Follow-Up On The Albee Agency Kerfuffle

If you recall, last month, a book publicity agency — the Albee Agency — posted testimonials on its website falsely attributed to some authors like me, Maureen Johnson, and Myke Cole, using our names without permission. (My post on the subject is here, but also have a look at the Writer Beware entry on them by the most excellent Victoria Strauss.)

Once busted and folks started tweeting to them, the testimonials remained the same but they changed the names associated with those them.

Things have been quiet since then, except recently I caught wind of:

@shamtown not only that, the articles calling Albee agency a scam were faked and paid for a competitor.

— Noah Murphy (@Murphyverse) January 11, 2013

I want this to be very clear: saying the Albee Agency falsely attributed my name and the names of other authors to testimonials they never gave was never an act of espionage launched by some other agency. It was a reporting of details. Nobody paid me. The blog post is not a fake.

I asked the person above (@Murphyverse) about where he heard that.

Was it from the Albee Agency? Is that what they told him?

@murphyverse @nvbinder Where then did you get the idea that I was paid by some competing agency?

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) January 12, 2013

They might have suggests, at least, that there is a chance the Albee Agency was lying to him about what went down regarding those testimonials, telling clients that those posts were faked and paid for by a competitor (@Murphyverse claimed it was “Smith Publicity” doing the dirty deed), when in fact no such thing was or is true.

Murphyverse followed up with (this time without an @-to me, perhaps mistakenly):

They told me the competing agency harressed you int…. You know what, they may not be a scam but I can’t trust them

— Noah Murphy (@Murphyverse) January 12, 2013

(I assume that’s to read, “harassed you into it.”)

Here, the key is, “they told me.”

Meaning, the Albee Agency told him that.

Meaning, they lied to him about that.

Looking through his Twitter stream seems to indicate other problems with the Albee Agency (issues of payment to them without result, issues of non-communication, etc).

The Albee Agency also now has a “word press blog” (“There is not wrong or right way to write a blog.. it is totally personal to you and your interests.”). But maybe there’s also this one? albeeagencyblog.wordpress.com? (Where they misspell their own name as Alby Agency?)

Once again, this is a reminder to be wary of any company out there in Internet-Land who provides dubious services and throw up a whole shitload of red flags. They particularly like to prey on self-published or “indie” authors. So, again, as Victoria Strauss says: writer beware.