The home of fiction author Val Gryphin…

I was web-hopping around this last Friday, visiting links from my fellow High-Fivers, when I ended up on the blog StoryCrafters. I started digging into it, and soon read an article titled” I’m a Mazzikin, or is that mizzikin?” that started out with the phrase:

I hadn’t been over to the Zooty & Flapper site for a couple days but was told he’d updated it and since I had some free time this afternoon, decided to check it out.

Whhaaaa? I read it and it was humorous, but I didn’t understand the background. So I went back into the archives to dig out the whole story, and actually found a more serious story than I was expecting.

The first post in the series was titled “ZootyandFlappers.com World’s First Pre-Publisher.” It was written by Jean Lauzier, and descussed the website Zooty and Flappers Pre-Publishing. From her summery of how they work:

First, you send him your novel. He sets it up and puts it on his site as a free download. The readers that download it, give it a rating of some kind. If enough readers like it, he pulls it from the “download for free” side of his site, and adds it to his “bookstore” as an e-book or cd and sells it with him paying you 45% of the sale price. Then, once you sell 10,000 copies, he will send a copy of your book along with a sales report and a readers report to “ten real agents.”

Hummmm, so lets see here, he makes money off of your writing on his site without paying you, and then if it starts making even more money, he’ll kindly to give you less than half. Then, as if that isn’t generous enough, he’ll send a sales report and readers report (because we know how well the agents will look at those!) to 10 “real” (as opposed to imaginary) agents, who will probably throw it straight in the trash when they realize who it is from. Mmmmmk, sounds good to me so far. He describes an author as (spelling and capitalization his own):

What does Zooty and Flappers consider a Published Author? A writer who has secured an agent, who has sold your work to a Publisher who prints books on paper, and sells your books to books stores.

And here I thought that you know, having fiction that I wrote published made me a published author. Damn, guess not.

So anyway, Jean published this post warning others about this scam, and this made Mister Domenic Pappalardo very unhappy. He started threatening her. Hence post two: Zooty & Flappers pt. 2 Here Jean outlined exactly what she said about him before, why she had problems with the site and then posts some of his comments responding to her first post.

What you have printed on this site, to the public, I shall take up with my attorney. If I can hold you and the chat room harmfull, I will.

I will take up with her in a court of law.

I understand why you have never been published by a Standard Publisher. I do believe anyone can go to a writing school, and learn how to write. But there are no schools that can teach talent. It’s like learning to sing. Anyone can learn to sing, but they still need talent. And you can’t learn talent. You either have it, or you don’t.The one thing you do have. You have the power to shut anyone on this chat room down when they won’t let you play the expert.

If you can’t beat them by logic, just scream really loud and hope they give up and go away.

The reason that this little “scheme” is so bad, other than just the money aspect, is that this is a form of publication, but not a good form. For one thing, no “real agent” is going to take this guy seriously. And, even worse, once a novel (or story or non-fiction book) is posted on that site, it is published. That means that should someone want to try and shop around a work that was on the Z&F site, even if the site is no longer in existence, they are going to have to tell every agent and/or editor that their work has already been published. While there are writers who have parlayed their online work into novel or non-fiction contracts, they are few and far between, and they were firmly in control of their work at all times. With this concept, the author is giving up a lot of control, and first publishing rights, for little or no payoff, and probably almost non-existent chance for an agent to pick it up off of that site.

So the third post, the I’m a Mazzikin, or is that mizzikin? post, contains basically a slander article that Pappalardo wrote about Jean, slamming her every-which-way and twisting the truth each time he makes a statement about her. Knowing the background puts the whole post into context, which I will only quote a little bit of, you have to read the whole thing for yourself.
He said:

What sparked her to go public with her writing? And what direction did it take?She said she read an article in a magazine. Angered, she wrote a letter to the editor, giving a rebuttal. Her letter along with those of several other people was printed. She had slapped someone down in print! How did that make her feel? In her own words, “I think I slept with that issue under my pillow for a month.”

The quote from an interview with Jean that he mangled was:

In fact, what really got me started on the road to becoming a writer was an article in a magazine. I wrote a rebuttal and it was published. The magazine was an international publication and I think I slept with the issue under my pillow for a month.

And a couple other choice quotes from him:

… I’ll tell you where you can nail my hide to the wall. Find spelling errors in what I write. I am a lazy speller. Heck I even put double words in at times…You put yourself out there as an expert as to what will work and what won’t. You name three other’s who have done the same thing. You say I can’t do it, because others have failed. Hmm? Come on kid, why don’t you stop trying to be an expert on things your not. I told my dog Ruff, “I don’t want to get down in the gutter with this gal and her following of Mazzikins. I have been asked by others to publicize some of your exploits. I know some of your readers think of you as a sweet person.

Humm.

I checked out his site of course, and the text is sloppy and has errors. The graphics that change on mouseover on the menu looks like either clip art or collected images, which gives it an amateur feel. So far it looks like he is his only client, although it seems that since the exchange with Jean, he has pulled most of the text down, and is no longer soliciting other authors’ manuscripts. Hopefully he’ll keep it that way. He is however, already talking about nominating a piece of work from the site for a Pulitzer Prize.