Wednesday, November 30, 2005

And from the "Don't-light-a-match-near-all-that-methane" department . . .

PublishAmerica is using the unusual success of one of their authors to promote their backlist of dreck. My apologies if I just blew your mind--but if I did, you must be new here.

This is from a recent email to PA's stable of authors:

"Today we are congratulating your fellow author Benjamin Frazier, who is well on his way to becoming a Hollywood celebrity! His PublishAmerica book "Shelly's Diary" [misspelled on Amazon, I should add] is currently being filmed on location in North Carolina, starring Stella Parton (Dolly's sister) and Traci Dinwiddie (Dawson's Creek, The Notebook). The big-screen release is certain to create a buzz, and you may expect the film to show in a theatre near you! Seeing your book turned into a movie is every author's dream, so here's to Ben Frazier, with pride!"

This is wonderful news for Mr. Frazier but "big screen" is not a term I would have used. Neither is the phrase "create a buzz" or anything similar. And crediting Traci Dinwiddie with starring in The Notebook is a little misleading. Sideways was a blockbuster movie but only generated moderate sales for Rex Pickett. So . . . grain of salt, you know?

The rest of the email (another eight paragraphs or so) go on to fling useless PA statistics around like "every 90 seconds someone orders a PA book" or eight times a day someone runs out of Charmin and reaches for a PublishAmerica novel or some such garbage.

Currently Mr. Frazier's book (which I have not read) is ranked well above 1,000,000 on Amazon. Looks the Hollywood buzz hasn't started yet.