professional services

Pamela Wray and WordWorks Publishing Consultants: The Amazing Case of the Serial Plagiarizer

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This post by Victoria Strauss originally appeared on Writer Beware® on 3/31/14.

Every time I consider purging Writer Beware’s files to get rid of documentation on agents and others we haven’t heard anything about in years and years, I’m reminded of why I hold onto that old paper.

Last Friday, I received an email from successful independent editor Jodie Renner. Apparently, client testimonials from her website had been plagiarized by an outfit called WordWorks Publishing Consultants.

I hopped on over to WordWorks’ website, expecting to discover something on the order of faux publicist Mike Albee, who decorated his site with fake testimonials from known authors.

What I found was way more bizarre: plagiarism, plagiarism, and yet more plagiarism, plus a blast from Writer Beware’s past. (Bear with me; this is a long post with lots of images, but I wanted to capture them in case WordWorks attempts to hide the evidence.)

Based in Alabama, WordWorks is owned by Pamela Wray Biron, who provides “Expert and Innovative Content Solutions,” including editing, ghostwriting, graphic design, illustration, marketing, and web services. A veritable Renaissance woman. And, gosh, just look at Pamela’s clients! The US Justice Department! 20th Century Fox! The President of the United States! Check out the impressive names on Pamela’s Testimonials page! Steve Jobs! Bill Gates! Michael Eisner! Editorial and marketing staff from all the Big Five publishers!

There’s just one problem: most of the testimonials are plagiarized, and not just from Jodie Renner.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes proof of the reported plagiarism in the form of many screenshots, on Writer Beware®.

 

Book Editors Really Do Edit Books. Really! They’ll Tell You So Themselves!

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This post by Chris Meadows originally appeared on Teleread on 3/30/14.

What does it say about what people think of you if you have to write a lengthy editorial insisting that, no, really, you actually do do your job?

That’s how a piece by book editor Barry Harbaugh in The New Yorker comes off. Entitled, “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” it insists that, despite Amazon claiming otherwise, book editors at major publishers actually do edit books. The fact that this piece had to be written in the first place possibly says more than does the entire piece itself.

Especially since there are just a few problems with it.

First of all, it’s hard to imagine where Mr. Harbaugh got the impression Amazon was claiming that editors don’t edit. The people who’ve been complaining about editors not editing have by and large been the authors of the works that were supposed to be coming in for editing—but weren’t. For example, look at some of the discussion from when the head of Kensington Publishing responded to writers’ complaints about their experience with the press. Many of those complaints involved the failure to receive any actual editing.

 

Click here to read the full post on Teleread.

 

What Does It Cost To Self-Publish?

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This post, by Sue Collier, originally appeared on Self Publishing Resources on 7/23/13.

Although it is possible to self-publish for a very small amount of money—have friends edit your manuscript, do your own interior layout, design your own cover, upload the files to a POD printer and/or ebook service—the reality is that by self-publishing, you are essentially launching a new business. And publishing a professional-looking, high-quality book will cost you some money.

So what can you expect spend for a book that looks as good and reads as well as the trad published stuff on the shelf next to it? Well, let’s say we have a 65,000-word manuscript in the self-help genre (nonfiction); there are no images, but several different levels of headings and a few tables that need to be created.

 

Editing

Every writer needs some kind of editor. Even if your sister-in-law’s cousin’s neighbor’s father was a former college professor and has offered to read your manuscript for free, I recommend you still hire a pro. As an editor myself, I have edited plenty of works written by academics—and other very smart people—who are awful writers and probably even worse editors.

You can expect to pay a minimum of $1,200 for a professional copy edit of a manuscript of that size. You might be able to find an editor who does it for a bit less and who probably has less editing experience. You can also expect to pay a lot more, depending on the level of editing required, anywhere from $2,600 and on up to several thousand dollars, depending on the experience of the editor. I’ve read some people estimate a developmental edit at $18,500, but that does seem quite high to me.

 

Interior layout

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Self Publishing Resources.