The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

Two issues involving Audible's ACX have come across my desk recently.

Rights Fraud

I've heard from several self- and small press-pubbed authors who report that they've found their books listed on ACX as open to narrator auditions...except that they, or their publishers, didn't put them there. This appears to be an attempt to steal authors' audio rights.

Below is one listing. Here's another and another and another. (All of these listings have been invalidated by ACX.)


See "Comments from the Rights Holder" at the bottom. The purported company, Publishing D LLC, does not show up on any searches.

The fraud seems pretty elaborate. Here's what one of the authors who contacted me told me:


These comments from a freelance audiobook narrator illustrate that "Publishing D" is not an isolated incidence.

Promotional Code Shenanigans

Multiple authors have contacted me to report that they've received an email from ACX withdrawing their promotional codes. The cited reason: "unusual activity," with no explanation of what that means.

The authors say that they have not used the codes improperly or violated ACX guidelines; in some cases, they've used the codes only a handful of times or not at all. See, for instance, blog posts by authors G. Michael Vasey and Adam Piggott. Per discussions on the KBoards and Reddit, a lot of authors seem to be affected.

Is this one of Amazon's (Audible's parent company) periodic crackdowns on misuse or fraud that has inadvertently ensnared innocent authors? According to author and self-publishing expert David Gaughran, ACX promo code scamming is a major problem, and Amazon's anti-abuse sweeps often involve a lot of collateral damage. Or could it be an error--a glitch or rogue algorithm?

So far, authors' efforts to get a fuller explanation have run up against the black box that is Amazon:


If I hear anything further, I'll update this post.

UPDATE 11/27/19: One of the authors who alerted me to the promo code withdrawal has received a notice saying that their codes are reinstated--however, they say that the promo code tab has yet to appear in their dashboard.


UPDATE 2/25/29: More about ACX scams, from a comment left by a narrator:

About the ACX thing...I was contacted by ACX to narrate three books, however, the person who offered the contracts kept emailing and frantically telling me to send them my book codes. I got leary and called ACX. They said unfortunately there are many scams taking place where if a book is "unclaimed" in their system, someone may grab it and offer it as an audiobook contract. Then they keep the codes and blackmarket sell them. They do not pay the narrators. Many other authors are experiencing it, they said, but they have no way to regulate it.

I declined the offers and got a nasty note from the contract holder. I was also told that since I corresponded with them, they had my email that is associated with Amazon..the same one. So, ACX said I had to go change my email on Amazon or they would have access there too. Geez.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®


A couple of weeks ago, my Twitter warning about an amateur literary agent received a fairly curmudgeonly response.


Mistaking it for a serious (if misguided) comment, I responded with a thread about why it's, well, bad for an agent to lie about their credentials. Which prompted this:

Ooookayyyy then.

After a couple more exchanges in a similar vein, plus a not-so-subtle threat (I do give this person credit for knowing the difference between slander and libel), "Dr. Mudgett" flounced.


Soon after, several alert individuals messaged me to let me know that "Dr. Mudgett" isn't just a rando with an inflated sense of self-worth and a profile named after an infamous American serial killer, but one of the sockpuppets of an astonishingly prolific Twitter troll possessed of awesome vitriol and seemingly unlimited free time to indulge it.


The troll's full name is Gary S. Kadet--and though I'd never heard of him before he decided to call me out, he is well known in the Twitter writing community as someone who, via large numbers of fake accounts (most of which have been suspended by Twitter), hijacks popular hashtags like #amquerying, #mswl, and #WritingCommunity to launch vicious unprovoked attacks against writing and publishing people of all kinds, especially new writers and literary agents. So copious is his output--we're talking daily, even hourly tweets--that sometimes he runs out of new insults and has to recycle them. (Sample, if you can stomach it, the stream-of-invective narrative of his Dr. Mudgett Twitter feed.)

I'm always interested in the bizarro side of writing and publishing, and Mr. Kadet certainly seemed to fit the bill. So I put out a call for contact.


I got a perfect flood of responses. I heard from agents and agency interns whom Mr. Kadet had targeted for insults, mockery, and general harassment--especially if they were women, and in some cases after they rejected one of his manuscripts (Mr. Kadet is a [currently] frustrated novelist). I heard from writers he'd savaged for nothing more than posting positive comments about something, or announcing a book sale, or just for talking about writing. Much of his trolling seems to be of the drive-by variety, but I also heard from writers for whom he has conceived a deeper grudge--some of whom he has been stalking and attacking for years, and not just with nasty tweets, either. Some of these individuals told me that he has doxxed them, and made public things about their personal lives they would have preferred not to share. One of his targets was forced to seek help from the police.

Several people have written about their encounters with him (prompting him, in at least one case, to send a laughably bogus cease-and-desist). More personal accounts of Kadet encounters are here. Also here. In fact, he's so famous--at least, as a troll--that he has inspired a parody Twitter account. I guess that's some form of validation, right?

Sockpuppet accounts Mr. Kadet has used in the past (all deleted or suspended): @JohnnyRacetrack, @JimboRockfordPI, @JacktheTrippe11, @JacktheTrippe12, @GaryKDarkLord, @GaryKadet, @RealGarySKadet, @CastleMurder,  @MudgettMania, @MudgettRedux, @FrugSigmund, @Joe_Nesmith. @JoeChristmas6, @ImmortalGSK.

Socks he's using currently (that I know of): @JackMcVea, @KatzProserpine.

Mr. Kadet loathes a lot of people, but for one agent in particular, his hatred burns with a white-hot flame: Gina Paniettieri of Talcott Notch Literary Services. In 2018, Talcott Notch rejected one of Mr. Kadet's manuscripts, to which Mr. Kadet took extreme offense, and he has been targeting the agency and its agents ever since. In addition to a veritable tsunami of noxious tweets, promises to sue, accusations of violating his "IP confidentiality" (apparently because Gina revealed the rejected ms.), and bogus bad reviews wherever he can place them (not always successfully, since they are so demented that they get flagged), Gina tells me that he has called her home to harass her, and that he's currently demanding that she "settle" with him--i.e., pay him off--so that he'll stop.


Here's an interview with Talcott Notch agent Tia Mele about toxic writers in general and Mr. Kadet in particular.

So who is Gary S. Kadet IRL? There's not a great deal to be found on a websearch, but he did publish a novel in 2000 with Forge, and was apparently an editor with the Boston Book Review. He has lived in Cambridge, MA and Providence, R.I. Twitter isn't the only place where he has been accused of stalking.

Soon after my call for contact, Mr. Kadet's @KatzProserpine sock account DM'd me this:


Ooooh, scary! Not to be outdone by his alter ego, Mr. Kadet reached out to SFWA under his own name. Of course, he couldn't resist mentioning Talcott Notch. Also note the date: more than a week before I put this post online.


Mystery Writers of America, one of Writer Beware's supporters, received an identical "complaint" on the same date. Fortunately, both SFWA and MWA know how to handle trolls.

So what's the bottom line here--other than the bigger issue of the toxicity that flourishes on social media and the inevitability of encountering it if you're active online? I guess it's really just the familiar advice: "Don't feed trolls". Starve the energy monster. The thing with trolls is that, for the most part, it's really not personal. They don't care about you; it's your reaction they need. They thrive on your distress, and draw strength from your response. Depriving them of these things may not shut them up--they can't really control themselves--but it is probably the single most frustrating thing you can do to them.

So if you find yourself targeted by Mr. Kadet--or, indeed, if any random tweet of yours receives a nasty or belittling response from an account you've never heard of--the best possible comeback is simply to block the account and move on.

UPDATE: I learned this evening that Mr. Kadet today sent his "bad writer Strauss" message to Horror Writers Association, another of Writer Beware's supporters--and for good measure, sent it to MWA a second time. He has also weighed in in the comments here.

UPDATE 4/10/20: Sockpuppet account @KatzProserpine has reached out again on Twitter, alleging, as it often does, that Mr. Kadet has no Twitter presence...


...and claiming that it is not Mr. Kadet's sockpuppet account...

...while exhibiting Mr. Kadet's twin obsessions (Talcott Notch, nefarious "IP practices"--see Mr. Kadet's complaint about me, above).

Hayley Williams “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” The first time I heard this song I had no idea who it was by, and was legitimately shocked to discover it was the singer of Paramore, a band I’ve never had any affection for in either their emo phase or their pivot to boppy pop a few years ago. Whereas the […]

Twice “Sweet Talker” When I write about songs sung in languages I cannot understand I generally try to find an English translation. This is helpful in getting the idea of the song, but it can do a weird thing in my brain where my understanding of the song is at a remove from my experience […]

If you loved The Unexpected Party sequence from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey then our friends from Weta Workshop have something for you. You can now buy a board game version of this sequence in the film. The purpose of this game is to be the first person to complete all 15 lines of the […]

A trooper stopping a car with a suspected "impaired driver" on a U.S. highway on Monday was bemused to find a 5-year-old in the driver's seat, the Utah Highway Patrol tweeted.

We’d like to hear from those who attended events between the end of February and early March such as Wolves v Espanyol and Cheltenham Festival

We’d like you to help us document the spread of coronavirus due to some of the mega-events that went ahead between the end of February and the first couple of weeks in March.

Those events include: Wolves v Espanyol Europa League game, Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League tie, Six Nations cup games and the Cheltenham Festival.

Continue reading...

Gatecrashing bar mitzvahs, quarantine quizzes and climbing Everest indoors – here’s a slew of things to do to stay connected without stepping outside

Lockdown could have seen us wallowing in some pretty unusual hermetic behaviour. Obsessively rearranging your groceries by best-before date. Binge-watching old episodes of Terry and June. Blankly staring at the forks in your cutlery drawer wondering why they have four prongs and not three.

Instead, the past few weeks have shown that being shut away could be making us more connected with each other. Thanks to strong internet networks and an array of digital apps and video communication software, we’re spending more quality time with loved ones, rehabilitating old relationships and forging new ones. Indeed, a recent study by Channel Mum found a quarter of British people now talk with neighbours they previously ignored. In short? Being confined to quarters is helping us rediscover a new sense of community.

Continue reading...

With disinformation connecting coronavirus to 5G masts, fortune cookies and eating bat soup, here are some of the worst examples of misinformation surrounding the pandemic

If there’s one thing we know about Covid-19, it is that the pandemic is incredibly infectious. At the same time, the volume of disinformation from doctored photos to false rumours and hoax videos spreading online has grown at a worrying pace.

In etymological terms, the word “viral” comes from the stem word “virus”. And the viral misinformation can be a danger in itself. Just think of the recent petrol bomb attacks on 5G phone masts because of a widely believed – but unfounded – link to coronavirus.

Continue reading...

As lockdown continues, Owen Jones speaks to private renters about how the pandemic has affected them. From activists in tenants' unions and NHS workers struggling to find accommodation to students who’ve had their final terms disrupted and are left unsure about what to do with their accommodation, he asks them if they are worried about what comes next 

Continue reading...

The floods that submerged one-fifth of Pakistan's territory took more than six months to recede.

One of the most affected regions was the Sindh region, located in the western corner of South Asia. 

At their peak, the floodwaters were up to 20 feet deep. About 20 million people were displaced.

But apparently, people were not the only ones seeking shelter from the devastating floods. 

One of the unexpected side-effects of the flooding has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising floodwaters, turning them into futuristic-looking trees cocooned in spiders' webs.

The people living in that area claimed they have never seen this phenomenon before but were glad to discover that those cocooned trees were actually significantly reducing the numbers of mosquitos and thereby, the risk of malaria. 

It is thought that the mosquitoes were getting caught in the spiders' webs which would be one blessing for the people of the area, facing so many other hardships after the floods. 

Check out some of the stunning photos, released by the department of international development.

This video is from 2017 but it just makes us feel so warm and happy that we had to let it surface once more! 

The video is only a bit over a minute but filled with a lot of emotions, excitement, and love, that you can just feel. 

Elephants are truly remarkable animals, so intelligent and gentle, you can just tell they have a big heart. 

Our pets are our children, and they deserve to be spoiled as such.

That's why we had to share with you these tiny crochet cat couches created by the crafty people on the subreddit r/crochet.

Sure, you could go and just buy a cat bed without exerting much effort, but they're not as fun or cute as this too cute to handle cat couch.

So, if you're looking for a new crochet project to tackle, this has got to be it! 

The couches are shaped with thick foam and polyester filling to really give it that comfy sofa look.

There are a few craft stores online who are offering the crochet patterns if you like. 

Ready to smile? Each week we are featuring the newly adopted pets of the week! Is there a lovelier sight than an animal being adopted?! We wholeheartedly thank those who have adopted, providing animals with a loving, comfortable and warm home. There's literally nothing better. 

We're seeing a lot of new furry faces being adopted due to the new regulations, and while we absolutely adore seeing so many adopted faces, please remember that a pet is for life. The decision to adopt one is one that should be thought through thoroughly.  

For those of you who are thinking about getting a pet, just remember; adopt, don't shop. 

If you recently adopted a pet, shoot us an email to be featured in next weeks list! 

We have a weakness for automated pancake machines here at Hackaday, but in terms of complete pancake machines rather than CNC batter printers we’re surprised to see more from the rest of the world than we do from the USA. Perhaps this has something to do with differences in opinion …read more

Trailer previews sci-fi action game from Tales of Vesperia team

Convention considers online replacement of September event

NOTE: In our traditional April Fool’s posts, we endeavor to make them credible at the beginning, then crank up the nonsense until the joke becomes obvious. But these days, the idea of knowingly spreading misinformation (even when comically false) sounds exhausting. So here’s our notice ahead of time: This is 100% silliness! Hope it lightens [...]