Adler & Robin Books 

Submission Guidelines, Legal Information, Spam and Junk Faxes
 

Legal Notice:  Sending of unsolicited advertising materials (including "spam," unsolicited commercial email, and "junk faxes") to any Adler & Robin Books, Inc. or affiliate email address, facsimile machine, telephone, mobile device, or other device constitutes an actionable trespass on personal property, theft of private resources, interference with business, may jeopardize safety, and may be construed as willful harassment.  Criminal and or civil penalties may be sought against the sender under 47 USC § 227, USC 18 section 2701, and other laws.   Please see the detailed information below.

What you can do about junk faxes and spam
Our policies on spam and junk faxes
The  Federal Trade Commission and telemarketing
Author query and submission information

What You Can do About Junk Faxes and Spam

Have you received a fax advertisement?  If so, you can report that illegal activity to the Federal Communications Commission.  Send a copy of the fax along with 1) your contact information, 2) the date the fax was received, and 3) the telephone number to which the fax was sent to:

Consumer Information Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
445 Twelfth Street, SW
Washington, DC  20554

In your letter tell the FCC " I did not invite or give permission for the sender to send me this fax," and
"I am requesting that the FCC take appropriate action against the sender."  

Be sure to mark on the envelope "TCPA COMPLAINT - UNSOLICITED FAX" 

The FCC levies fines against companies that send junk faxes.  There's more information about dealing with unsolicited junk faxes at http://www.junkfaxes.org.  The maintains a list of companies that have been fined on its website. 

Junk email can be forwarded to the appropriate government agency, especially if the spam involves fraud, misrepresentation or stock fraud.   Forward all your spam to the Federal Trade Commission, uce@ftc.gov.  Here are the agencies to which you can forward your junk email.  In addition to these agencies, you can also report spam that may involve illegal activity to your state's attorney general.   (When you do, be sure to include the header information.)

All spam:  uce@ftc.gov 
Multilevel marketing:  pyramid@ftc.gov  
Pornography:  consumerline@ftc.gov  
Chains letters, mail money:  fraud@uspis.gov  
General. fraud:  nfic@internetmci.com
Medical scams:  webcomplaints@ora.fda.gov 
Claims of great earnings:  net-abuse@nocs.insp.irs.gov
Investment/stock scams (any stock promotion by email):  enforcement@sec.gov  
Spam promoting "Nigerian bank schemes:"  419.fcd@usss.treas.gov 
Software piracy:  software@bsa.org or netpiracy@spa.org
Prescription drug fraud, scams and illegal activity: enforcement@fda.gov

Report spam promoting child pornography by calling the FBI.

Read about the FTC's crackdown on junk emailers.
Report fraudulent spam to your state attorney general.

What's so bad about spam?  For one thing, it costs the recipient money.  ISPs --those are places like America Online, Earthlink, Starpower, Skywaves-- have to provide storage space and bandwidth to accommodate spam, which accounts for some 15 to 25 percent of all emails.  We pay for this extra capacity in the form of monthly charges:  spam is cheap for the spammer, costly for the consumer.  Spam slows down the delivery of legitimate email.  Spam causes people to lose, delete and miss real email.  Travelers who retrieve their email from hotels have to pay costly per-minute charges, and spam can quickly run up a hotel telephone bill. 

It's simply wrong, unethical and illegal to make the recipient pay for advertising.  Most spammers use forged return addresses, which tells you a lot about who they are:  crooks and cheats.  Want to read more about how spammers lie?  Visit this interesting website.  One of the best sites for anti-spam information is Spam.anti.  Another good site for fighting spam is Junkbusters.  Try a spam cost calculator to see what junk email costs your business.

If you've ever returned from a week's vacation to an inbox filled with dozens or hundreds of junk email messages, you know how difficult it can be to wade through spam, just to find your legitimate email.  Spam interferes with our ability to use wireless devices -- spam is now creeping into Blackberrys, Palm Pilots and even cellular telephones.  To find out how to report spam to the sender's ISP, click here.

Spam prevents us from relying on electronic communications.  With worries about the safety of paper mail, we would like to be able to rely on email.  But, because of spam, we can't. 

Spam is especially troublesome for people who are blind and have their computers read their email to them; it's also a big problem for people who are hearing impaired and rely on email, rather than the telephone, to communicate.  But spammers don't care.

One of the best anti-spam program is MailWasher, written by Nick Bolton.  It's a highly effective, highly customizable program that lets you deploy a combination of blacklists and filters to thwart spam.  MailWasher, which you can download from www.mailwasher.net, also lets you create a "friends" list so that you don't mistakenly delete any email you want. 

Another potent anti-spam weapons is a combination of Spam Buster and Gary Belcher's up-to-date list of spammers on the GazNET Anti-Spam website.  Download and install Spam Buster from www.contactplus.com/products/spam/spam.htm.  Then add GazNET's list of spammers, available at http://www.gaznet.au.com/spam/ to Spam Buster's spam blacklist and you will have gone a long way toward keeping your inbox free of junk.  Another program that can help cut down on spam is InboxDoctor.  Still another is Cloudmark, which works on a shared-knowledge system:  Cloudmark identifies spam by the information provided to it by its thousands of users. 

You can do something about spam by clicking on the graphic below which will bring you to spam.abuse.net. 

Or by joining the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email:

Tired of telemarketers?  Then you should comment about the proposed rules curtailing telemarketing.  Among other things, these news rules would establish a national do-no-call database.  Read what about the new Federal Trade Regulations regarding telemarketing.  The FTC wants your opinion! 

And your opinion counts!   Over 11,000 emails have been sent to the Federal Trade Commission (at tsr@ftc.gov) about their plan to have a national do-not-call registry.  And it shouldn't come as a surprise that almost 100 percent are in favor of curtailing the ability of telemarketers to annoy us at home.  But the telemarketers, which opposes any Federal do-not-call list,  is planning a counter attack.  “We don’t want the FTC to conclude that there is not significant support for our position because the pro-telemarketing side has been silent.” said the legislative affairs director at the American Telemarketing Association.

So, please write the FTC and let them know you support a national do-not-call list.  All of our voices will make a difference.

Our Spam and Junk Fax Policies

Sending SPAM to any Adler & Robin Books, Inc. email address is not permitted.  Spam is unsolicited commercial email, often called junk email.  (A query from an author is not spam.)  Spam can be identified by several traits including that the same email is sent to numerous email addresses in bulk, the email tries to sell something, the address header in the email is forged, or the email message contains web site links (URLs) that are numerical, instead of in words.  A lot of spam involves pornography, multi-level marketing schemes, stock manipulation, and other fraudulent, unsavory or illegal activities.  We consider any email with forged address or headers to be fraud.

Sending spam, advertising, junk communications or any unsolicited communication to any mobile device, telephone or equipment at Adler & Robin Books, Inc. is prohibited under all circumstances.  Because mobile communications devices have limited storage capabilities and are used for important and urgent communications in locations where land lines are not available, anyone who sends unwanted messages, spam or any kind of advertising to one of our mobile devices, shall pay all costs associated with our being sent that message, plus a fee of $1,500 per incident.  If you send spam, junk email, or any kind of advertising to one of our mobile devices, including mobile telephones, hand held computers and wireless computers, you agree to be pay any and all costs incurred by us from the sending of that message, in addition to a fee of $1,500 per message, plus any legal costs we incur.

NOTICE ABOUT OUR USE OF MOBILE DEVICES IN AIRCRAFT:

We use mobile communications devices while piloting aircraft, and these devices are an integral and crucial safety component of the aircraft we fly.  Sending spam to our mobile devices jeopardizes safety.  

WARNING:   FEDERAL OFFENSE --  DISABLING OR INTERFERING WITH ANY AIRCRAFT OR AIRCRAFT EQUIPMENT, IS IN MOST CASES, A FEDERAL OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY FINES UP TO $10,000, IMPRISONMENT FOR 20 YEARS, OR EVEN DEATH, IF SUCH INTERFERENCE CAUSES AN ACCIDENT RESULTING IN LOSS OF LIFE.  THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION WILL BE NOTIFIED.

Individuals and businesses that send spam should take notice that Adler & Robin Books, Inc. regards spam (and junk faxes) as an interference with our business.  Adler & Robin Books, Inc. reserves the right to initiate legal action against spammers and junk faxers.  Anyone sending Adler & Robin Books, Inc. spam or junk faxes will be responsible for all business and legal costs associated with that spam, including reasonable attorney's fees.  

Notice to junk faxers:  Sending unsolicited commercial faxes has been illegal under Federal law since 1991 (47 USC § 227.)  We have, and will continue to, successfully sue companies and individuals who send us unsolicited commercial faxes.  If you send us a junk fax (unsolicited advertisement or promotion) you agree to pay us $500 or $1,500 per fax, in accordance with 47 USC § 227, plus any legal costs we incur.

Notice to spammers:  If you send us spam, which includes but is not limited to unsolicited commercial email, pornography, advertising, get rich schemes, and illegal activities, you agree to pay us $1,500 per email, plus legal fees, if, in our sole judgment, the email you have sent is disruptive to our business.  We consider email to be disruptive to our business if the same or similar spam is sent more than once in a one-month period to us, if the email contains forged headers designed to mask the sender's identity, if the email's content is misleading or deceptive, if the email promotes pornography, or if the email contains computer code (including Java, HTML, ActiveX), which causes our computer to connect or send information to the Internet.  If you permit your computer to be used to send us spam, or host the individual or company who sent us the spam, you also agree to pay us the abovementioned fee.  

Submissions

Address your queries to Djana Pierson Morris or Laura Belt.  Bill Adler, Jr. is not accepting new clients.  You can also mail your queries to Djana Morris or Laura Belt at:

Ms. Djana Morris or Ms. Laura Belt
Adler & Robin Books, Inc.
3000 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008

If you're interested in writing for our Outwitting series, there's more information at http://www.adlerbooks.com/outwitting.html.

Our privacy policy:   We do not share email addresses or proposals with anyone, and we do not maintain a database of email addresses.  This website does not put "cookies" on your computer and does not track visitors.

To main page
A short essay on spam
Calling all writers:  Become an author of an Outwitting book
How to write a book proposal (A really good guide!)
Our client and book list
Learn about a new time travel book
Report on banned books and censorship
Electronic rights and authors
Questions and answers about literary agents
Order The Successful Literary Agent's Guide to Getting Published
Enjoy some Celtic music on our Celtic Music Page.

Having trouble emailing us?  That may be because we now have filters that automatically block and delete email originating from certain domains and countries, in an attempt to curtail spam.  Please try writing us instead.

Adler & Robin Books, Inc.
3000 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 317
Washington, DC 20008

The Outwitting Series was created and is owned by  Bill Adler, Jr. The Lyons Press is the exclusive publisher for the Outwitting series.  All rights to the Outwitting series belong to Bill Adler, Jr. and The Lyons Press.  The Outwitting books include: Outwitting Squirrels, Outwitting Critters, Outwitting Deer, Outwitting Fish, Outwitting Neighbors, Outwitting Toddlers, Outwitting Clutter, Outwitting Your Appetite, Outwitting Your Computer, Outwitting Mice, Outwitting Homework, Outwitting  Contractors, Outwitting Your Teenage Child, Outwitting Cats, Outwitting Your Appetite, Outwitting Fish, Outwitting the Stock Market, Outwitting the IRS, Outwitting Traffic, Outwitting Clutter and others. 

Stop plagiarism.  Join an email list all about plagiarism:

SPAM TRAP
These are non-working email address -- edwardsm@adlerbooks.com and jsmith@adlerbooks.com.  Email sent to these address or which contains these address in any header is automatically deleted.