This short story was written many years ago by myself in retaliation to a certain subsidy publisher who had been hounding me with junk mail, all of which is now happily stuffing some old shoes. It should be known by the reader that I purposefully wrote this in a casual style: all errors were intentional. —Kaleb
CONTINUED…
The author, who was now filled with a zeal to save the lives of so many other hapless authors, decided to do something that is not recommended by anyone, and certainly not by the author of this work. Instead of cash, he put an angry alligator in the box and shipped it straight back to the subsidy publisher. When the subsidy publisher opened the box, something inevitably terrible happened; and the author, now worth his salt, finished his book, found an agent and a real publishing house, and lived very happily ever after.
This short story was written many years ago by myself in retaliation to a certain subsidy publisher who had been hounding me with junk mail, all of which is now happily stuffing some old shoes. It should be known by the reader that I purposefully wrote this in a casual style: all errors were intentional. —Kaleb
CONTINUED
“You’ll never be an author, you starving bum!” she greeted him as he came up the road.
“Ah, but mother,” he said with a hint of vain reproof. “I shall, when my publisher finishes their work.”
“What?” his mother said, adjusting her earpiece.
“I will be an author. A subsidy publisher will publish me.”
“Ha!” his mother said. “You mean a vanity publisher!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” the author bellowed, and he left her there and ran off into the wheat fields, and sat on a rock, and realized that her words were true. It was a vanity publisher, under the disguise of a subsidy publisher. They were making their money off of his vanity: and probably hundreds of other hapless authors who were desperate to see their books in print, and didn’t want to do the work of finding a real publishing house.
As he thought about how he had been hoodwinked, he became worth his salt, and realized with deep anger that he must rid the world of the subsidy publisher, before some other hapless author fell into their trap. He went home to his mother, swallowing his pride and a new man. She handed him his mail and started to fix him some eggs and biscuits, because she could see that he was a new man now and had changed from his old ways.
In the mail was a package for him from the subsidy publisher, confronting him with even more fees, right and left. There were bank fees, food fees, travel fees, gas mileage fees, transportation fees, limo fees, catering fees, rental fees, photocopy fees, insurance fees, courier fees, clothing fees, speeding citation fees, plumbing fees, office fees, business fees, typist fees, automobile fees, billboard fees, advertising fees, fishing license fees, general expenses fees, computer part fees, cell bill fees, Nanny McFee fees, garden gnome fees, bodyguard fees, valet service fees, gas bill fees, dinner-party hosting fees, uncatalogued replacement fees, warehouse fees, and taxes on the whole list. They requested that the author send it back inside of the provided box in the form of twenty dollar bills, stacked up neatly and wrapped with red rubber bands. They informed him if he included one dollar too little, they would charge him a late fee and a processing fee. They also asked him to include three more copies of his book, because the last ones were so tasteful.
This short story was written many years ago by myself in retaliation to a certain subsidy publisher who had been hounding me with junk mail, all of which is now happily stuffing some old shoes. It should be known by the reader that I purposefully wrote this in a casual style: all errors were intentional. —Kaleb
CONTINUED…
Upon receiving this enormous fee, the author was forced to sell his open-air home for one made of sludge- which is a fancy term for climbing down a manhole cover and living in the sewer. Then, the subsidy publisher packaged up the one remaining copy of the manuscript, and mailed it to The Small Town Gazette, a small town gazette, and offered to pay them for any sort of review they could give. There was a packaging fee, a handling fee, a duct tape fee, a gas mileage fee, a post office fee, a postage fee, a publicity fee, a marketing fee, a reviewer fee and a courier fee, all of which was charged to the author. The author, suddenly more broke than ever before, was forced to sell his sewer home to some rats who only paid half its property value, and he moved off to Mordor.
The subsidy publisher took the last copy out of refrigeration and devoured it, and while eating it, one of the subsidy publishers got a paper cut on his tongue, and another had an allergic reaction to the ink on the page. This was certainly unacceptable, so they charged the author medical fees, tongue-doctor fees, allergy-doctor fees, medicine fees, special treatment fees, gas mileage fees, hospital fees, emergency room fees, allergy medication fees, tongue-massage fees, emotional destruction fees and twenty-eight-weeks-leave-from-work fees. The author was forced to move from Mordor to live with his loud-mouthed, cranky, disbelieving mother.
- December 17th, 2007 at
6:00 am by --KALEB NATION-- -
Due to the popularity of my last retaliation towards the vanity publishing industry, here’s another one from deep in my files. The story behind this one is that, once again, a certain press of dubious nature sent me the offer of a free thesaurus if I would submit a manuscript (a ploy no real publisher would ever do). Quite tired of the game being played, I must admit I went into a bit of a frenzy and mailed this back, scribbling it down rather hastily and taking no time for revisions.
Needless to say, I never received my thesaurus.
I will be posting this in parts over this week. Here is part 1 of The Subsidy Publisher…
—-
THE VANITY PUBLISHER
This is the terrible and sorrowful story of a subsidy publisher, who made its business from feeding off of starving authors, and one day received its due justice. Though you may not know what a subsidy publisher is, every author worth his salt does, though they will usually call it a vanity publisher. If you are not an author, you may imagine a piranha or a dragon in the place of a subsidy publisher if that makes it easier.
One day, a very poor author received something in the mail, and he was so hungry that he nibbled on the edges of the envelope. Many authors do not make much money until they write a bestseller: this author was indeed the poorest of them all. He had been writing and writing on one book, polishing and changing, and doing the things that authors do, hoping that one day he could send it to an editor, who would publish it. This author, seeing the envelope, wondered why anyone would want to contact him, and when he saw the name ‘V—–e Press‘ next to the name of the sender, he almost fell dead on the spot. He rushed into his popsicle-stick house and opened the letter in haste, to find that, indeed, a publisher was contacting him, even though he hadn’t sent his book off! What luck! he cried, and he immediately packaged his half-finished manuscript and sent it off to the publisher.
But, you see, this author was not worth his salt. He had not really noticed that the publisher was a subsidy publisher. In fact, he did not even know what it was. He was not the smartest man in the world, either, which should be obvious by now.
When the manuscript arrived at the subsidy publisher’s offices in Pennsylvania, the whole office erupted into uproar.
“Look at this!” the head editor shouted, waving the pages of the manuscript. “A manuscript! Quick, Abnar! Joheezeth! Abednego! Kill the fatted calf, and we shall feast at our good fortune!”
They feasted and feasted for two weeks straight, with the main course being the pages of the manuscript, which they ate mercilessly like it was slices of bologna, with neither napkin nor fork.
“Scrumptious!” the head editor said at the end of the feast. “Now we tell him we accepted it, and send him back the Contract of Never-ending and Always Outrageous Fees!”
When the author received this form, he was so happy to finally be an author that he signed it without reading it, for it was eighteen hundred pages long. And here is where the story gets terrible and woeful. He then sent another copy of his manuscript to the subsidy publisher, and they in turn made three-hundred and one photocopies at their local copy shop, on heavy paper with full color ink, and lamination on each page. They then charged the author for such, so that he had to sell his popsicle stick house, and move on to living inside an open-air home, which is a fancy term for living in the park. Then, the subsidy publishers devoured two-hundred and ninety-nine of the copies, and stored one away for later, and then charged the author a storage fee for its refrigeration.
