Zooty and Flappers “Pre-Publishing”
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
I first heard the term ‘pre-publishing’ a few weeks ago, and it caught my curiosity. I’d heard of self-publishing, e-publishing, vanity publishing, traditional publishing… But ‘pre-publishing’? That was something I needed to check out.
With just a little snooping around, I found ZootyandFlappers.com, a professional looking site with easy navigation. But then I started reading…
As I understand it, you give him your book to put up as a free download on his site. People who download and read your book give it a rating. If it gets good enough ratings…
Wait, wait, right there. So instead of trying traditional publishing or submitting to an agent, he wants you to give your book to him to put up for free? Okay…
Continuing on, if it gets good enough ratings, he takes it off the site as a free download and puts it up as an ebook or CD people can buy.
Wait again. Who is going to pay for something they could download from the same site for free a couple weeks ago?
When you get 10,000 downloads, this guy sends the book, sales report, reader ratings, etc to ten agents.
10,000 downloads? Who is going to pay for what they know is a non-published, not represented by an agent ebook? And again, who is going to buy a book they were getting for free a few weeks ago?
Also, what agent or publishing house is going to want something that has been downloaded 10,000 times? Can we say “first publishing rights” anyone?
Not only does what he’s doing get me (all things I could technically do by myself for no cost and all profit going directly to me), but I’ve caught typos on his site. For a site like mine, it damages my reputation a little, but it’s forgivable. I post nearly every day. But when you’re a business, you can’t really afford typos on your site.
At least, you can’t afford to call your site “Zooty & Flappers”, have that in your URL, but have the title bar (the top of your browser) show up “Zoodyandflappers.com”
Even beyond all that, I decided to do a little more research. Maybe somewhere in the abyss of this all, there was some good to be found.
Apparently, there’s no good to be found, just a lot worse.
Domenic Pappalardo doesn’t like his sites being talked about in a negative way. In my searches, I found two interesting blog posts…
The first post talks about the Zooty and Flappers company and how it doesn’t work. So be it. There was no name calling, no slander; she told it like she saw it to be.
That post was followed by this post in which the post author talks about the threats Domenic has made.
Domenic proceeded to talk about the person who posted the posts above here on his site, obviously set on destroying her credibility.
Not good. Not professional. I am never the final word, however, so check everything out and make your own judgments. I’m confident you’ll see what I see (and what others like Writer’s Beware have seen).
