Archive for the “General” Category
Nov
03
2009
 
Seth Godin Rethinks the Publishing IndustryPosted by Matthew Chan in Book Publishing, General, ePublishingIn doing a YouTube search, I found some great videos where Seth Godin spoke to the Digital Publishing Group regarding the future of the publishing industry. You can tell the employees are not happy about what Seth is telling them. Part 1 of 3. — Part 2 of 3 — Part 3 of 3.
Nov
03
2009
Prediction: Within 5 Years, Only 25% of New York Publishing Will SurvivePosted by Matthew Chan in Book Publishing, GeneralI have a prediction that within 5 years, only 25% of New York Publishing as we know it will survive. The other 75% will be acquired, move into a different business, or simply shut down. The economics of the present model will not be able to be sustained and the technological advances in publishing continue to advance at a rapid rate. There will continue to be celebrities and other people who have large platforms that will continue to make the remaining New York Publishers viable. But the Long Tail effect will continue to lengthen shattering the current obsolete book publishing and distribution models. There will be much more free content produced by authors that will monetize their efforts in other ways than from their books. As more authors become more empowered and understand their position in the new publishing marketplace, even the best authors will consider moving off in a different direction UNLESS New York publishing accommodates them or moves with them. But I see very little of that because most employees are fundamentally not entrepreneurial. Or if they are, they are not in an environment that will support them. Many employees within New York Publishing will find their skills obsoleted in much the same way old-style typesetters were put out of business when desktop publishing software became popular. Those employees who continue to chase positions with the big publishers will be participating in a game of musical chairs except that the chairs being removed will taken away dozens if not hundreds at a time. Their only hope is to find another career or morph into providing contract services to empowered authors. However, I believe most authors will NOT take on New York publishing’s ex-employees. They expect too much pay and the culture shock will be too great. It will probably be better for many to home-grow their own professionals or find those people who are experienced in being independent contractors. Book publishing will continue to have its place. Books won’t go away. But with many more authors producing more independent titles, it will dilute the power and influence of most New York publishers. And if you are bothered by this article, ask yourself why? I am only one unknown guy writing on little-read blog right? There is no power in this one lonely blog post, right? After all, a prediction does not make it fact. If I am wrong, I have little to lose. But if I am right, there are LOTS of people in for a lot of financial and career pain. Word of the the day: TITANIC This is another “waste of time” post, but I have to cover myself by being transparent. It appears that Ari Hinnant has is carrying out her threats to smear my name through fake stories of my being a pedophile, child rapist, and molester. Anyone knows if I was, in fact, these things I would be reported and registered in the state Sex Offender databases around the U.S. It is simple enough to check anyone’s Sex Offender background on:
She sent me this email last night. Please note that she has not stated what “offenses” I have supposedly committed. She is just going to report me to the authorities. For what I ask? For telling the truth of her online shenanigans? Matt, I have reported you to the FBI, BBB, All your social networks and local police. I will be taking further actions against you and your business. All future correspondences will be forwarded to the FBI and my attorney. Ms. Hinnant My initial response to her was this: Ari, What exactly will you report as you are the one who has been scamming people and lying to people with your products? You have impersonated people. You plagiarize people. You hire people without paying them. You get shut down by ecommerce companies. In fact, I caught you and the proof is posted. I suppose you will go make something up as you continue to do. I have screen shots of payment companies shutting you down and so forth. I am keeping records on everything you send me. You brought this on yourself. If you had not persisted in spamming the business area I was in, I would never have investigated you. I could not stay silent while you tried to take advantage of the community I participate in. I have no wish to waste any of my time coming across your fake posts and messages. I see you have removed your website so I am willing to “hide” those blog posts. But if you persist on, I will spend money on information services to dig out more personal information on you. I don’t want to waste my money but if you are hell bent on tarnishing my reputation by concocting stories, be prepared. It is your choice how you want to proceed. Believe it or not, I have much better things to do than to keep investigating you. I am willing to stop but you need to stop engaging in your fraudulent and spamming activities where I participate. You let me know what you want. This can all go away quickly. But if you want to do it the hard way, then I can play hardball too. I have way more to report on you than me. The only way you can report something on me is if you fabricate something (which I know you have already done). Do you want to escalate this or do you want to back it down? I prefer that everyone go back to their own lives and mind their own business. Matthew Chan My second response to her made today was: Ari, I have seen evidence of your handiwork on the whole Pedophile accusation thing. Everyone knows if I was, in fact, a pedophile, I would be required to register my name to the state and I would have a criminal record. I am happy to say that, aside from the occasional traffic ticket, I have no criminal record which is easily verifiable to anyone who cares. Just realize, I am printing screens of everything I find from you. As usual, you have taken to impersonating other people to make these accusations. This is very transparent. If and when it comes to the point where there is “enough” evidence or destructive behavior, I have every intention to seek criminal prosecution not simply make online reports. At this point, I am willing to let everything go away. But just realize if you persist, I will be an aggressive fighter and I will reach out to your family and friends to inform them of your shenanigans. Believe it or not, I don’t have an axe to grind here but if you perpetuate in this smear campaign, I will become very angry. If I find more fake smears, then I will no longer give you a courtesy warning. You can simply expect I will be taking actions to the fullest extent I am able. There will be no warnings anymore. Matthew Chan I have made screen prints of everything I discover along the way. Thus far, she has attempted to smear my name on:
There is probably more on the way that I will have to keep track of. I will be updating this post as I gather ongoing evidence. I have heard of nutjobs on the Internet but I have to say this is my first close encounter with one. Four weeks ago, I had the misfortune of encountering an online scammer named Ari Hinnant, who allegedly is a best-selling author that wanted to give to the world. She made these outrageous claims of books sales that no reputable author could ever accomplish anonymously. You can read about the two prior encounters here: Ari C. Hinnant – Red Flags for a Possible Scam/Rip-off ArtistAri C. Hinnant is Definitely a Fraud and Scam ArtistAnyhow, you would think she learned her lesson and keep a low profile. So, on a LinkedIn Group, she makes this post in a group full of experienced publishers, authors, editors, writers, etc. Everyone knows she is running a scam because of what she wrote which I have pasted here. Tips on Selling over 100,000 books for the fearless authorHello fellow fearless writers, I’m going to tell you step-by-step how I sold over 100,000 books. I will make this process effortless. 1. Create an explosive book. The title must be off the hook! The book and title must be irresistible! Inside the book, the first page my have 10 plus bullet points one what is inside the book. Once again, they must be irresistible. Once your book, website and publishing’s company is complete its time to hit the street. 2. Book hundreds of radio interviews. 3. Advertise on TV, cable, radio, etc.. 4. Most importantly, own all your work. Create your own publishing company. Do not give your power or money away. If you want me to show you how to sell tons of books… let me know. I will show you how to sell over 250,000 books in 18 months or less. Effortlessly. Contact me at: ari@changeyourlife.org Tell me. Does that smell like a scam or not? And get this, the LinkedIn Account holder is named Bliss L. but the message says to contact Ari! Yet another fake name and account. Anyhow, everyone is piling on with wise cracks of her claims. I share my prior investigation and the moderator Judy (a consummate publishing pro in her field) thanks me. So, I get this email tonight from an “arnold lewis”. It is a bit sick but it proves what a nutjob Ari is. I was going to buy a book from you… then I read that you are a child rapist on Linkdn. Now I know why you write such mean things about people. I’m going to spread the word that you are a pedophile. I will make sure that every social network knows about your past. Let’s assume for a minute that what she said was true. Who the heck says to themselves, “Gee, that looks like a great book. I think I want to buy it. BUT, she “reads” through some LinkedIn post that the author is supposedly a child rapist? Imagine that. LinkedIn is where a whole bunch of networking and business discussions are going on and someone just conveniently discovers a little-known “news flash” about a child rapist. So this “arnold lewis” supposedly has just met me and now feels the need to spread word about me being a pedophile. The investigator within me decides to look at the email headers. This is what I find. Return-Path: <arnoldlewisjr@gmail.com> Now, I am no expert here but I do some poking around to check where this email is coming from. Clearly, it is being sent from a Gmail address (which Ari is infamous for using). What do you think the chances the email sender’s real name is “arnoldlewisjr”? I would have to say “arnold” is “ari”. If you study her writing patterns and languaging, it is consistently bad English! Anyhow, based on past behavior patterns, it did not take long to figure out who it was. For the record, this was my reply to Ari Hinnant and “arnoldlewisjr”: Ari Hinnant, You are fooling no one. You are once against impersonating someone. If you decide to post these false allegations, you better believe that I will be tracking you down personally and hold you responsible for such actions. I suggest you watch yourself. You are the one who has been scamming people. Jennifer Cole knows it, another editor knows it, and I know it. All of your messages will be traced I promise you. Matthew I truly hope I don’t have to write about this again but when someone is going to make some outrageous statement about me that has no basis in fact, you have to fight it even if it is a nutjob. And the best way to fight it is to just make it public to defuse it. As an added feature to the TurnKeyPublisher.com website, I have added a Discussion Forum as an open and free resource for anyone interested in getting into the independent publishing business, how to write a book, how to produce audio programs, and other related subjects. I have visited various publishing discussion forums and I am disappointed by what I see. There is clearly a lot of interest but there are lots of spam-like posts, self-promotional posts, and otherwise unrelated posts. Having successfully operated and managed a very active business discussion forum for many years, I thought I was done with that phase of my life. However, it looks like I am getting back in the discussion forum game on the subject of Independent Publishing because I want to see a better quality and better managed forum where there is quality information and solid enforcement of rules to keep out unrelated, spam-like, and self-promotional postings. Like my prior forum, I will be assembling a small team of subject matter experts who will assist me in managing and answer questions on this forum. For now, I am both the Host and Moderator. If you have any questions regarding how to write non-fiction books or starting an independent publishing business, you will want to register yourself and participate. In my earlier article on Ari C. Hinnant and the changeyourlife.org website (now defunct and replaced by zkari.com, I strongly suspected and was 95% sure that she was a fraud and a scam artist. However, today I am absolutely sure of it would bet my life on it. In the few days since she contested my claims, she has gone to almost entirely a cash basis to collect payments using MoneyGram for the moment. She had the Amazon payment option but that looks like it got removed. I suspected that it would not last long since Amazon and other payment vendors has excellent fraud detection. She has certainly revealed more by posting this “C. Hinnant / Zkari | Louisville, KY 4022″ as the person all money orders should be made out to. I must say that watching this 46-year old woman make a mockery of her name and throwing her incredulous claims around is mind-boggling. I never knew there were so many payment vendors around but she is quickly burning through them all. An it appears she has made an enemy of Jennifer Cole (twitter jcole711) because there are several tweets trying to warn others of Ari Hinnant’s fraudulent claims that Oprah has jobs for people. For the people who are wondering why I would waste any time writing about this. It is simple. I am trying to prevent others from being scammed and victimized. And if they have been victimized and scammed, to let them know other people know about it. I know it is sort of a sick activity watching a scam artist at work but I can’t help it because it is out in the open! You just have to read the contents and pay attention to the details of changeyourlife.org (now zkari.com) and you will understand what I am talking about. The latest update I have is, Ari is now on Zkari.com using am Insight Phone cell number of 502-690-4685. The mailing address she uses: 277 Royal Poinciana Way, Palm Beach, FL 33480-4007 is from an RSVP Pack & Ship facility in Palm Beach, Florida.
Sep
24
2009
Upcoming Visit to Webster University Alumni & Faculty Authors Book Signing & ReceptionPosted by Matthew Chan in Conventions & Events, GeneralThis post was first published on the MatthewChan Blog. ==== As an MBA alumni who became an author, I have been invited by Webster University to attend the Webster University Alumni & Faculty Authors Book Signing & Reception in St. Louis, MO on October 9, 2009. When I attended Webster University for my MBA well over a decade ago, I did the academic work at the Orlando campus. I have never been to St. Louis and looking forward to finally visiting the city and the Main Campus being at the heart of the academic action. I will be bringing out my digital camera and camcorder to capture some memories of the experience.
Sep
20
2009
Ari C. Hinnant – Red Flags for a Possible Scam/Rip-off ArtistPosted by Matthew Chan in GeneralIn a recent participation of a LinkedIn discussion forum, I ran across a pretty audacious posting that immediately raised my suspicions. If it had only been posted once, I probably would have disregarded but it was posted 3 times in a forum where there were quite a few inexperienced people interested in publishing. Her bio and book description screamed of red flags. Her bio read like this: === Ari is on a mission. She is traveling around the country empowering people with jobs and peace of mind. Ari created 30 eBiznesses that will create millions of jobs, raise confidence and save millions of street children. All of Ari’s books are the stuff that dreams are made of; her books create jobs, quick income and profound peace of mind. For the last decade, Ari C. Hinnant has reached millions of people through her 30 books, radio network, speaking engagements, workshops, column, social networks and articles. Ari is a guest host on (Rumor Mill News Radio) that has over 1.2 million listeners and 17 million monthly visitors. Ari is donating twenty five percent of every book to empower homeless street children. Yes, there are literally 150 million plus children (Age 1 month to 18 years old) living on our global streets. Tonight while you are in your comfortable bed with a kitchen full of food, there are millions of children hungry, alone, exploited, sleeping in drainage ditches, under ground in abandon railroad shafts and buildings. No adults, no food, no safety, no love and no future. Ari will be speaking everywhere! All events benefit street children and women around the world. All events will supports the following organizations: Global Angels, City of Joy Foundation, Oprah’s Angel Network and Habitat for Humanity in empowering homeless women and street children. ==== Her book description reads like this: === The Author’s Guide to Selling 100,000 Books in 12 Months Twenty five percent of ‘The Author’s Guide to Selling 100,000′ books profits will be donated to empowering homeless street children. Ari’s newest book, The Author’s Guide to Selling 100,000 Books in 12 months’ will ignite all writers to release their formidable powers to create a masterful product and effortlessly sell over 100,000 copies in 12 months. You may think 100,000 books is allot of books, but, Ari has sold and donated over a million books. Jack Canfield has sold 144 million books and he was told he wouldn’t make it as a writer. My goal is to make your path of a writer effortless, profitable and fun. === This is one of the posts minus all the “accomplishments” that was listed prior. Will sell 2 million books from someone I couldn’t find on Amazon.com or barely find on Google search? === Sell 100,000 Books | Free gift to the amazing communityNamaste, I’m a successful author. I expect to sell 2 million books next year. I would love to gift this amazing community with one of my best selling books. The Author’s Guide to Selling 100,000 Books in 12 Months My intention is not to spam this group, just to help other authors and speakers. LOL, ari ==== Bottom line, I did a quick Internet background check and website review. This is what I found on changeyourlife.org and Ari Hillant. I suspect Ari Hinnant of making questionable business claims and not who she says she is. I have done some checking out of sheer curiosity and audacity of the claims. There is no solid realistic photo for this Ari whether you look at Ari’s Twitter or Facebook account. A Google search reveals no particular history for Ari Hinnant except that she is a 46-year old woman living in Louisville, KY. Anyone with such an extensive list of accomplishments and philanthropy would have some kind of Internet listings, records, and media news coverage. For an author who has written 30 books and sold 1 million books but isn’t listed on Amazon.com or BN.com is very suspicious to me. The twitter account has entirely spam-like messages with hard-to-believe claims. And everywhere you go to pay on the changeyourlife.org website, it is either a Western Union cash payment, a suspended AlertPay’s Alertrax account (big red flag!), or some other obscure alternative payment company. Where is her merchant account as most reputable vendors use? Or even Paypal? Or Google Payments? The Amazon payments I see is a very new service so we will see how long she keeps that service. Curiously, nearly all testimonials are from gmail addresses or “free” email accounts. Not one testimonial email address comes from a paid domain? And on the contact information, where is a mailing address? No street address or even a P.O. Box for such a successful person? The whois record for changeyourlife.org is listed to a Bella Lenta at 860 Global Gate in Roswell, GA with an email address of coolzenist@gmail.com. However, Fulton County GA Property Records shows it is owned by Victor Stevenson. According to movoto.com, the house has been listed for sale since 2/3/2009. Can it be Victor who is stupid enough to pull this scam off? Or is he simply a victim where his street address is being used? The IP addresses of her recent email to me and blog comments by HappyCarole indicate she is based in Louisville, Kentucky. It is consistent with what I found in peoplefinders.com. A Google search on “Bella Lenta” reveals no information of any real meaning so I am guessing it is also a fictitious name. I don’t buy it. Lots of red flags in this very simple background check anyone can do on Google. I do not believe there is an Ari Hinnant that has written 30 books, sold 1 million of them, and is a philanthropist, coach, and author. Although I am not 100% certain, it smells like a fake and scam to me. And I have screen shots on my computer to back up this report even if the website gets taken down or “corrected”. Let the buyer beware. === On the night of September 23 at 12:07am, I received an email allegedly from Ari that said this: Would you like to chat? So, you can see I’m real. Would like to see my 130 personal pictures of me and my family on Facebook? I wonder why people take the time to spread hate and lies? I will call you tomorrow. Blessings, ari The email header which that email came from says this. Return-Path: <SRS0=pYjU1Y=FO=changeyourlife.org=ari@yourhostingaccount.com> Although certainly not a crime or even a red flag in itself, what I find interesting is that she is using a free email program Windows Mail 6.0. For such a “successful” person, one would think she would use something else. === At 12:13am, I received a comment from HappyCarole: Author : HappyCarole (IP: 74.128.166.84 , 74-128-166-84.dhcp.insightbb.com) E-mail : happy.carole32@gmail.com Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=74.128.166.84 Comment: Sorry Matt… I have known Ari for five years. She is real and doing amazing work. Her whole family is on facebook. I have read two of her books and have taken one class and she changed my life. Her goal is to help homeless children around the world… what have you done to make the world better? I feel sorry for people like you. Happy | happy.carole32@gmail.com If you look at the original email header from Ari and compare it to the comment sent by HappyCarole, you will find that all the messages come from the same IP Address at the same ISP, Insight Communications Co. If there wasn’t proof before, I have now received more evidence that there is something fishy. Both Ari’s email and HappyCarole’s comments come from the same IP address 74.128.166.84? Very fishy indeed. ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.insightns.com:4321/ NetRange: 74.128.0.0 – 74.143.255.255 === At 12:13am, I received another comment from HappyCarole: Author : HappyCarole (IP: 74.128.166.84 , 74-128-166-84.dhcp.insightbb.com) E-mail : happy.carole32@gmail.com Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=74.128.166.84 Comment: One last thought. How can Ari be a scam artist if she provides a 100% money back guarantee on all her books? I think Matt is jealous…. how many books has he written? How many children has he helped? So so sad… Please note the same IP address. Also note that all 3 messages occurred at 12:07am, 12:13am, 12:19am. What is the likelihood that there are actually 2 different people posting 3 messages from the same IP addresses withing 6 minutes of each other? === Because of the recent discovery of the ISP and IP address Ari is using, according to peoplefinders.com I will admit that Ari C. Hinnant does appear to exist but seems to be based in Louisville, Kentucky. Also note the writing style of this person and compare it to my writing style. Would you say there is a bit of a contrast in style and sentence structure? I don’t even consider myself a professional writer! For such an allegedly successful author, Ari and HappyCarole have very similar writing styles. |
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