Light Sword Publishing and LSP Digital

I've been reading Victoria Strauss' and Ann Crispin's great blog, Writer Beware. (If you want to check up on scams and such, it's the blog to read, IMHO.)

So What About Light Sword?

The latest scam/whatever, is the title of this post. Light Sword Publishing is yet another start up to end up in bankruptcy court.

Except this looks like a dodge. Why? Because while the bankruptcy petition for Light Sword claims that it's had no income for the previous 12 months, the owner of Light Sword started up another publisher called LSP Digital (yeah, gee, what does LSP really stand for, eh?) just last June. In fact, Ms. Strauss goes on to say:

A bankruptcy petition has not been filed for Daly's other publishing company, LSP Digital, LLC, which to all appearances is still a going concern, publishing books and accepting submissions.

In a word: Disgusting.

LSP Digital Authors

According to Ms. Strauss, if the petition for LSP is granted, the trustee will probably not be fooled by this, um, workaround (or whatever you want to call), and the authors, unfortunately, will be caught up in a mess - a mess than might go on for years.

Horrible, nasty stuff.

And apparently authors' contracts are looked at by the courts as assets to be sold; after all, the idea is to try to generate some kind of money to pay off the debts.

Alas, Nothing New - Other Bankruptcies

This brings to mind the Triskelion bankruptcy, and other online-only publishers that have gone belly up in the past few years. (There was one that I followed on the Water Cooler that imploded almost before my eyes. It was a one-woman shop, being run by a woman out of her basement. Good intentions are paved with potholes, some with gigantic potholes, people!) Unless the people running the firm have been in the publishing business for a while (and I don't mean just a year or two), don't waste your time schlepping your baby to such start ups.

If your ms. bores you or you just don't care what happens to it, by all means, schlep it to such places.

The Writer Beware post is here, if you want to read it in its entirety.

Me? I'll try the agent route, then onto legit smaller publishers that take mss. directly from writers.

As always - do your homework before you send it out. You'll be able to sleep better at night if you do.

Love and kisses,

~Nancy Beck