What could induce thirty professional authors to spend hours writing the WORST prose they could produce?

They did it to prove a point - that a Maryland-based company called PublishAmerica is lying when they claim to be "selective" and reject 70-80% of the manuscripts submitted to them.

Over a holiday weekend last year, thirty-odd science fiction writers each banged out a chapter or two of Atlanta Nights, an original "novel" about hot times in Atlanta high society. Their objective was to write the most awful tripe they could and submit it to PublishAmerica, a self-described "traditional publisher" located in Frederick, Maryland. PublishAmerica claims they are not a vanity press, but the authors made their point when the print-on-demand (POD) publisher accepted the book and sent a publishing contract. Vanity presses don't read what is submitted to them before accepting it the way real, traditional publishers do.

The project began after PublishAmerica posted an attack on science fiction authors at one of its websites. PublishAmerica claimed "As a rule of thumb, the quality bar for sci-fi and fantasy is a lot lower than for all other fiction.... [Science fiction authors] have no clue about what it is to write real-life stories, and how to find them a home."

The writers wanted to see where PublishAmerica puts its own "quality bar." If the publisher really is selective, as it claims, or if it is a vanity press that will accept almost anything, as Writer Beware, the scams watchdog committee of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), asserts.

After Atlanta Nights was completed, any sign of literary competence was removed. Then even more mistakes and computer-generated nonsense were inserted, and the results submitted to PublishAmerica.

PublishAmerica accepted the book on Tuesday, December 7, 2004.

Writer Beware revealed the sting on a public writers message board on January 23, 2005. Within hours, PublishAmerica withdrew its offer, saying "Upon further review it appears that your work is not ready to be published. There are portions of nonsensical text in the manuscript that were caught by our editing staff as they previewed the text for editing time assessment pending your acceptance of our offer."

So that aspiring authors can see for themselves just what literary "standards" PublishAmerica maintains, the writers have made the novel available online at ftp://ftp.sff.net/pub/people/doylemacdonald/sting/StingManuscript.rtf.

Ironically, several authors and instructors wanted physical copies to illustrate how not to write a novel. SFWA elected to print up copies of the manuscript at a reputable POD publisher, lulu.com. All proceeds from the sale of Atlanta Nights by "Travis Tea," will be going to SFWA's Emergency Medical Fund, a charity which helps authors who have no health insurance. To purchase Atlanta Nights go to: http://www.lulu.com/travis-tea.

 
Excerpt from Atlanta Nights:

Alright. No Dopplering dotcom plummet to eat a terminal snack of pigeonflavored pavement after the dead cat bounce. No jolt of autocratic asphyxiation, wrenching the Apex Data Ruler the way he wrenched himself in the wee of the night when he lay prostate on his back and no one could hear him ejaculate Margaret's name into the Sealy Serta mattress drenched with the carnal effluents of desire. No tragic grandiose flinging of the BellSouth fiber=optic wiring over the rafter beam since there wasn't one, positioning the SemperFidic ergonomic office chair, looping the Jimmy Hendrix original hand-made collectable silk necktie neck, kicking the spinning chair across the anti-static mat cleated like Beckum's soccer shoes to the migraine Millikin Carpet, kicking the climate controlled air with its direction adjustable hypoallergenic louvers, kicking the generic afterlife. There was always Valium.

Posted February 7, 2005