Author: James C Harwood
Date:   03-22-06 10:09

I have been away from Writers.net for what feels like a long time, perhaps a couple of years since I last posted. Even so, I left my account open and profile listed. As result, from time to time, I get contacted by some good people, and I get contacted by some scammers. It recently started happening again with the scammers.

I am going to post this at more than one place at Writers.net to make sure everyone knows the details and facts. I am also sending all of this information to a friend of mine at the local FBI office in Wichita, Kansas, to be forwarded to the FBI Computer Crimes Task Force. It will at least be listed, might be investigated on my report alone, but they will not likely take action unless they hear from people who have actually done business with eQueryonline.com and believe they have been ripped off.

I’ll explain about my situation and my experience with the market as a published author, after I cover the details of what I believe is a scam. And I’ll give a few tips to writers new to this scene, and others who have been around for a long time and are still trying.

I suddenly began receiving emails from various individual sources, all of them using false email headers, and all of them trying to get me to go to eQuryonline.com. It appears that what they are actually doing is targeting expired domains, so that the former domain owners are not likely aware it is happening, and are using those expired domains for the false email headers to send the emails. I usually move them to the spam trash. Today, I decided to investigate the latest one…

I received an email today Wednesday 22 March 2006 from fictionwriters@studioinsight.org
The email directs me to submit my manuscript at
http://www.equeryonline.com
I opened the full header of the email to examine the source information.
The full header of the email shows the IP address to be 65.254.41.202
The ARIN WHOIS database search results shows it belongs to
Global Net Access, LCC, 55 Marietta St, NW, Suite 1720, Atlanta, GA 30303
I then attempted to access the apparent website for
fictionwriters@studioinsight.org
which should be
http://www.studioinsight.org
but goes to the Error #1500 page stating the page is not available and to contact
PremiumSupport@Brinkster.com
Then I went to
http://www.brinkster.com
which is real and is the domain source for studioinsight.org.
I then did a search for more information on the studioinsight.org domain and its owner.
The WHOIS search website
http://www,hnetworksolutions.com/whois/
search led me to information on the owner of the domain studioinsight.org to be
Scott Rhodes, 859 N. Hollywood Way #128, Burbank, CA 91505-2814 at phone number 310-098-9999 with a separate email address
fromcalifornia@fastmail.fm
which apparently is not a false email address.
It might be that Scott is not even aware any of this is happening, if his apparently expired domain has been hijacked. I have not attempted to contact him directly, but I did send an email reply, which has not yet been answered and has not yet come back yet as a dead address.

The next step is checking up on eQueryonline.
I went to http://www.equeryonline.com/
There I found no contact information. Huge red flag. There is only the means to complete and submit their form, and to send them your money. So it would appear there is no way to find out where your money went.
If you are someone who has sent money to eQueryonline, then your bank or credit card company can provide some good feedback for you on where the money went after the payment clears your account and is posted at your account website if you can access it online. I’ve nailed a few scammers that way, by just sending a dollar instead of the full amount to find out who they are and where they are. That works.
In this case, I did a search for the owner of the eQueryonline.com domain.
The first search results took me to TUCOWS INC, which is a business I have encountered before when checking up on scammers, as it appears many scammers like to use TUCOWS to get domains. The people at TUCOWS are very much aware of that fact, don’t like it, and are trying to help fix the problem. An internal search via their special link to WHOIS led me to identify the owner of eQueryonline.com. When he got his domain, he had to pay for it with a credit/debt card and had to provide the street address to where the credit/debt card invoices are sent. He is…
Dominic LaPaglia, 8217 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212 at phone number
310-989-8878.
He also has an email address being
equerry@dygo.com
So naturally I looked up
http://www.dygo.com
It is a page with Dygo.com on it and “We are currently undergoing a hardware upgrade.” And under that a “check email” link that goes to a password sign-in at “W.Mail Connecting People” at
http://dygo.com/cgi-bin/wmail/wmail.pl
which is the end of the trail.
If Dominic’s street address is real [for where he receives his credit/debt card statements, then that is where your money is going, and that is who your money is going to. So, if it is a scam, then that is the person who is ripping you off.
If you have been ripped off, then you can report it to the FBI. But it might be more effective to contact the Consumer Fraud and Economic Crime office of the District Attorney for your location as well as the one for Beverly Hills. Good luck!

Now, about my experience as a writer and just barely published author…

I spent about ten years submitting manuscripts to traditional agents and traditional publishers, collecting a pile of rejection slips. NONE read my material. It was rejected without anyone opening the manuscript to read it. My contact letters failed to get them to go that far. Contact letters can make a difference. But don’t ever waste your time and money on services offering to read and review your manuscript for a fee. Finding the right words to put in a contact letter to open that door can make a difference, and has nothing to do with your ability to write what should be a best selling novel. Writing an effective contact letter has nothing to do with writing. It is about selling a product. You might be better off taking your product to people who are experts in advertising and marketing and have them present it to major publishers. That would be worth it, if you can afford to do that, and if you really do have a good product. It is too bad that the eQueryonline concept option appears to not be the real deal.

In 2003, I finally gave in to a print-on-demand publisher. Initially, it was not a bad deal. I can still say that option is not a bad deal for nonfiction writers. It would be ideal for someone like a professor writing a textbook that will be sold directly to his students. But it is not the best option for fiction writers to sell novels. The problem is not the money paid up front. That didn’t bother me at all. The problem is the marketing and distribution and relating competition. The end result is a trade paperback with a retail sales price of around $20.00, which at best is sold online and at worst ends up being a few copies on the back shelf of an obscure bookstore. The competition is from traditional big publishing houses, able to put a hard cover novel from a known best selling author on display at the doors of bookstores and at grocery store checkouts for only about $11.00 per copy displayed as being 40% off the usual price. A paperback version goes for about $8.00 now. Very few people are going to be willing to pay $20.00 for a trade paperback from an unknown author, when they can get a hard cover for $11.00 or a paperback for $8.00 from a known best selling author. That is really what it comes down to. It is a marketing dead end. Nothing can change that fact. It was iUniverse.com. I terminated the contract and ordered the book pulled so that I could be free to pursue other options.

In 2004, I tried the electronic publishing route and converted my novel to an ebook in MS Word, PDF, and HTML with internal hyperlinks to a special glossary and as a “layered” ebook. It was immediately accepted by an ebook publisher in Australia. Didn’t cost me anything at all. The owner of that company is a writer like the rest of us who have been down the same dead end roads. I was the first author to submit to his new company. He became a friend. We write the same kind of fiction, being science fiction. He gained more titles –more authors –after a period of time, first selling the ebooks at his own website, and there have been a few sales. Then he ran into a problem. Marketing and distribution. Like to Amazon.com, for example. They refused to accept any titles directly from him. We found out the big publishing houses with printed books that have ebook versions can get right in and listed. But they will not allow a new ebook publisher to do that. Instead, he would have to submit through a special ebooks distributor. It turned out that the only distributor willing to do that wanted $5000.00 up front as a fee, plus an unreasonable percentage of any sales, and a minimum of 100 titles submitted rather than accepting one title at a time from the ebook publisher. So it became a dead end as far as getting the ebook listed and sold through any and all major websites like Amazon.com. But not a total dead end, because he at least did get his business listed in all major search engines, so that readers and writers looking for ebooks will find his website. It is growing. It is better than nothing. There are a few sales. However, like me [having just turned age 50], he really doesn’t want to bother with it anymore. But he decided to keep accepting new titles and to keep his online bookstore for ebooks open for at least another year to see how it goes. PulplessFiction.com.

Traditional publishing comes down to knowing the right people, and being willing to kiss their butts. Butt kissing can translate to money under the table in some cases, such as kickbacks to people in key positions. It is not just the agents, not just the publishers, and not just the distributors. It comes down to who controls the display of books. They can kill a good book by putting a few copies on a back shelf, and they can sell trash by putting many copies on display at the door and checkout. What is “in it” for that person to decide to put your book up front or stash it in the back? That is a powerful person.

If you finished a manuscript, then congratulations because few actually get that far, but you must realize even that much is a fraction of the job. You know the hardship of getting agents to accept it, or approaching publishers willing to accept manuscripts directly from writers. And even good agents know the hardship of trying to get even a good manuscript to be accepted by a publisher. That is about half of the job. The rest of the job, the really important part, is distribution and getting bookstores to accept the book. Hey, they don’t have to!!! There is no law that says any bookstore must accept any titles from any publisher through any distributor. The final decision comes down to the owner/manager of the bookstore. And even if he/she accepts it, what really matters is how it is displayed and if it is sold for a reasonable price.

Yep, it was a long posting. I hope this has been helpful.

Best regards to everyone!

James C. Harwood,
Wichita, KS

Author: James C Harwood
Date:   03-22-06 11:20

Just a brief note to correct a link I provided in my previous posting. There was an error in the link. The corrected link is...
The WHOIS search website
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/

And, just one additional PostScript, for those who hate PODs. From my lengthy posting, one might conclude that I finally decided to try a POD as result of frustration from ten years of rejections by traditional agents and publishers. Yes, that was half of it. The other half was and still is my failing health. But, like Michael J. Fox, I got a little better. Even so, when I thought time was running out, I was willing to do anything to reach my goal, just to get a novel published. I didn't care about the money. I wasn't going to be around to spend it anyway. But I'm still here. I could use the money now. However, taking a turn for the worse again, I've got the tremmmmors [screwed up that link in the earlier posting due to keyboard operator malfunction]. I freely admit my sin, that the POD option was a mistake. But the ebook option I next tried was OK, and better than nothing. I can die happy, hopefully later than sooner, and not totally broke financially. It is out there, and some are buying it and reading it. No complaints.

James C. Harwood,
Wichita, KS

Author: James C Harwood
Date:   03-22-06 14:25

Here is a link I found about the scam when I did a new search for Dominic LaPaglia and also for Scott Rhodes...
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/printthread.php?t=21756
So no doubt about it now.

James C. Harwood,
Wichita, KS

Author: Carol O
Date:   03-22-06 15:33

Good to hear from you, James, I'm glad you're hangin' in there.

Author: James C Harwood
Date:   03-22-06 19:39

Thanks, Carol O.

Author: James C Harwood
Date:   03-22-06 19:40

Update…

I used Google Earth to zoom in on the claimed address of Dominic LaPaglia, 8217 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212, and it appears to be the middle of a somewhat complicated intersection of streets. Reverse directory did not identify any person or business at that exact address, as if it is false. Reverse lookup on his phone number 310-989-8878 shows it is a cell phone out of Gardena, CA.

I used Google Earth to zoom in on the claimed address of Scott Rhodes, 859 N. Hollywood Way #128, Burbank, CA 91505-2814, and it appears to be a building in a commercial/industrial area with trucks backed up to loading docks. Reverse directory did not identify any person or business at that exact address as if it is false. Reverse lookup on his phone number 310-098-9999 indicates it is a false number –no such prefix.

Google Earth is FUN.

A posting, last year, at another message board website, indicates Scott Rhodes and Dominic LaPaglia are the same person, but not proved. It is interesting that the ISP for Scott Rhodes has its HQ in Atlanta, GA, instead of anywhere near his claimed location in CA. Reviewing the reply messages at the other message board, it looks like the person who tried to warn everyone about the scam took an unreasonable beating, even from people who should have praised him for his efforts to try to save everyone from being ripped off.

If it isn’t a scam, then in my opinion it is at a minimum an extremely unprofessional operation that should be avoided. No contact information at the website; no phone number, no street address, no email address. No information on owner or personnel. He apparently uses other people to spam potential targets, and always with emails that appear to have false header information.
There are too many dead end domains and email addresses involved with one simple online business, and that is a fact.

Whoever decided to target me got my name and email address from finding it at Writers.net, I know because of the particular email address used to contact me at. But then failed to read my information and see that I already got the book published –by two different means –POD and separately an ebook. And I know that no traditional agent or book publisher would dare touch it now. But it could still be sold to someone wanting to turn it into a move, although very unlikely at this point. I’m not waiting for Tim Burton to call me, but he would be first choice for that option. So there really isn’t anything eQueryonline can do for me, even if it is real and not a scam.

James C. Harwood,
Wichita, KS

Author: Kenneth Brosky
Date:   04-25-06 16:15

I'm going to weigh in on this because I recently used equeryonline. So far, I've received 32 responses from agents and a few from publishers, including Dandelion Press, Chronicle Books, Random House (2 editors), and Simon and Schuster. The queries were sent out in mid-April, and I'm still occasionally getting responses from the queries. Typically, the agents request the first few chapters, but the editors from publishing houses have all requested the full manuscript.

I received the email from equeryonline to my business account (Editor@FinalDraftLiterary.com), which suggested that my email MUST have been sold by a writing site (maybe Writers.net, or another site I subscribe to). If this is the case, then equeryonline PROBABLY purchased a bulk advertisement from a third party, which probably hid the real address out of concerns for SPAMMING.

Make of this what you want. I certainly don't feel scammed in any way, and I am satisfied. Whether you agree or not, I'm not necessarily sure it's fair to attack equeryonline simply because they may or may not have used a questionable mass mailing advertiser. James has done a commendable investigation, however it's difficult to have any mert without complaints from actual clients.

Author: eileen arpke
Date:   12-19-09 12:30

Pretty well said..!!!!!!

Eileen..
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Author: eileen arpke
Date:   12-19-09 12:31

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