ParaDon Books - possible publishing scam?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Nov 2011 Posts: 1

I'd like to introduce you to ParaDon Books Publishing:

http://paradonbooks.com/index.html

Although this weird little outfit is based in Montana - well, their PO Box is in Montana - there is something very 419ish about them. ParaDon has been spamming the net like mad during the past couple of weeks and eventually came to the attention of writers' advocate site Absolute Write:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230026

Note ParaDon's response to criticism - they threatened AW with a "cyber-attack"!

Although ParaDon claims to be founded by a "newspaper mogul" named Richard Egland and has a newspaper columnist turned acquisitions editor named Celina Marka, a Google search turns up nothing about them. The grammatical errors, tortured English, grandiose claims and bombastic tone of their publicity material is very similar to the content of 419 emails.

NO reputable publisher asks its potential authors for money, yet ParaDon charges a $25 dollar submission fee. Until very recently Celina Marka had a fiverr page on which she advertised a short story competition; all an aspiring writer had to do was send a story which she'd read for $5. After I complained to fiverr all mention of the contest was removed.

Only very, very naieve novice writers would submit their work to a company whose representatives are barely literate. Sadly, such people exist and do fall victim to scammers and unscrupulous vanity presses.

Take a look at the Guest book on ParaDon's website - critical comments are removed within hours!

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 9:34 am

Hello Alice.

Scam or Sharpe business practice ?

I've read some of the comments over at absolutewrite.com and I think that the contributors over there have noticed most of the Red Flags.

I would add:

Would you do business with all the Red Flags that absolutewrite have mentioned, and then also discover that the web site 'paradonbooks.com' has only been registered for one year ? ---

Quote:

WHOIS - paradonbooks.com

Registrar: TUCOWS.COM CO.
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Dates: Created 13-oct-2011 Updated 13-oct-2011 Expires 13-oct-2012
DNS Servers: NS1.MDNSSERVICE.COM NS2.MDNSSERVICE.COM NS3.MDNSSERVICE.COM

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