manuscript To Ruin A Recovery and it has caught my attention.

We are a publisher recognized worldwide, whose aim it is to help talented but international yet unknown authors to publish their manuscripts supported by our experience of publishing and to make their writing available to a wider audience.

JustFiction! Edition would be especially interested in publishing your manuscript as an e-book and in the form of a printed book and all this at no cost to you, of course.

If you are interested in a co-operation I would be glad to send you an e-mail with further information in an attachment.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Evelyn Davis
Acquisition Editor

Just Fiction! Edition is a trademark of:
LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG
Dudweiler Landstr. 99
66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

Phone: +49 681 3720-310
Fax: +49 681 3720-3109

Email: e.davis[at]justfiction-edition. com
www. justfiction-edition. com

Register court/number: Handelsregister Amtsgericht Saarbrücken HRA 10752
Identification Number (Verkehrsnummer): 12917
Partner with unlimited liability/Persönlich haftende Gesellschafterin:
VDM Management GmbH
Register court/number: Handelsregister Amtsgericht Saarbrücken HRB 18918
Business Registration No.: C07072290
Managing directors/Geschäftsführer: Dr. Wolfgang Philipp Müller, Christoph Schulligen, Esther von Krosigk"




I'm curious to how legitimate they are. If they might be a vanity press or just a scam. Also, it's worth noting that when I looked up more online, I was directed to a page on Inkpop.com where a few members were also messaged with similar things.

Comments? Opinions? Facts?

 

[priceless1]

Legit publishers don't troll for authors. Might think about finding a publisher/agent who has a verifiable track record.

 

[CaoPaux]

JustFiction! Edition: https://www.justfiction-edition.com/site/home/10

Lambert Academic Publishing: https://www.lap-publishing.com/

Leaving aside the fact you don't want to work with a publisher who spams writers for submissions, it looks like a bog-standard e/POD author mill with online "distribution" only.

Also, from their FAQ:

JFE pays a royalty fee of 10% of the publisher’s proceeds for a print book and e-book. What does this mean?

For many publishers, the authors of monographs are required to make (direct or indirect) payments to the publisher before the publishing process begins. Printing cost allowances, for example, or clauses that oblige the author to purchase a certain quantity of their own book(s) from the publisher are not uncommon. We have chosen to do things differently, and do not ‘pass the buck’ on to the authors (directly nor indirectly) for the costs of printing their work(s). Thanks to a streamlined workflow combined with other efficient practices, we are in a unique position to grant our authors an outstanding royalty fee. However, it is wise not to think that the publication of your monograph will make you rich, but having your own book is priceless.

 

[Anne Lyle]

10% royalties for not much more than you could get from Lulu or CreateSpace? I don't think so!

 

[priceless1]

And the mighty Cao strikes again.

 

[Deleted member 42]

LAP is best avoided:

http://www.lisaspangenberg.com/it/2...ublishing-ag-co-kg-and-vdm-verlag-dr-mueller/

 

[Writer14]

I didn't think it was legitimate either, but I also wanted to get verification from a source (Absolute Write Water Cooler) that I consider trusted. Thank you for such quick response. I'll forward this to everyone else who has questions.

 

[victoriastrauss]

Another name for this outfit: VDM (Verlag Dr. Mueller). Author mill, notorious for soliciting students and academics.

- Victoria

 

[CaoPaux]

Ha! I thought the site layout was familiar. Merged with VDM.

 

[Another]

Get Ready: A Book About You by a Robot (merged into VDM thread in BR&BC)

From the 60’s to 80’s, I once was a rock climber in Yosemite when the sport was thought crazy and done by few. I did many first ascents, wrote about them in old Sierra Club publications, the American Alpine Journal and several climbing magazines. I considered the writing a labor of love complementing my labor of love on granite walls. Reader audiences were a small but avid group of climbers. A few years ago, I created a non-commercial website telling some history of the early ascents and providing copies of several old magazine and journal articles with permission from the original publishers. I copyrighted the site. It’s been a fun way to stay in touch with new and old climbers and share tales and trends. Also a few years ago, I found a Wikipedia page on me as a climber upon which I weighed in and modified along with others who work on such pages at Wik.

A few days ago, I googled myself and found I as a rock climber was the subject of a book published by Lambert Surhone of VDM Publishing who, without contacting me, had simply copied big chunks of the Wikipedia information and my website, put the material between book covers and was selling it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble sites. I then ran into a NY Times article by Pagan Kennedy who, like me, was surprised to find he too was subject to a VDM book titled “Pagan Kennedy” priced at $50. He did some digging and found VDM “extrudes thousands of paperbacks every year using content available without costs on the Internet.” VDM puts a notice on the book saying the content comes from “high-quality content by Wikipedia articles.” After some effort, Mr. Kennedy did talk directly with VDM people and found they only sold 3,000 wikibooks last year, but Amazon claims Surhone has written or edited more than 100,000 titles, meaning you too soon could be the subject of a VDM publication if you are featured in wiki land. Perhaps most strange, as Kennedy looked over some of the books (not cheap, turns out), he found the mind of a machine at work in titles and errors not typical of human editors. His conclusion: VMD uses robots to compile its books.

Here’s the link to the NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/b...thors.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=pagan kennedy&st=cse

I have yet to order the book on me. I wonder how the robots did transcribing my wiki and web page material. Perhaps I could get a complimentary copy if I could get through the robots at VDM to a person, who I would inform, “Might have been nice to be contacted for permission to do the book on me.” And, “O, by the way, my website asks not to duplicate anything without permission.” An attorney friend suggest I should send them a cease and desist order and probably have grounds for a suit, but I never had any intention of doing a book on me and my days on the walls, and if the robots took what already was in cyberspace and pretty accurately put it on paper, why should I care? Of course others may feel differently, especially those with presence in cyberspace who are considering memoirs at least in part for their own return on sales.

And then there’s the bigger question: will robots someday write wholly new books instead of just compile them from existing material?

Anyone been subject to an unauthorized book, robot made or not? Is what I’ve experienced a trend known to readers here? What implications do you see?

 

[Drachen Jager]

It's just a dumb scam. Another good one is to buy rights to an out-of-date how-to manual, like 'how to buy a used car' that nobody wants for $100 or so. Buy twenty of them. Every day, you do up cover art, re-fit titles, and update several of those books and post them on Amazon as 'new titles'. Cycle through them all until you get back to the start. If each one sells 10 copies or so you're rolling in the cash pretty quickly.

This is basically the same thing. Recycle useless or easy to find information and call it a 'book'. I'm sure they do quite well for themselves.

Will computers ever write a book worth reading. No. Certainly not in our lifetimes. Just look at the IBM Jeopardy playing computer, Watson's outtakes. Even with a closely defined set of parameters that sucker made some really dumb answers. Answers too stupid for a human to even consider. So, even writing a book would be impossible, but coming up with novel and original ideas? Forget it.

 

[Another]

VDM Continued

I gather VDM is, as Victoria states, an “author mill,” meaning: no editing or proof reading, no marketing, high sales price for them, and minimal compensation to the author. Now with my experience, we might conclude they are something more than a mill. Contrary to the criticisms on the thread about VDM “soliciting authors” or “trolling” for them, I was never contacted by VDM for any sort of permission before material from my website and pages about me on Wikipedia simply were copied and slammed into a book. So now we’ve moved from sleazy and scummy to downright illegal use of copyright material, at least in the case of my website (I don’t know how Wikipedia handles such issues).


It’s worth noting here the author of the article at the NY times I referenced (Kennedy) was able to make contact with VDM and get a response. And, looks like the author of the article at the Medievalist post link (Lisa Spangenberg) even got their work removed from the company catalog. I will ponder contacting VDM too. Perhaps I can learn something of their policy about contacting the subjects of their books, especially in light of potential copyright issues. Perhaps if they get enough heat and bad press, it will give them pause. Perhaps not. If I learn anything new, I’ll post here.

Overall, any readers of this thread now should see enough to avoid the place, and to monitor anything the reader/writer puts up in cyberspace to be used by the likes of VDM.

 

[IceCreamEmpress]

I then ran into a NY Times article by Pagan Kennedy who, like me, was surprised to find he too was subject to a VDM book titled “Pagan Kennedy” priced at $50.

Pagan Kennedy is a woman.

But, yeah, these "content harvesting" pseudo-publishers are a real problem. The science-fiction superstar C. J. Cherryh just sent out a message to her fans about how it's affecting her.

(A different pseudo-publisher in Cherryh's case.)

 

[Another]

Ice Cream,

Thanks for the correction and link.

"Content harvesting pseudo-publishers" sure captures the VDM I'm coming to know. Maybe we need a thread on them, or probably there are several already if I search around. Ideas for keywords?

 

[Another]

"Harvesting Wikipedia" and beyond

And here is the key paragraph in link by Icecream, just to make the issue as explicit as possible:

"... this company called Hephaestus Books, which has harvested Wikipedia, and then published the Wikipedia articles as her book. Several of her books. Hephaestus Books has no rights to publish anything of hers, and they haven’t. What they are doing is scamming readers."

So looks like searching Cooler and Google for "harvesting Wikipedia" and "copyright pirates" and the like would be a start for those interested.

 

[Chumplet]

I just received an email from these people today for my WIP, which isn't completed and only the first few chapters are posted in Book Country. I wonder how they managed to see it? Do they trawl through Book Country? I'll ask Colleen.

 

[AphraB]

A co-worker published his book with this outfit. Breaks my heart. However, it might benefit him professionally so I just keep my mouth shut.

 

[Colleen Lindsay]

"I just received an email from these people today for my WIP, which isn't completed and only the first few chapters are posted in Book Country. I wonder how they managed to see it? Do they trawl through Book Country? I'll ask Colleen."

Hi Sandra -

Thanks for letting me what's going on. I'm extremely concerned that this scam publisher has your email address, as it is not published on the site anywhere (you don't have it in your visible bio, correct?). If you can please forward the email they sent you, I would really appreciate it. In the meantime, I'll post a warning on the Book Country Discussion Forum as well. Send the email to my Gmail address as I am in Georgia for the holidays: [email protected].

I'm very sorry to hear about this!

If anyone else is also getting these emails, can you please let me know as soon as possible?

Thanks!

Colleen Lindsay
Book Country community mananger

 

[Chumplet]

Okay, Colleen. I sent it.

 

[CaoPaux]

Updating link: http://www.vdmpublishinggroup.com/

And Wikipedia has a lovely list of VDM's imprints, subsidiaries, and dbas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing

 

[triceretops]

Yeah, got spammed today from this outfit.

 

[AussieBilly]

WoW! Where do these types come from? Yeah, they are anxiously awaiting for my manuscript. Doesn't that make the old heart beat faster? My question is the same as others on this thread; how did they get my email address? how did they know I was in the last stages of a WIP? Boy, the greedy procreate too fast to keep ahead......
Take care, people ... and keep writing!