| | Mr. ben f small,
Wow.
I was just able to find my Post 32 on this thread, where I presented some of my Internet research on Durban House.
I was a bit surprised to learn that the following link,
http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=453.topic
was no longer active, mainly because there was an analysis given there by Victoria Strauss of Durban's contract. Here is my comment in that post (and the link I just mentioned is the second one):
There is a story in 2004 by a disgruntled author, William Barnes, recounted here. The story is pretty abrasive on both sides, so it is difficult to judge.
There is more in 2004 on this here (including response by Mr. Lewis), but it is interesting because the last post on the page by Victoria Strauss analyzes some of the clauses of Durban's publishing contract, and her judgment is that it is author-unfriendly, even when there is no $ 25,000 price tag for the author to pay. But she notes that the $ 25,000 price tag was not an isolated experience for Mr. Barnes, as she had confirmation of this from another author who was asked for $ 25,000 to publish a book, not directly from Durban House, but through his wife's company instead. (If this actually happened in 2004, then Mr. Lewis's claim that Durban's author subsidy practice stopped in 2003 is not accurate.)
The second link is the one that is broken, but I remember the letter from Mr. Lewis being identical to the one in the first link. It is a shame that the contract analysis has disappeared, however, as I stupidly did not paste it into a Word document. Fortunately part of her analysis is given in Michael Prescott's blog - from Michael himself. Here is the link: http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2005/06/vanity_thy_name.html.
A poster named is Mike Farell was answered by Michael P on June 23 with a breakdown of the conditions of Durban's contract based on what he read in Vicoria Strauss's post at the broken link.
The letter where Lewis claims that Durban has not been a subsidy publisher since 2003 is the one to Lee Goldberg at another now broken link (which I mentioned previously) - http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2005/03/vanity_presses.html.
For this last, however, I did keep a word document and I will be glad to send you a copy.
Michael
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