Word of warning
"Love of Books Self Publishing Gold Coast Queensland" founder as
complaints dog self-publisher and convicted fraudster
'We publish some
amazing stories,'' Julie Marie McGregor once boasted of her business providing
specialist services for people with dreams of publishing their first books.
But the
do-it-yourself publishing entrepreneur has an incredible story of her own
involving bankruptcy, fraud and a string of complaints from disgruntled clients
from Victoria, NSW, Queensland and the ACT stretching back more than three
years.
The law caught
up with McGregor on November 1, 2017, when a Southport magistrates court
convicted her of three counts of dishonestly gaining thousands of dollars from
three restaurants using fraudulent credit cards. She was handed a nine-month
suspended sentence for what the prosecution said was a "calculated,
fraudulent activity, not once but three times".
Acting
magistrate Gary Finger described McGregor as "certainly naive to say the
least" for her role in the complex fraud, in which she booked restaurant
functions on fraudulent credit cards and then persuaded the restaurant owners
to pay for non-existent florists and limousine services. A sobbing McGregor was
told she would face jail time if she came before the courts again.
The undischarged
bankrupt presented herself as a model businesswoman who had built her online
publishing service from scratch only to emotionally fall apart following the
death of her husband in 2015.
The English-born
pensioner claimed to have been targeted online and convinced against her better
judgment to transfer the illicitly-gained money into other accounts for which
she was entitled, but rarely took, a 10 per cent commission. At the time she
was grief-stricken, was downing a bottle of Bacardi a day in the months after
her husband's death and was easily manipulated, her lawyer said.
But a number of
former customers have come forward to the Sun-Herald to reveal the loss of
their hard-earned savings for books they ordered from McGregor's do-it-yourself
publishing business but never received, which arrived too late for book
launches or were so amateurishly produced they were unsaleable.
It was McGregor
who dealt exclusively with a Melbourne high school whose parents spent $10,000
to produce a cookbook as a Christmas fundraiser in 2016.
The school,
which does not want to be named, paid a $4000 deposit raised from local
sponsors plus a further $6000 to McGregor's business, Love of Books Brisbane,
to print 1000 copies of recipe favourites.
To date the
fundraisers say they have not received a single copy of the book, which was to
have been delivered four weeks after the supply of artwork and content in
September 2016.
"Ms McGregor
was incredibly encouraging and promised the world initially," a parent
said. "But it wasn't long before the relationship felt uneasy. It was
erratic and inadequate. Work would come back poorly done, with corrections not
addressed. She would be uncontactable for days. It took me 2½ weeks to get them
to settle on a font while she made a litany of excuses and apportioned blame
back on the school.
"Ms
McGregor was the only person you could ever get on the phone, she was the only
person who was ever there. She was frequently irrational and emotionally
aggressive to deal with. It was a nightmare."
Prospective
author Graeme Allan fell out with McGregor over his feelgood fairytale for
children and adults that had been 10 years in the making.
Allan flew to
the Gold Coast in 2016 to meet McGregor at her home and handed over cheques for
$4950 to start the edit and proofreading.
After the edited
manuscript was returned with grammar and spelling errors and Allan received no
assistance to manage the difficult self-publishing process as promised, he
notified McGregor he was terminating the contract and demanded a refund. He has
yet to receive one.
Word of caution
Since the
arrival of Amazon's Kindle and the e-book, it's never been easier for authors
to get published – or burnt, says Juliet Rogers, executive officer of the
Australian Society of Authors.
Beguiled by the
chance to see their work in print and inexperienced in the industry, first-time
writers are paying thousands of dollars for editing, print and website services
with little scrutiny of contracts or knowledge of the services they are
purchasing, Rogers says.
The high costs
involved in taking a case to court, combined with the inherent risks of
defamation, mean the majority of writers are unable to take the matter any
further when contracts fail to live up to expectations.
Disaffected
clients claim they handed over sums ranging from $2000 to $12,000 since 2013
and as recently as late 2016 to entities including Love of Books Brisbane and
Books Publishing Services Australia. The projects have ranged from historical
research and commercial fiction to travel guides.
Another
complainant is a Queensland debut novelist who unsuccessfully claimed a partial
refund when the deadline for her fantasy fiction "was exceeded, my
manuscript edited with no permission or tracking to show where the edits took
place, no finished product and then I had to pay someone else to edit it again
from scratch".
The writer says
she is still owed $4000 and has not heard a word from McGregor since she was
promised the refund in August 2016. At that time, she was not advised that
McGregor was a bankrupt.
"The first
time I made contact with Julie she informed me she was 'one' of the directors
and the middle man – she didn't do any of the work herself – that she had
multiple 'professionals' she used in all different areas of publishing to get
my book from A to Z. I later found out these were friends and family friends.''
Melbourne author
Dean Munro signed up with McGregor a year out of university in 2014.
Having studied
at RMIT University with the support of seven scholarships, and acquired a
property portfolio worth more than a million dollars, Munro wanted to sing of
his success in a how-to book for like-minded entrepreneurs.
He was persuaded
to self-publish by a friend. More control, an easier path to publication, he
was told.
Munro paid
$11,850 up front to McGregor of Love of Books Self Publishing, to proofread,
edit, format and typeset the manuscript and print 1000 copies of his 350-page
title Breaking the Chains, as well as to set up and host a website and prepare
an e-book file.
The Queensland
Civil Administrative Tribunal subsequently ordered McGregor to refund Munro
$10,488, finding she was in fundamental breach of the contract and the
"applicant did not get the quality or integrity of that which had been
represented he would receive and for which he paid".
Those breaches
included printing books that were unusable for sale, that contained spelling
errors and had inferior binding.The website didn't have plug-ins for PayPal and
credit cards and had no search engine optimisation.
Munro is listed
among creditors with claims against the bankrupt estate of McGregor.
The Australian
Financial Security Office recently notified Munro that its investigations to
date had not been able to result in the "realisation of assets" and
that in "the absence of funding and/or evidence provided by
creditors", it "did not intend to devote additional resources to
investigate further".
Ian Lewis, the director of Love of Books
Australia-Wide, a separate entity, said he purchased the domain name and was
given the McGregor-run websites and client list in November 2016. It was his
own business name under his own ABN.
As such he is
not responsible to refund the school or any other complainants for any failures
that occurred before this time.
In response to a
series of questions put by the Sun-Herald, McGregor conceded the school was
entitled to a refund of $8000, less $2000 discount she gave for book
formatting.
She said she had
kept the order in a state of suspension so the school would not lose the
deposit owed to the overseas printer.
"Of course
I want them paid. Why wouldn't I? I did ring the school and ask for bank details
so that I could do regular payments."
In earlier
correspondence before her court hearing, McGregor said: "There is no way I
would want anyone's money. Working with overseas suppliers especially China to
get funds returned is a case of swap really. They don't like to let go of
money.
"Late
launches are a product of this industry. Why? Because clients need to ensure
their book launch date coincides with the delivery of the books.
"If clients
make too many changes to their book file contents it causes delays all round
throughout this industry worldwide. However I have continually worked, even
around the clock, to assist meet deadlines within logical reason on many
occasions."
Apart from
Munro, the Queensland Civil Administrative Tribunal has awarded two other
authors refunds amounting to $4445.
Carmel Charlson
was one who got most of her refund. Having gone through the process she
understands why most people give up: "They usually win the case but lose
the battle as the process is so convoluted for the average citizen."
McGregor
disagrees with the findings of the Queensland Civil Claims Tribunal against her
in the case of Dean Munro and has attempted to reopen the findings three times
and unsuccessfully appealed once.
Munro understands
there is little hope of getting his money back but wants his experience to
stand as a warning to others.
The Arts Law
Centre says writers need to be careful entering into financial arrangements
with self-publishers.
The greatest
potential for dispute arose around online publishers who offered services to
print, distribute and promote an author's work, and questions of copyright,
reprints and royalties. Under some terms of agreement, authors had found they
were obliged to purchase copies of their own printed book at retail prices.
"Often,
unfortunately, the writer is coming to us after they've signed a contract and
things haven't gone the way they hoped they would," the centre's chief
executive Robyn Ayres says.
Following the
collapse of the unrelated JoJo Publishing in 2015, in which liquidators
estimated more than 50 authors were owed money, the Australian Publishers
Association began to develop a code of conduct for members, setting out their
obligations to clients.
The code
requires members not to partake in conduct that brings embarrassment to the
industry or the association and not purposely or inadvertently to defraud
authors by making false promises or unrealistic claims, particularly in regards
to sales potential and distribution.
Linda Morris
Sydney Morning Herald
No comments:
Post a Comment