...and in a big way. Although, they could just want our money. You decide.
When we copyrighted our last novel a few months ago, we did so prior to publication -- and under a different title than the one we used when it actually hit the e-book market. So the only people who knew the novel as "Project: Runaway" (now you know why we changed the moniker) were the two of us, the crew at the U.S. Copyright Office, and...as it turns out...the marketing staff at Dorrance Publishing.
According to Dorrance Publishing, Dorrance Publishing is "America's oldest author services company". Which isn't what is said here and here, but it's better than being called a vanity press. It's believed by some of our fellow writers (but not by us, according to our lawyer's advice) that such outfits prey on the foolishly optimistic and the greatly uninformed, charging thousands of dollars for their services. For some absolutely legal reason, Team Dorrance is allowed to fish through the government's registration files and contact new copyright holders.
For the past several days, we've received multiple emails from Dorrance Publishing. They want us to know how interested they are in Project: Runaway and how eager they are to review the manuscript. The other day, they even called our house, such was their excitement. Since they know nothing about the actual story we've told, we have to assume they're motivated solely by the novel's title. The title that we've discarded.
But they're America's oldest author services company, so who are we to say we shouldn't have kept the title?
We've tried to direct their communications to our internet junk file but the Dorrance Jedi Spam Masters are smarter than Google and Firefox combined. Day after day, another one of their emails slips through Google's defenses, offering us yet another chance to give them our money...um, our manuscript. Hopefully, one of their sales people -- no, we're wrong, these are Publishing Consultants -- will contact us on a day when we're home. If that happens, one of us can tell him or her that we've already published the book, it's had time to climb up and down the sales charts, and we've already collected a dozen or so reviews as we write its sequel.
Or maybe it's better they never know. They love Project: Runaway so much, they'll only be heartbroken.
We've received a couple of other offers last month, too. A lovely gent contacted us through Bablecube, wanting to translate our short story set, After Things Went Bad, into Italian. We were open to the idea -- after all, the Spanish and Portuguese translations were kind of fun -- but he then added that he'd never done a written translation before. He hoped we could check his work, just to make certain he was doing it right. Since we didn't know how to do that, we decided to pass.
A week ago, we heard from a woman who wants to narrate one of our romance novellas. Not Twisted Games but one of the titles under another of our pseudonyms. This narrator specializes in super steamy erotica. We told her, politely, that our story lacked almost all of the elements a listener would want in a hot and sexy story. She said she didn't care, she wanted to do the narration, anyway. So we signed a contract and our non-erotic story, narrated by an erotic specialist, should be out in December.
Ho, ho, ho.
Reading: Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks. And enjoying it very much, thank you.
Watching: Gotham. Well, not yet but soon. By Week Four or Five, certainly. Probably
When we copyrighted our last novel a few months ago, we did so prior to publication -- and under a different title than the one we used when it actually hit the e-book market. So the only people who knew the novel as "Project: Runaway" (now you know why we changed the moniker) were the two of us, the crew at the U.S. Copyright Office, and...as it turns out...the marketing staff at Dorrance Publishing.
According to Dorrance Publishing, Dorrance Publishing is "America's oldest author services company". Which isn't what is said here and here, but it's better than being called a vanity press. It's believed by some of our fellow writers (but not by us, according to our lawyer's advice) that such outfits prey on the foolishly optimistic and the greatly uninformed, charging thousands of dollars for their services. For some absolutely legal reason, Team Dorrance is allowed to fish through the government's registration files and contact new copyright holders.
For the past several days, we've received multiple emails from Dorrance Publishing. They want us to know how interested they are in Project: Runaway and how eager they are to review the manuscript. The other day, they even called our house, such was their excitement. Since they know nothing about the actual story we've told, we have to assume they're motivated solely by the novel's title. The title that we've discarded.
But they're America's oldest author services company, so who are we to say we shouldn't have kept the title?
We've tried to direct their communications to our internet junk file but the Dorrance Jedi Spam Masters are smarter than Google and Firefox combined. Day after day, another one of their emails slips through Google's defenses, offering us yet another chance to give them our money...um, our manuscript. Hopefully, one of their sales people -- no, we're wrong, these are Publishing Consultants -- will contact us on a day when we're home. If that happens, one of us can tell him or her that we've already published the book, it's had time to climb up and down the sales charts, and we've already collected a dozen or so reviews as we write its sequel.
Or maybe it's better they never know. They love Project: Runaway so much, they'll only be heartbroken.
We've received a couple of other offers last month, too. A lovely gent contacted us through Bablecube, wanting to translate our short story set, After Things Went Bad, into Italian. We were open to the idea -- after all, the Spanish and Portuguese translations were kind of fun -- but he then added that he'd never done a written translation before. He hoped we could check his work, just to make certain he was doing it right. Since we didn't know how to do that, we decided to pass.
A week ago, we heard from a woman who wants to narrate one of our romance novellas. Not Twisted Games but one of the titles under another of our pseudonyms. This narrator specializes in super steamy erotica. We told her, politely, that our story lacked almost all of the elements a listener would want in a hot and sexy story. She said she didn't care, she wanted to do the narration, anyway. So we signed a contract and our non-erotic story, narrated by an erotic specialist, should be out in December.
Ho, ho, ho.
Reading: Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks. And enjoying it very much, thank you.
Watching: Gotham. Well, not yet but soon. By Week Four or Five, certainly. Probably
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