Expensive Mistakescoopsweb asks "What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? Should I mention a certain employee who caused 4 hours worth of delays in Central London and got his company fined £500k?"
No points for stories about the time you had a few and thought it'd be a good idea to wrap your car around a bollard. Or replies consisting of "my wife".
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chthonic, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 11:26)
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Vanity PublishingI am one of the mugs who fell for the vanity publishing scam back in 1995. This was before vanity publishers had been exposed by a BBC investigation for the crooks they are but even so, I must have been living on Planet Gullible at the time. Basically, I wrote a sub-sub-Ben Elton "comedy" (I can't bring myself to look at it now, it's so gut-wrenchingly bad) and convinced myself I'd come up with a masterpiece.
So I answered one of those "Authors Wanted" ads that used to be in the Sunday papers and within a week got a "reader's report" implying that my book made Shaw and Wilde look like lightweights. (Guess that's why it's called vanity publishing.) All I had to do was part with £3,000 and the literary world would be bowing down before me. At that point there was a sensible and a stupid option, and guess which one I chose?
Since the book was crap, their "editing" made it even worse and they had my money so had no motivation to sell it, I managed to shift a total of about 100 copies thanks to the support of friends and family. Even then I had to threaten legal action to collect my royalties!
I'm glad to say that Minerva Press have since gone out of business and I hope they're living on the streets. Most of the other crooks in the vanity publishing business have too, I think, as people are more wise to their ways.
This was certainly an expensive mistake, though wouldn't have been out of place under "conned" or even a QOTW entitled "How can someone with an IQ above 10 be so bloody stupid?"
(, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 20:53, Reply)
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