Bitch Rant #1 – Omnifuck Publishing

 

Bitch B here with the inaugural post of the Bitch Rant.  My motto is “Go Big or Go Home,” so I thought why not take on the biggest thing I could think of at the moment.  I’m sure pretty much everyone has heard the name Omnific Publishing at some point in the past few months.  Way back in January/February when they were kicking this whole thing off, I saw some tweets and some banners on Twilighted.net and thought, “Well, hey that’s cool.  Someone out there is giving fanfiction authors a chance to publish some of their original work.  Maybe I should look into that shit, because you know there’s nothing I would love more than to have my name on a book cover to rub in all those haters’ faces.” But being busy bitching and ranting it kind of slipped my mind for awhile.

So you can all imagine my surprise when I actually looked up Boycotts & Barflies to see who had published it and found Omnific’s website.  So, I decided to start poking around sticking my nose in other people’s business to see what other badly disguised works of fanfiction they had available for purchase.  They currently offer 14 titles for purchase in either e-book ($4.99) or hardcover ($14.99) format, and from what this bitch can tell, all but two of them appear to be former fanfics.  Let me offer a smattering of what is available for copyright infringement purchase.

One of their newest titles is Immortal Awakening by KC Randall.  Here is their summary of the book.

Gregory has lost interest in being alive. He’s been doing it for far too long. But dying is too much trouble, so he simply continues to exist in all his jaded, apathetic, eternal glory. In a hopeless attempt to find a diversion, he takes a night class at the local community college where he meets Nikki Christian. She seems to be everything he is not—young, open, honest, hopeful, charitable... the nauseating list goes on. However, Nikki is also overtly intuitive. She can see through lies and secrets in ways no human should, and Gregory has lots of secrets. Obviously, he should just eliminate her and be done with it. But there is something beguiling about a woman whose countenance shines like the sun in a world that’s gone dark.

While Gregory struggles to understand this woman’s mind and the disturbing effect she seems to have on him, he realizes that he’s not the only one with an interest in Nikki Christian. There’s a jealous ex-boyfriend, the other suspicious Immortals, and now a mysterious assassin has turned up. Despite Gregory’s best efforts to keep this mortal girl alive, it seems Fate has other ideas. Is it possible for even a devil to find Happily Ever After?

 

So for argument’s sake, lets substitute Edward for Gregory, Bella for Nikki, vampire for Immortal and high school for community college.

Gregory EDWARD has lost interest in being alive. He’s been doing it for far too long. But dying is too much trouble, so he simply continues to exist in all his jaded, apathetic, eternal glory. In a hopeless attempt to find a diversion, he takes a night class at the local community college HIGH SCHOOL where he meets Nikki Christian BELLA. She seems to be everything he is not—young, open, honest, hopeful, charitable... the nauseating list goes on. However, Nikki BELLA is also overtly intuitive. She can see through lies and secrets in ways no human should, and Gregory EDWARD has lots of secrets. Obviously, he should just eliminate her and be done with it. But there is something beguiling about a woman whose countenance shines like the sun in a world that’s gone dark.

While Gregory EDWARD struggles to understand this woman’s mind and the disturbing effect she seems to have on him, he realizes that he’s not the only one with an interest in Nikki Christian BELLA. There’s a jealous ex-boyfriend, the other suspicious Immortals VAMPIRES, and now a mysterious assassin has turned up. Despite Gregory’s EDWARD’S best efforts to keep this mortal girl alive, it seems Fate has other ideas. Is it possible for even a devil to find Happily Ever After?

Hmm… Sound like Twilight anything you have read before? 

Here is one of the reviews from Goodreads.

“I really enjoyed reading this book. Although it took a little long in the beginning, the middle and ending were unpredictable. However, it did remind me a lot of the Twilight series in some parts but the dialog was completely different. The ending in my opinion was exciting as i believe she will make this a series. After the book took off, i could not put it down. It's funny, exciting and loving. Overall the book is great.”

The next one that caught my eye was called Life, Liberty and Pursuit by Kaye Quinn.  This one offered an excerpt from the first chapter, so of course my curiosity would not be settled until I had read it.  It turned out to be the entire first chapter of the fic novel.  I’ll save you the boring shit and give you the quick and dirty synposis.  It stars a young Marine named Edward David who’s father the handsome, talented, blonde Dr. Carlisle Cullen Jozef Marek helps him come to the rescue of young Bella Eliza.  Eliza is a pale, dark haired, brown eyed teen girl in Keds whose clumsy ass falls in the swimming pool of the cruise ship they are all vacationing on and nearly drowns.  After she faints, David carries her to the infirmary where the nurse is completely dazzled by Dr. Marek and allows him to examine Eliza until her brother Emmett Johnny stops by with his “tall, rediculously muscular” ass to give her a “bear hug” and drag her back to her mother’s cabin. 

All the reviews for this little gem that could be found over on Goodreads were made by staff of Omnific Publishing.

I could go on all day like this.  Hell, most of the stories didn’t even change their titles.  Omnific Publishing was founded in late 2009 by the founder of Twilighted.net one of the two largest sources of Twilight fanfiction on the internet.  Their staff are from all over the country from Texas to Denver to Florida.  They even have their own YouTube Account.  Funny thing that a majority of the authors published by the company have been long associated with Twilighted.net as validation betas. 

Now when I started trying to find some contact information for the group, I discovered they don’t have a phone number, so there’s no way to call and make sure you are talking to a real person, but I digress.  The company has been mentioned in several places on the web so I’m not the first to discover this rip off situation.

Absolute Write : http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=170972

Clairvoyant Wank: http://www.journalfen.net/community/clairvoyantwank/468741.html 

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:  http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/links-from-the-oh-youre-kidding-right-department/

In addition there have been numerous postings over on A Different Forest reguarding author’s feelings about the whole thing. 

This bitch’s personal opinion is that the only reason Stephenie Meyer’s lawyers haven’t already filed a lawsuit is that they’re waiting until the company’s earnings statement comes out at the end of the year to see if it’s actually worth their time.  Here’s to hoping that they didn’t even make enough money to cover the cost of hosting their webpage, and Meyer doesn’t decide that this particular fuckery is enough to ban Twilight related fanfiction completely. 

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