My-E-Book.com

[AnneMarble]

Someone mentioned this one to me because the site didn't smell right to him. The URL is
www.my-e-book.com/.

He noticed this in the FAQ:
"What if I can't come up with 100 names of friends, family, and colleagues?

You can send at least the ones you have.
The more addresses you have - the better promotion of your book we can do.
Send all you can think of now, and add over the course of the year !"

100?! Wow, isn't that even more than PA?!

 

[RaechelHendersonMoon]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

I think it's at the very least frustrating that there is no way to get any information without signing up with their service. All of the documents mentioned in the FAQ (for example the "Example Associate Agreement.") aren't linked from the FAQ. I'm presuming that you have to be a member to read it.

The language of on the sign up page gives me the same feeling that I get from other questionable enterprises:

* We know what it's like to pour your life into a novel or work of non-fiction, only to have it rejected time and time and time again.
* We know what it's like to live the isolated writer's life.
* We know what it's like to dedicate yourself to a passion.
* We know what it's like to pay the price of never knowing where that next check is coming from.
* We know, first hand, what it's like to live this writing life.

Just who is "we?" What experience have they had in the publishing field?

Probably the only way to get any more information is to e-mail or sign up and see what they have listed in the writer's only area.

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[HapiSofi]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

I don't have a high opinion of them. I went and had a look at some sample pages from their books. The prose was slushpile-average.

What got to me, though, was their ugly typography and book design. These guys are a disgrace to the word "amateur." They've left in double spaces between sentences in justified text. I couldn't find a single book that had hyphenated wordbreaks, so their lines vary from normal density to unreadably wide wordspacing. Tables of contents aren't keyed to page numbers. I only found one book where the apostrophes and quotes weren't ' and ". Don't even ask about their ellipses and em-dashes. Their page lengths are uneven, as though they'd run the thing out in MSWord without turning off the "keep paragraphs together" and widows-and-orphans format defaults. Their chapter headers are set in their default text face, one size larger plus automatic bolding. I'm not sure they know what a chapter sink is. Worse, one book had run in its chapters, but hadn't watched out for widowed chapter starts.

Ick, ick, ick.

 

[Duncan J Macdonald]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

RaechelHendersonMoon said:

Probably the only way to get any more information is to e-mail or sign up and see what they have listed in the writer's only area.

Well, I did. Yup, took one for the Team. Did it for the Gipper.

Basics:

1) Vanity E-Book Publisher
2) Charges $850.00 up front
3) You pay for your own copyright
4) They do the ISBN. No mention of CIP, though I'm not sure of the utility of CIP for E-Books.
5) They agree to list your book on their web site store for one year.
6) You get 40% of sale price.

Positives:

1) You can sell your E-Book elsewhere, as long as you tell them, and don't sell it for more.
2) You can get out of the contract at any time, provided that you both e-mail and write to them requesting to be released.
3) They only want e-publication rights, plus authority to use your data (and characters from your work) in their promotional work.
4) Their guarantee:

Our Unique Guarantee

We have a unique, unmatched Guarantee for you as a writer.
Provided you comply with our instructions regarding the marketing of your work, we guarantee you that your own investment in MY-E-BOOK will be for at least 75% recouped by royalties and by fees and commissions as an Associate.

If this is not the case within the period of one year after you sign up, then we will repay you the difference between 75% of your sign-up fee and the amount you have acquired in royalties as an Author, fees and commissions as an Associate.

NOTE. The guarantee conditions do not apply to the published MINI-E-WORKS™

Negatives:

1) They only publish in .pdf format.
2) They want you to shill for them, and bring in new writers. For each one you bring in, you get 20% of that new author's up-front fee. Plus, you get 5% from authors that that author recruits. You also get a refund of 75% of your own publishing fee, if you do everything that thay ask for in a separate agreement.

Summary:

1) Yuck.


R/
Duncan

P.S. I've got copies of the sample agreements, which I'll fire off to Dave for P&E perusal. Anyone else interested, drop me an e-mail (see profile).

P.P.S. Oh, and the parent company is located in Lithuania. You send stuff in to a lady in Rochester NY.

P.P.P.S.

Edited. Yup. I make mistakes.

 

[DaveKuzminski]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Thank you, Duncan. I'll look forward to receiving your email. I'll see that the information is used only for good.

 

[RaechelHendersonMoon]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Duncan J Macdonald wrote:

Basics:

1) Vanity E-Book Publisher
2) Charges $850.00 up front
3) You pay for your own copyright
4) They do the ISBN. No mention of CIP, though I'm not sure of the utility of CIP for E-Books.
5) They agree to list your book on their web site store for one year.
6) You get 40% of sale price.

Pardon me for a moment...*boggles*

The CIP is necessary if you want your title listed with any companies like Netlibrary.

Listing one's book on one website isn't very helpful sales wise. There are several companies that have already created a name for themselves as e-book vendors and they get a lot of traffic which in turn means many sales. Is there anything on the site that states they are partnered with, say, Fictionwise or even the Adobe e-book store?

For $850 do you retain the rights to the actual PDF file that is created? That is, if after a year you decide not to list with the site any longer can you take that PDF file and sell it yourself. In fact can you do so while you are signed up since:

1) You can sell your E-Book elsewhere, as long as you tell them, and don't sell it for less.

There are a dozen other questions that come to mind but I think it's safe to say this is not a good deal for anyone. There are many, many legitimate e-publishers out there. If you can't get your work published by one of them you could set up and sell your work on your own and it would cost much less than $850 and you'd have about the same success (I'm guessing based on what I see from the site) as you would going with My-E-Book.com.

Oh and thank you for taking the plunge and signing up to find out the goods. Hopefully it doesn't mean that you are now stuck on some unghodly mailing list.

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[Duncan J Macdonald]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

There is no reversion clause that I could find, but the whole thing goes in chunks of one year. It can be read to revert after the year is up.

But, IANAL, nor do I play one on TV.

Oh and thank you for taking the plunge and signing up to find out the goods. Hopefully it doesn't mean that you are now stuck on some unghodly mailing list.

Oh, you thought I would be using one of my normal e-mail addresses? That and Baal will protect me. 5:-o


R/
Duncan

 

[DaveKuzminski]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Oh, I think we have found us a natural to play secret agent.

Just think of the advantages, Duncan. After a year or two of exposing the various goings-on, you could write your own non-fiction book.

 

[Duncan J Macdonald]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Oh, I think we have found us a natural to play secret agent.

But ... I don't look at all like Patrick McGhoohan!

or

Umm, I've just washed my hair and I can't do a thing with it!!

or

"Boris."

"Yes, Natasha?"

"The Squirrel, I tink. It must be the Squirrel that makes you clumsy."

"Yes Natasha."


R/
Duncan

 

[Medievalist]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Bogus.

And clueless. You'd be better off using Lulu.com.

There are companies (peanutpress.com, Embiid.com, Fictionwise.com) doing e-books well, with care, though some only handle reprints.

 

[DaveKuzminski]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

What dictionary do you use, Lisa? Yes, I read some of what you have to say about Atlanta Nights and my home dictionary just doesn't have a couple of those words. I tried an online dictionary, too.

 

[RaechelHendersonMoon]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

All the e-publishers you noted have editorial standards. With this outfit I have seen no evidence of such, it's a pay to publish deal and one can do that for much less. There are free tools to make PDF files. Webspace is cheap and sometimes free depending on where you look. A PayPal account is free.

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[Medievalist]

Re: Has anyone heard of My-E-Book.com?

Dave asked:

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> What dictionary do you use, Lisa? Yes, I read some of what you have to say about Atlanta Nights and my home dictionary just doesn't have a couple of those words. I tried an online dictionary, too. <hr></blockquote>

For a minute there, I had no idea what you were referring to. Then I read the second sentence.

It's this.

Those are rhetorical terms, from classical rhetoric. The first book I ever worked on was Richard Lanham's <cite>Handlist of Rhetorical Terms</cite>. I was an R.A. for the book, and then produced the e-book, both available from U. California Press. The terms I used all refer to specific "vices," things that, according to classical rhetoric (not to mention medieval and renaissance), one should avoid doing.

Acyrologia is the use of an incorrect, or illogical word. Because of Dickens' Mrs. Malaprop, we've called this same figure a malapropism in Modern English.

Cacosyntheton (yes, it shares an Indo-European root with <em>that</em> word) refers to awkward syntax caused by transposing the parts of a sentence; this is much easier to do in Greek than in English, but Travis Tea has a genuine gift.

Amphibologia in English usually refers to a sentence that is ambiguous because of odd punctuation. Travis likes to use commas to generate ambiguity.

Synchisis refers to a sentence whose word order is confused; it's similar to cacosyntheton, but usually takes place at the word level, rather than the clause level.


You can find rhetorical terms here, from the excellent Jack Lynch (though really Lanham's book is finest kind):


I'm sorely tempted to do a complete formal rhetorical analysis of <cite>Atlanta Nights</cite> and submit it to one of the more obscure PoMo scholarly journals. I'd throw in a couple of quotations from Derrida and lots of unintelligible footnotes.

But then, there's no pay for doing that, and I am supposed to be writing other stuff (also for no pay) . . .

 

[snarzler]

Re:Meanings

I have a wonderful little program on my computer called Word Web. I can type in a word and it gives me the meaning, synonyms, homonyms, antonyms and alternate spellings (where applicable) she typed ademently.

You can download the free version here.

Andrea 0]

 

[Medievalist]

Re: Re:Meanings

These really are examples of specialized technical vocabulary; the average unabridged dictionary doesn't have them. The OED does include rhetorical terms, though often with different orthography.

Hence the reason for writing and publishing the <cite>Handlist</cite>.

 

[DaveKuzminski]

Re: Re:Meanings

Thank you. I'm tempted to place some of those in the Definitions listing at P&E.

 

[RaechelHendersonMoon]

Re: Re:Meanings

Word web is indeed the best little program ever. Although it did not have any of the words mentioned. Guess I will be heading to the library today to check out Handlist...

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[snarzler]

Re: Re:Meanings

I use the pro edition and it has about 65% of them.

Guess the ol' pay to play adage applies.

Andrea 0]

 

[CaoPaux]

my-e-book.com

Any updates? The FAQ hasn't changed http://www.my-e-book.com/support/index.php?id=faq

 

[CaoPaux]

Managed to survive until April 2006.