When an article doesn’t include all the facts

Below is an article on Writers Beware about Tate Publishing, my publishing company. The article leaves out facts; that Tate Publishing is also a traditional and a hybrid publisher. This is one of those articles that gives the reader a bad impression about a publishing company because the article only refers to Tate Publishing as a vanity publisher with authors who have had bad experiences. What about us happy Tate authors who haven’t paid for publishing with Tate? Read my comment to the writer at the end of this post.

The following is a re-post from Writers Beware: http://bit.ly/2hj4G1H

 

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

It’s hard times lately for “America’s Top Publisher,” a.k.a. Tate Publishing & Enterprises, a.k.a. one of America’s most prolific vanity publishers.

Tate has been on Writer Beware’s Thumbs Down Publishers List since the list was created. Not just because it charges enormous fees (an initial $3,990, with the option of paying hundreds or even thousands more for extras such as video trailers, custom websites, self-ordered books, and the like), but because it presents itself as a “mainline publishing organization” and doesn’t reveal its fees anywhere on its website or in its promotional videos.

In fact, Tate’s website specifically promises that authors do not have to pay to publish: “Tate Publishing does not charge a fee for publishing and absorbs all the cost of production and distribution of a book.” But this is classic vanity publisher doublespeak. Deeper into the submission process, when Tate finally gets around to asking authors to pull out their credit cards, they are told that the money is for a publicist.

Clearly, Tate wants authors to assume that it’s as traditional as traditional can be. And they do. Writer Beware has gotten hundreds of questions and reports from authors who approached Tate in the belief that it was not a vanity publisher.

We’ve also heard from many Tate authors who don’t feel their money was well spent–and we aren’t alone. In 2015, Tate was the second most complained-about company to the Oklahoma attorney general. Many more complaints–not just about Tate Publishing, but about its vanity recording subsidiary, Tate Music Group–can be found online. They make for terrifying reading–bad editing, shoddy production, constant staff turnover, books ordered and paid for but never received, delayed pub dates, non-payment of royalties, “marketing” that mostly consists of urging writers to buy their own books…the list goes on

The Better Business Bureau, which as of this writing has logged 134 complaints over the past three years, yanked Tate’s accreditation earlier this year.

That’s a lot of chickens, and they are now coming home to roost. This past May, Xerox Corporation filed a $1.7 million lawsuit (since increased to $1.89 million) against Tate, alleging defaults on service agreements and promissory note payments, and seeking re-possession of $450,000 in leased equipment. Tate has not had good luck with its attorneys in the case; the first withdrew in September, saying he was retiring, and the second is also seeking to withdraw, in part, apparently, because Tate hasn’t paid him. (Maybe that’s why Ryan Tate never got around to filing his promised counter-suit against Xerox.)

The Xerox lawsuit spurred layoffs from Tate’s printing plant, even before Xerox began re-possessing its equipment in late July. And that’s not all. Tate is facing at least four additional legal actions: a lawsuit by an author who claims that she paid over $12,000 for a book that was published full of errors (twice); a petition by a client of Tate Music Group to compel arbitration, due to various alleged breaches of contract, including copyright infringement; an action by memorabilia manufacturer Jostens, which says that Tate owes it more than $13,000; and another by the property company that leases Tate its print shop (possibly vacant now that Xerox has re-possessed its equipment), which claims that Tate owes nearly $20,000 in rent.

If that weren’t enough, Tate’s employment practices are being investigated by the Department of Labor. (Some employees say that they were threatened and “coached on what to say” by CEO Ryan Tate before Labor Department investigators came to interview them; this would not be the first time that Ryan Tate has threatened employees.) And per an (uneverified) comment on one of my previous posts about Tate, Tate may recently have been evicted from its offices.

Are these the straws that broke the camel’s back? Has Tate reached its very own End Times? Either way, it’s not looking good for “America’s Top [Vanity] Publisher.”

Predictably, the honchos at Tate are pretending nothing’s wrong. “There are a lot of issues that probably would be a little more important for you or your news agency or any news agency to deal with,” company founder Richard Tate told local news station KFOR, “other than the fact that our company is doing a great job.”

Hmmm. I think some Tate authors would disagree.

1 comment :

Diane Mae Robinson Multi-Award-Winning Author said…

Hi Victoria. I wanted to inform you that not every author that is published with Tate has to pay a fee, of any sort. I have two traditional contracts with Tate. I have not paid for editing, illustrations, production, video trailer, website, a publicist, or any thing else you can think of that may require a fee. Therefore, I would strongly disagree with you that Tate is a vanity publisher only. They may have a vanity publishing arm to the company, I don’t know what other people’s contracts say. You are giving a wrong impression here.

In regards to the person who had their book published twice with mistakes, I can’t see how that could happen. My books went through three rounds of editing, which I had to approve at the last round, and then a final layout, which, again, I had to approve.

There are a lot of great authors signed with Tate and great books being produced by Tate. For example, in the 2015 Literary Classics Book Awards http://www.literaryclassics.org/AwardsByYear.html there were a number of Tate authors who won Gold and Silver, myself included:

I have had excellent service with Tate who has always gone out of their way to please me as one of their authors.

Many author’s livelihood depends on their books being available through Tate and affiliate links. Maybe, before you bash them as the worst publisher on earth, you should get all your facts straight.

Thank you.

Diane Mae Robinson
Multi-award winning Tate author

My Writing Process

As a children’s chapter book author, the first and most important aspect of my writing process involves finding my “child voice”. “Child Voice” is a term in children’s literature that interprets into the author being able to get inside the heads of their children characters; think and act as those children characters would think and act and, thus, be able to write about them with ease.

Through all my years of studying children’s literature and children’s behavior, a major lesson I have learned is that to write for children the writer must have a certain level of immaturity along with the ability to remember the art of play. In my case, this is very doable, and when my friends call me immature, I take that as a compliment that I am on the right creative track.

When I am in the first stages of planning a new children’s book, I do a lot of note keeping, character building, and mapping out the fantasy world that the characters will be having their adventures in. Once I know my character’s world and know each character as much as I would know a good friend, then the plot creating process begins.

The creating of their story starts out as a movie playing in my head. This movie plays a scene, re-winds, re-plays the scene somewhat differently, builds the next scene only to re-wind, re-build, and re-plays that scene. As day and months go by, the movie keeps building, re-playing, strengthening the plot; it’s just about like the characters take over the making of the movie to get their story told.

Then one day, the movie in my head is complete and that’s when I get down to the business of writing. When I’m in the writing phase, I write with a frenzied passion for days, weeks on end, often writing non-stop for 12 hours at a time until the book is written.

Once the story is written in the first draft, I leave it alone for a few weeks to give the characters some time to settle into the story.

Then it’s on to editing. Editing phase will last another several weeks where I edit in two or three hour intervals every few days.

When I feel the book is at least 90% well written and well edited, the manuscript is submitted to my publisher. I am published with a traditional publisher, so the book will be scrutinized by their editor and the editor and I will work through several more stages of editing before the book goes on to production

Illustration by Samantha Kickingbird

Illustration by Samantha Kickingbird

For more information about my dragon books for children, www.dragonsbook.com

My Writing Process

As a children’s chapter book author, the first and most important aspect of my writing process involves finding my “child voice”.  “Child Voice” is a term in children’s literature that interprets into the author being able to get inside the heads of their children characters; think and act as those children characters would think and act and, thus, be able to write about them with ease.

Through all my years of studying children’s literature and children’s behavior, a major lesson I have learned is that to write for children the writer must have a certain level of immaturity along with the ability to remember the art of play.  In my case, this is very doable, and when my friends call me immature, I take that as a compliment that I am on the right creative track.

When I am in the first stages of planning a new children’s book, I do a lot of note keeping, character building, and mapping out the fantasy world that the characters will be having their adventures in. Once I know my character’s world and know each character as much as I would know a good friend, then the plot creating process begins.

The creating of their story starts out as a movie playing in my head. This movie plays a scene, re-winds, re-plays the scene somewhat differently, builds the next scene only to re-wind, re-build, and re-plays that scene. As day and months go by, the movie keeps building, re-playing, strengthening the plot; it’s just about like the characters take over the making of the movie to get their story told.

Then one day, the movie in my head is complete and that’s when I get down to the business of writing. When I’m in the writing phase, I write with a frenzied passion for days, weeks on end, often writing non-stop for 12 hours at a time until the book is written.

Once the story is written in the first draft, I leave it alone for a few weeks to give the characters some time to settle into the story.

Then it’s on to editing. Editing phase will last another several weeks where I edit in two or three hour intervals every few days.

When I feel the book is at least 90% well written and well edited, the manuscript is submitted to my publisher. I am published with a traditional publisher, so the book will be scrutinized by their editor and the editor and I will work through several more stages of editing before the book goes on to production.

To read reviews about my multi-award winning dragon books for children: http://www.dragonsbook.com/ReviewIndex.html

 

Lessons From Picasso

There are lessons to be learned from the art and the mind of Pablo Picasso. His techniques, creative insights, and empathy of his art has distinguished him as the revolutionary artist of the twentieth century.

Pablo Picasso
Oct. 25, 1881 – Apr. 8, 1973

“When I was a child, my mother told me, ‘If you become a soldier, you will be a general. If you become a monk, you will end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”

Ah, the confidence to do what you were destined to do in life, and to do it well. This is a lesson all creators of the arts can take to heart.

Pablo Picasso was an innovative thinkers of his time. He reinvented himself many times over during his career. Depending on his mental state and what was going on in the world at the time, his paintings took on the persona of: depression during his ‘Blue Period’; love during his ‘Rose Period’; shocking abstracts from his ‘Cubist Period’; and the ‘Classic Period’ as World War 1 broke out. But at each stage, the art was profound and empathetic.

Does this mean that, as a writer, if we can feel the deepest emotions of what we are writing at a certain time, the work will be more poignant? I think that is exactly what Pablo Picasso was telling the world.

If a writer or an artist does not have their emotions wholeheartedly invested in their art, then neither will the reader or the viewer.

Pablo Picasso knew of the complexity of creating a piece of art, but he also understood the simplicity of art. Upon passing a group of school kids in his old age Picasso remarked, “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Rapheal,  but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” 

 

Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait, 1907, oil on 

As a children’s book author, this statement is a profound lesson to me. It’s as if the artist is telling me to leave behind my adult ego and think as a child, to play as a child, to create as a child. And then, and only then, when I have re-mastered the skills of being a child, to write the books for the child.Being an artist has also taught me lessons in writing for children, and teaching art to children, more so. Teaching children helps me to understand their creative insights, their lack of ego or competition, and their pure imagination that is so very intense.

The Princess Knight by Diane M. Robinson
2009, acrylic on canvas

 

Children create from their heart. So as a children’s book author, the lessons I’ve learned  from being around the creative minds of children is what grounds me in my writing, and teaches me how to create stories for children, through the eyes of a child, and with the heart of a child. Children have also taught me how to capture childlike innocence in my own art.

Picasso has made a profound impact on the world of art, and his creative genius is a lesson to all who create, in all aspects of the arts.

.”If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” Pablo Picasso

http://www.biography.com/people/pablo-picasso-9440021http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picasso-2.html



                                    May the wheels of creativity never stop turning.


What does an author do when not authoring?

When I first started writing and creating stories, I thought that was a tremendous amount of work.

Then along came the part where a couple of my stories were ready to start looking for a publishing home. The process that follows in researching publishers and the children’s book markets to see who is accepting what and what is the process for submitting, became more work still.

After many years of researching those markets, writing query letters, submitting my manuscripts when requested, waiting for an answer, researching some more, submitting again, waiting some more, my first manuscript was accepted by a publisher—27 rejections later, in fact.

So, finally, a contract. Here comes the easy street of being an author, right?  Wrong.

Illustration by Samantha Kickingbird for Sir Princess Petra – The Pen Pieyu Adventures, book 1.

First, comes the editing of the book, which is quite a huge process to begin with. Then, I’m assigned a marketing manager who informs me about all the things I am required to do as an author. The marketing manager puts my book is distribution all around the world and is in charge of marketing, what would I possibly have to do?

Well, putting a book in distribution to book stores and on-line book sellers apparently isn’t enough. With the amount of new books being published by traditional publishers and self-published authors (approximately 40,000 books per month), a new author has to get their name out there.

So an author must learn marketing skill also. My marketing manager told me I would have to set up a blog, make regular posts, attend book signings he set up for me, talk about my book on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc, schedule events to speak at schools and libraries,  attend interviews he set up, seek out reviews for my book, regularly update the website the publisher set up for me, and join other blogs about writing and hopefully in responding to these blogs, they will in turn respond to mine. All this to try and stir up interest in my book.

Now, these things are all a lot more work than I ever anticipated. I do everything my marketing manager suggests–sometimes with gritted teeth, but I do listen to him.

So just when I think my time is taken up to the max, I decided to hire a marketing-publicity person to  set up a more professional website with key word rich formatting. He also writes and sends out news releases with key word structure, maintains and updates my new website, and in general, is a computer savvy person that knows how to stir up a lot of interest and also how to get my new website into the top pages of Google hits. After all, people have to find me in the sea of writers.

All these things do work to get my book, and myself as a writer, noticed. But it is also a lot of work on my part to follow the instructions given to me by these book selling geniuses.

Every week, I also have fan mail to answer, and write new posts for two blog sites that I maintain.

So, what does an author do when not authoring? Well, about 20 hours per week dealing with the list above.

By the way, I have a full-time job at a dental office and a part-time job as an art teacher. My writing days are now limited to a few specific days I set aside during any given month.

And just when I thought the writing part was hard work.