UPDATE #2 screengrab at bottom of entry.
This new crowdfunding page has been open for three days. In the first day, it raised $34 from two contributions, one for $30, and the other for $4. Initial speculation was that Nicky seeded the fundraiser himself from his October dole check. Given that this is the first of many crowdfunders he’s ever done that accumulated more than $0.00 in pledges, I wanted to wait a while to see what would happen.
So far, it’s limited to an update page in which he crows about the two pledges, that received two “likes” from Scott Early and Kickitback, and updated FAQs. It turns out Scott early and Kickitback are also responsible for the only two pledges to date, so it looks like Nicky didn’t seed it himself. If you go to Nicky’s update page, click on “more,” then scroll down and click on each of their names, you can see for yourself. Both have pledged to back hundreds of projects, which Nicky can’t afford to do, and the two projects Nicky backed have nothing to do with these people. There’s one mystery solved.
These screengrabs look fuzzy here, but click on them to open full size versions:
We learn that:
- Tabetha Jones, the woman who was going to publish Sinister Souls, claimed that the Kickstarter Nicky set up for her was really to pay for her wedding, not the anthology, as claimed in the Kickstarter page (if, true, that would be fraud, but it never raised any money)
- for Lock ‘n Key, Nicky padded it out with a bunch of stuff from Project Gutenberg, some of which is listed with a copyright status of “unknown”
- he’s back in “Facebook jail” for the umpteenth time
- he bought a dress on Amazon for whoever agreed to write the introduction — someone he refers to as the “Guy or Gal”
- he plans to market it by word-of-mouth
- the first people to get copies (giveaways, at that) are:
I am planning to send one along to Ronnie James Dio’s foundation as the painting I have as the cover was done when he was a baby and the American Writer’s Museum will also get hooked up with a copy along with Issue Five of my magazine. Then the Italian-American museum in Chicago as my family been here in Chicago since 1910-1913.The Pacione family has historic ties to the city. Sons of Italy and Hardcore Italians of Chicago will be given few copies in trade for one of their hoodies as I want to have them design the hoodie for this project. I am of Italian Heritage and listen to thrash metal — Italians in Chicago tend to have longer hair on males.
I got a laugh out of the idea that an Italian-American society can be cajoled into trading one of their hoodies, and designing one for him, for a few copies of his crappy anthology.
The update #1 page is even funnier when you look at the back cover:
In the old days, all that text on the back cover would have been tucked away in an “Editor’s Lounge” section near the beginning, detailing stuff we never wanted to know about him, and his trials and tribulations while assembling the whole mess. Unless I’m missing something, he didn’t leave room for the ISBN, barcode(s), and cover price boxes. It’s the sort of book cover I might photograph for shits and giggles before putting the book back on the shelf, and moving along to something more interesting. Why he thinks this dreck belongs anywhere in the book, let alone on the back cover is a mystery. I sort of feel sorry for the “living authors,” as Nicky calls them, but only up to a point.
People, I can’t stress this enough — do a search on anyone you plan to send your stories, or crowdfunding pledges, before you do so. Ask yourself whether you want your good name associated with his. Unless you are a fairly decent writer, the mud will stick. And, if you are a fairly decent writer, you can do much better than Pacione. He stopped writing contracts and paying people years ago, and even when he did, he was very hit or miss about payment. He has also been known to take submissions and publish them without telling the author. Imagine thinking your story was rejected, then submitting it elsewhere as previously unplublished, and having it accepted, only to find out it’s a reprint, after all. Then there are the instances in which he misspelled the author’s name in the ToC, and bitched the person out for pointing it out to him. Those are some of the reasons several people have had their stories yanked post-publication, which filled Nicky with RAEG, and, by now, you know all about what happens when Nicky’s pissed off at someone … threats, stalking, etc. Heck, Pacione has misspelled his own name on the cover at least three times. Are you sure — really, really sure — you want your name associated with his?
Also, note that he wants $3000 to publish this book, for which CreateSpace charges nothing, and market it via word of mouth, which also costs nothing. That tells me he still has unpaid household bills, and still wants a new laptop, camera, clothes, and art supplies, so that he can do his fantasy book tour. Those were all things he mentioned on his previous Kickstarter for Tabetha’s Sinister Souls.
UPDATE #2: Screengrab
Note that Nicky made use of Brian Keene’s name for commercial gain.
On the upside his backers will get their money back. There’s no way in hell he’s going to meet the goal.
That’s the good thing about Kickstarter: the money doesn’t leave until the timer hits zero AND the project’s been funded.
Good lord. That back cover. He rambles forever, and talks about the book being finished soon; who talks about a book in future tense on the cover? When you’re presumably holding a copy of it in your hands? Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But it does let the reader know, before even opening it, that the editor is a lunatic with incredibly poor judgement. If I saw that much text on a back cover, I’d know I’d found the work of a self-published nitwit and put it back down. I wouldn’t even have to read the crazy, irrelevant stuff about Boy’s Life.
And it really gives you hope for the stories inside when the cover has sentences like “This painting spoke to me for years when I seen it as a high school student presented for the art guild.” Yeah, that doesn’t scream “guess what, that guy you saw playing with his own poop in the parking lot of 7-11 wrote a book” or anything.
And, yep, it may not be fair, because perfectly nice people can be unwary and fall for a con job, but I’d pretty much dismiss anybody who “published” with Nick as having failed to find any other option. He’s the bottom of the barrel. And, really, I don’t know why they’d submit to him in the first place. CreateSpace, Kindle, etc. will “publish” a collection of your grocery lists if you want them to, just so they can have another “unit” to sell. Why “publish” on CreateSpace with Nicky when you could put a few more stories together and put out your own collection, free from the taint of being associated with an illiterate troll/terrorist? He’s poison.
The only way I would ever submit anything to Nicky is if I used a pseudonym and wrote some completely idiotic garbage just to giggle at it if he actually released it. And I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted…
A professional publisher probably knows better than to put the phrase “sucked donkey dick” on the back cover of a new book. Just another example of someone trying way too hard to be some kind of badass.
“…as he would be seventy-three years old this year as one of the bands who he manages are in touch with me.”
Kind of hard for a dead person to manage a band, is it not?
Well, I’ll concede that S is next to D on the keyboard . Have you seen the photos of Pacione giving the middle finger? I remember he complained that it is hard for him to give the middle finger unless he balls his fist really tight because his fingers are short. That must make typing difficult.
I think that Pacione has a lexdysic problem: when he reads or edits his own work, he remembers what he intended to write and does not see the misspellings or missing words or phrases everyone else notices.
He’s not managed to put out an actual antho in years. No one is sending him anything any more. Our hard work is paying off
Taking bets it’s all Public Domain work and Nicky stories.
Nicky’s back on Shelfari trying to change things back again…
“… the scars in genuine leather are proofs of authenticity …”
That manuscript of “The Pattern of Diagnosis” by Nickolaus A. Pacione is supposed have Michelle Russo’s coffee stains to establish it’s authenticity. Yes, I think I see a blotch near the right hand corner. That might cinch it. But was Blue Fuzzy Font an option in 2007?
Oh, “… the scars in genuine leather are proofs of authenticity …” I believe is an old Spanish saying. So coffee stains of Pacione Mss are proofs of provenence, or something.
So… Scott Early is a member of “BackerClub” which is supposedly a bunch of people who love crowdfunding things. For only $299 dollars (with a money back guarantee ), you can promote your project with them to get more moolah.
Kickbackit is a “service” that allows others to market your project to get themselves a commission. The user sets the commission rate, but getting the project listed costs $20.
There is absolutely zero evidence that Nicky has bought into either of these. BackerClub gives you a banner and a “shout out” to use if you pay them, meanwhile KickBackit has only one active project listed. Also if you scroll down KickBackit’s home page, you’ll see some unimpressive statistics.
Of course given Nicky’s ineptitude with technology (and I say this from the standpoint of a 20-year career in IT) it’s just as likely that he did drop the $300 into BackerClub thinking it a safe deal, and he just can’t figure out the banner thingy.
Let me solve another mystery about the KickBackIt pledge…
I’m Jim, the owner of KickBackit. We just launched the site a week ago and I went through and backed the most recent 100 projects for $1 each.
I don’t know Nicky and I know absolutely nothing about the project. Since I didn’t want to spam all the new project owners like so many do, I was simply trying an inexpensive experiment to see if it would drive any traffic to the site.
And about the “unimpressive statistics” posted on KickBackIt.com… Again We’re brand new and I’d much rather post the actual statistics than try to deceive anyone.
But please keep checking back 🙂
Almost two week recap:
Kickstarter Lock ‘n Key Project by Nick Pacione launched 4 Oct 2015
$3,000 goal by 23 Nov 2015 first day had 2 pledges totaling $34
By 8:30pm 17 Oct 2015 has 1 backer $33.00 pledged of $3,000 goal 36 days to go. Apparently one backer backed out a $1 pledge. (Someone pledged $33 toward the $30 reward? That threw my math off.)
[I usually avoid internet videos but the pitch video started running all by itself. It was a darkity dark experience. I mean the pitch video was shot in the pitch dark. The audio was like the infamous “Well to Hell” recording. When it was over I noticed one of my overhead lightbulbs was out. Eerie. Not a great lake, but the creepy feeling. And that’s why I don’t youtube.]
His videos are getting worse and worse, but they can be good for a laugh if you turn on closed captioning, because of how badly it misinterprets his gerbil on crack voice. He typically films himself in really poor lighting, and seldom gets more than his giant honker or his misshapen goatee in the picture, although there was one fairly recent one he filmed of himself standing outside, bobbing and weaving, in the driveway that had adequate daylight.