- Atlanta Nights
"Atlanta Nights" is a collaborative
novel created by a group ofscience fiction andfantasy authors, with the express purpose of producing an unpublishably bad piece of work and testing whether publishing firmPublishAmerica would still accept it. It was accepted, but after the hoax was revealed, the publisher withdrew its offer, and the book was not published at that time. [cite web
url=http://www.cs.du.edu/~aburt/StingAcceptance.pdf
title=PublishAmerica accepts Atlanta Nights manuscript
accessdate=2007-01-26
publisher=University of Denver]The primary purpose of the exercise was to test PublishAmerica's claims to be a "traditional publisher" which would only accept high-quality manuscripts. Critics have long claimed that PublishAmerica is actually a
vanity press which pays no special attention to the sales potential of the books they publish since most of their revenue comes from the authors rather than book buyers. PublishAmerica had previously made some highly derogatory public remarks about science fiction and fantasy writers, because many of their critics came from those communities; those derogatory remarks have influenced the decision to make such a public test of PublishAmerica's claims.Background
PublishAmerica described itself as a "traditional publisher" and claimed to accept only high-quality
manuscript s for publication. Its website further stated that the company received over 70 manuscripts a day and rejected most of them.At one point, PublishAmerica's AuthorsMarket
website posted an article stating that, among other things:Quotation|As a rule of thumb, the quality bar for sci-fi and fantasy is a lot lower than for all other fiction... interp|science fiction authors have no clue about what it is to write real-life stories, and how to find them a home... interp|science fiction writers who erroneously believe that SciFi, because it is set in a distant future, does not require believable storylines, or that Fantasy, because it is set in conditions that have never existed, does not need believable every-day characters. [cite web
url=http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/1/prweb202277.htm
title=Science Fiction Authors Hoax Vanity Publisher
accessdate=2006-03-05
publisher=PRWeb Press Release Newswire]Preparation
In retaliation, a group of science fiction and fantasy authors under the direction of
James D. Macdonald collaborated on a deliberately low-quality work, complete with obvious grammatical errors, nonsensical passages, and a complete lack of a coherent plot. The effort appears to have been partly inspired by another collaborative "hoax" work, "Naked Came the Stranger ": The working title of "Atlanta Nights" was "Naked Came the Badfic".cite web | author = Denise Howell, James D. "Travis Tea" Macdonald | title = Vanity Presses: Sound Policy with Denise Howell | url = http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1666.html | publisher = The Conversations Network | format = Podcast | date = 2006-11-15 | accessdate = 2008-07-24 ]The distinctive flaws of "Atlanta Nights" include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical to each other (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter "written" by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase "PublishAmerica is a vanity press." [ [http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1032467&postcount=44 Absolute Write Water Cooler - View Single Post - Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a TURKEY! ] ]
The finale was also crafted to be deliberately bad; not only are all the previous events of the plot revealed to have been a dream (long condemned as a "cheat" ending), but even after this revelation the book continues for several more chapters. This particular fillip was the work of Macdonald, who contrived the entire plot, or lack thereof.
Submission, acceptance and then repudiation
The completed manuscript was offered to PublishAmerica by an unrevealed person not usually associated with fiction. The manuscript was accepted for publication on
7 December 2004 without comment, despite the claim made by PublishAmerica that "We read every single submission before we accept or refuse."The contract was reviewed with legal counsel, and the decision was made not to carry the hoax to actually publishing the book.
On
23 January ,2005 , the hoax was publicly revealed by the authors. On24 January 2005 , PublishAmerica retracted its acceptance, stating that the novel failed to meet their standards after "further editing".Current status
The authors subsequently published the book through
print on demand publisherLulu.com (ISBN 1-4116-2298-7) under thepseudonym Travis Tea (apun on the word ""), with all profits designated to theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Emergency Medical Fund. Lulu.com's description of the novel continues the joke: "Atlanta Nights" is a book that could only have been produced by an author well-versed in believable storylines, set in conditions that exist today, with believable every-day characters. Accepted by a Traditional Publisher, it is certain to resonate with an audience." Or asTeresa Nielsen Hayden 's review said, "The world is full of bad books written by amateurs. But why settle for the merely regrettable? "Atlanta Nights" is a bad book written by experts."Authors
The authors of the chapters of this book include:
*Chapter 1 -
Sherwood Smith
*Chapter 2 -James D. Macdonald
*Chapter 3 -Sheila Finch
*Chapter 4 -Charles Coleman Finlay
*Chapter 5 -Julia West
*Chapter 6 -Brook West
*Chapter 7 -Adam-Troy Castro
*Chapter 8 -Allen Steele
*Chapter 9 -Alan Rodgers
*Chapter 10 -Mary Catelli
*Chapter 11 - Andrew Burt
*Chapter 12 -Victoria Strauss
*Chapter 12 -Shira Daemon (There are two "Chapter 12"s)
*Chapter 13 -Vera Nazarian
*Chapter 14 -Sean P. Fodera
*Chapter 15 - Teresa Nielsen Hayden
*Chapter 16 -Ken Houghton
*Chapter 17 - Charles Coleman Finlay
*Chapter 18 -M. Turville Heitz
*Chapter 19 -Kevin O'Donnell, Jr
*Chapter 20 -Chuck Rothman
*Chapter 21 - N/A, chapter missing
*Chapter 22 -Laura J. Underwood
*Chapter 23 -Jena Snyder
*Chapter 24 -Paul Melko
*Chapter 25 -Tina Kuzminski
*Chapter 26 -Ted Kuzminski
*Chapter 27 -Megan Lindholm /Robin Hobb
*Chapter 28 - Danica and Brook West
*Chapter 29 - Rowan and Julia West
*Chapter 30 -Derryl Murphy
*Chapter 31 -Michael Armstrong
*Chapter 32 -Pierce Askegren
*Chapter 33 -Deanna Hoak
*Chapter 34 - Computer generated by [http://www.critters.org/bonsai.html Bonsai Story Generator]
*Chapter 35 -Catherine Mintz
*Chapter 36 -Peter Heck
*Chapter 37 - M. Turville Heitz
*Chapter 38 -
*Chapter 39 -Brenda Clough
*Chapter 40 -Judi B. Castro
*Chapter 41 -Terry McGarry References
External links
* [ftp://ftp.sff.net/pub/people/doylemacdonald/sting/Contract.pdf Contract] offered by PublishAmerica
* [http://www.cs.du.edu/~aburt/StingAcceptance.pdf Acceptance letter]
* [http://sfwa.org/members/TravisTea/ The Official Travis Tea Website]
* [http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1666.html ITConversations podcast interview with James D.Macdonald]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
