Atlanta Nights

Atlanta Nights
Authors"Travis Tea"
LanguageEnglish
GenreParody
Science fiction
PublisherLulu
Publication date
January 26, 2005
Publication placeUnited States
ISBN978-1-4116-2298-2

Atlanta Nights is a collaborative novel created in 2004 by a group of science fiction and fantasy authors, with the express purpose of producing an unpublishably bad piece of work, so as to test whether publishing firm PublishAmerica would still accept it.[1] It was accepted; after the hoax was revealed, the publisher withdrew its offer.[2]

The primary purpose of the exercise was to test PublishAmerica's claims to be a "traditional publisher" that would only accept high-quality manuscripts. Critics had long claimed that PublishAmerica is actually a vanity press that paid no special attention to the sales potential of the books they published, since most of their revenue came from the authors rather than book buyers. PublishAmerica had previously made some derogatory public remarks about science fiction and fantasy writers, because many of their critics came from those communities; those derogatory remarks influenced the decision to make such a public test of PublishAmerica's claims.[3]

  1. ^ Tea, Travis (2005). Atlanta Nights. Lulu. ISBN 978-1-4116-2298-2.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ Meg Phillips (December 7, 2004). "PublishAmerica accepts Atlanta Nights manuscript" (PDF). University of Denver. PublishAmerica. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 5, 2007. Retrieved January 26, 2007.
  3. ^ "Ah, Schadenfreud!". Archived from the original on October 30, 2008. Retrieved October 30, 2009.