I
happened to be in a Wells Fargo branch recently. I’d forgotten to send my mortgage payment in
and didn’t want to mail it in late or use online banking. My son, 11, was with me. We joked that we should ask the bank teller
if she can open a new account – with no credit, no job, no assets. Wells Fargo was penalized for ordering the
opening of fake bank accounts on a mass scale.
They ended up firing 5,000 workers, though the ones that really had to
go were the people at the top who actually benefited from the fraud. It wasn’t until this past month that the CEO
quit – retired – got fired. He paid scores
of millions from running the financial institution that people can no longer
trust. There are many criminal CEOs like
him.
Remember ENRON and Ken Lay? How about Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Jon Corzine’s M.F. Global, Bernie Madoff, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial Corp, Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Tony Hayward of BP, and on and on? No one will miss Wells Fargo’s John Skimof. But all of this talk of scandalous, scurrilous CEOs has me wondering: Does the book publishing world have its versions of corporate shenanigans?
Remember ENRON and Ken Lay? How about Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Jon Corzine’s M.F. Global, Bernie Madoff, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial Corp, Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Tony Hayward of BP, and on and on? No one will miss Wells Fargo’s John Skimof. But all of this talk of scandalous, scurrilous CEOs has me wondering: Does the book publishing world have its versions of corporate shenanigans?
It’s
hard to search for this. If you search
under terms such as “criminal book publishers’ or “book publishing criminals,”
you get lists of people who publish crime books. Or they show books written by
criminals. "Book publishing crooks" did
yield a hit from a Goodreads post that complained about vanity presses.
It does
call up the ugly side of book publishing.
There’s a huge pay-to-publish industry and it comes in many forms. There’s nothing wrong with self-publishing,
but too many people are overpaying for books.
Others pay money for services that were never delivered.
There
is a site, sfwa.org that puts out Writer Beware, an online information source
about industry service providers. It
highlights specific practices it deems to be unscrupulous and highlights
specific companies that they accuse of wrongdoing. Through the site doesn’t fully litigate or
research a complaint, it does act as a bulletin board for people to
consult. I would caution people to be
aware that not every complaint posted is valid or shows all sides. Still, it may be a place to check if one
can spot a trend of serious offenses by specific companies. Another
such site is editorsandpreditors.com.
But
who really are the monsters of the book publishing world? Could their ethical lapses or criminal
actions be going on but just not getting exposed?
We know every day that someone is:
§ Pirating content.
§ Publishing a book
of lies.
§ Violating one’s
copyright with rampant plagiarism.
§ Screwing an author
out of royalties.
§ Stiffing a
bookstore out of money due.
§ Misrepresenting
their services or capabilities.
§ Falsely
advertising a book.
§ Forcing or
threatening writers to give up valuable rights.
The
book industry may consist of people who by and large love books and want to
fight censorship, promote the First Amendment, expand literacy to all, and encourage
more people to read more books, and to nurture more people to become writers
who perfect their craft. But there are
scumbags that ruin it for others, who lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate for their
own gain.
Wells
Fargo, on a large scale, is one of the worst offenders out there. But they are not alone. Every industry has its version of a Wells
Fargo, including book publishing. Words
cannot say what irreparable harm these con artists do to a terrific industry
like book publishing.
Libraries
“Bring
your questions to any good library, and most likely you will match them up with
answers. Bring loneliness, and in books you will find the solace and company of
other lives. Bring the gray of the everyday and you will lose it in the
infinite colors of books. The great houses and protectors of books, libraries
offer as many thousands of worlds as there are volumes on their shelves” -- Helena Hjalmarsson
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