NY Literary Magazine

[eqb]

Link: https://nyliterarymagazine.com/

I received an email from them this morning, congratulating me on my nomination for their "Best Story Award." This was followed by a link to submit my entry. Of course that raised all kinds of red flags. A quick scan of their site showed a hodgepodge of articles on the front page. Their contest page listed monthly contests with the words FREE TO ENTER in large font at the top.

But lo, when I clicked on the link in the email, this brought me to a page where I could purchase an entry for $14.95. And the prizes? A "distinguished award seal" for monthly winners. A "victory trophy" for yearly winners, and a listing in their Hall of Fame.

Foz Meadows received the same email, and she has a useful thread analyzing the operation: https://twitter.com/fozmeadows/status/945250115991638016

 

[Filigree]

In a weird, horrible way, I find this obvious and clumsy scam hilarious. In this age of more-or-less instant information via the internet, I have to wonder about *who* gets taken in by 'NY Literary Magazine'. This is a forest of bright red flags.

I do give the 'magazine' kudos for a superficially slick About Us page. https://nyliterarymagazine.com/about/

 

[Aggy B.]

I got one of these this morning too. Sheesh.

 

[mrsmig]

So did I. Happy Scammas Day.

 

[thethinker42]

I immediately gave it side-eye because it a) went to both of my author email accounts, and b) didn't specify WHICH story had been nominated. Brilliant scam, but...no.

 

[Marissa D]

I wonder if it's a brainchild of Robert Fletcher, of New York Literary Agency fame..?

 

[Marian Perera]

Mine was automatically sent to the junk mail folder.

 

[Filigree]

I just checked. Yep, I got one too.

 

[eqb]

I saw one new author excitedly tweet about her "nomination" and tagging TorTeen and her agent. Both liked her tweet, so apparently even trade publishers and agents are taken in by the ruse.

 

[Undercover]

Got it too. Thought it was fishy from the start. Then having to pay? Umm, no thanks.

 

[Aggy B.]

I saw one new author excitedly tweet about her "nomination" and tagging TorTeen and her agent. Both liked her tweet, so apparently even trade publishers and agents are taken in by the ruse.

Or it was Christmas day and they didn't bother to look at what she was talking about.

Regardless, it made me twitchy. And the pay-to-play aspect was an instant nope. The additional research I've seen (which is basically a lot of clever use of general statements about awards but nothing that actually references this particular outfit) confirmed the gut feeling.

 

[Gillhoughly]

I'd like to know who on their staff knows what my correct first name is and why they thought they had permission to address me by it. Then I would like to toss them all into a dung pile after a heavy rain, followed by a long walk home. I tasked them for sending garbage on Christmas and told them to piss off. Unsubscribe? Yes, please.

 

[CaoPaux]

They profess elsewhere that this is all the fault of outsourcing their marketing and they're totally legit and how dare anyone think it's a scam.

I note that founder Camille Kleinman has vanished from their masthead. And scrubbed NYM from her website (Wayback page).

 

[Aggy B.]

They profess elsewhere that this is all the fault of outsourcing their marketing and they're totally legit and how dare anyone think it's a scam.

I note that founder Camille Kleinman has vanished from their masthead. And scrubbed NYM from her website (Wayback page).

Their response actually makes me even less comfortable with their operation. Sheesh.

 

[Filigree]

TorTeen should know better, and I'd *really* side-eye the agent. Then again, a Big Name SFF author (who lurks on AW, so I won't call them out by name) enthusiastically boosted Inkitt once.

Just because a 'celebrity' or 'professional' endorses something, doesn't mean the thing is above research.

 

[eqb]

I just got an incredibly overwrought email from this outfit, that basically says it wasn't their fault and people were being horrible and mean to them. It ended with this:

We hope those people who spread the lies and worked so hard to destroy honest people's lives are now satisfied.
We have closed our contest. Refunded everyone who entered.
There will be no more free-to-enter contests. No more free-to-read anthologies.
No more articles. No more anything.

We had the heartbreaking task of firing our team of loyal, hard-working employees. 10 people are now jobless after Christmas.

 

[Helix]

We hope those people who spread the lies and worked so hard to destroy honest people's lives are now satisfied.
We have closed our contest. Refunded everyone who entered.
There will be no more free-to-enter contests. No more free-to-read anthologies.
No more articles. No more anything.

We had the heartbreaking task of firing our team of loyal, hard-working employees. 10 people are now jobless after Christmas.

What a load of bollocks.

 

[Aggy B.]

What a load of bollocks.

Yeah. They've added this to the bottom of the "Enter our Monthly Contest" page. "Due to technical issues, we are suspending further contest entries till we can resolve them, once our technical support is back to work from their holidays. Apologies, please email our support via our website contact form if you wish to be notified when entries are functional again."

The rest of the website appears to be still as it was the other day.

 

[Marian Perera]

We quoted true facts about winning awards and contests in general. We did not lie and say this is what they said about our contest.

Talk about disingenuous.

 

[Zaffiro]

We hope those people who spread the lies and worked so hard to destroy honest people's lives are now satisfied.
We have closed our contest. Refunded everyone who entered.
There will be no more free-to-enter contests. No more free-to-read anthologies.
No more articles. No more anything.

We had the heartbreaking task of firing our team of loyal, hard-working employees. 10 people are now jobless after Christmas.

Tiny Tim is gonna DIE all because of you people.

If the contests were free to enter, why are they refunding everyone?

 

[Gillhoughly]

We had the heartbreaking task of firing our team of loyal, hard-working employees. 10 people are now jobless after Christmas.

What a thin margin they must run on if they have to fire 10 people because of a fail at a pay to enter contest scheme.

I read Camille Kleinman's (the founder, according to Writer Beware) overblown bio on Amazon and the only thing this paragon has not done is give birth to the second coming Jesus.

She has removed all mention of NY Literary Magazine from that bio, though. It was there last night. Fast worker, this gal!

Give the bozo a month for the ruckus to die down and she will be back at it again, but for now NTLM is smack in the middle of today's Tweet storm generated by pissed off writers.

 

[eqb]

If the contests were free to enter, why are they refunding everyone?

The poetry and short story contests are/were free to enter. The one with the reading fee was a new contest for novels. (Helpfully called the Best Story contest.)

 

[ctripp]

There were actually 10 people working there? And they got paid enough they will notice the missing cheque? This must have been a MUCH bigger mag then anyone knew and to think I'd never heard of them before Christmas Day

 

[JulesJones]

As I noted earlier on Twitter, yes, I was one of the many authors who received their delightfully misleading missive. By the time I saw it others had already done the hard work of dismantling the nonsense.

 

[eqb]

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