Ondanks dat de toezegging dat foto’s zouden worden geplaatst in het World Wide Art Books, gaat dit toch niet door. De redenen hiervoor zijn legio.

In een eerder blog van een maand geleden werd triomfantelijk gemeld dat de foto’s zouden worden gepubliceerd in één van de Art Books van World Wide Art Books.
Uiteindelijk heb ik besloten niet met hen in zee te gaan.

Grootste struikelblok was toch wel de hoge kostprijs ($ 1.985 voor twee pagina’s) die hiermee gemoeid was. Op mijn vraag wat deze hoge kostprijs ten opzichte van Inspiration: International Art Book ($ 350 voor twee pagina’s), kwam een nogal schokkend en, naar mijn idee, onprofessioneel antwoord terug:

“Hi Tjeerd,
There is a huge difference between our books and the ‘so called’ Inspiration book.
We have been in the business since 1997 and we have represented over 8,000 artists. On our website, under Testimonials you can see what the artists say and results from being in the book .
As for inspiration book, it is a real scam!
This guy started in October 2015 and he just copied our business model.
You can look him up on Whoiis Look Up IP and you will see what I mean.
He opened the website in October 2015.
He firstly copied the list of our artists and put all the names on his website under a link Our Artists. We found out a few months later and we threatened to sue him so he took the list down.
The only books he prints are the ones the artists get only and he does not distribute a single copy to any one!
It is one of the biggest scams I have ever seen!
And in a few months he will blow up like a bubble!”

Naar mijn idee onprofessioneel om een concurrent min of meer te betichten van fraude. Daarnaast heb ik officieel bewijs dat, door de publicatie in het International Art Book kunstgalerieën mij hebben gemaild. Overigens wordt er nog geen uitleg gegeven waarom de publicatie in World Wide Art Books zo veel moet kosten.

In mijn volgende e-mail antwoordde ik:
“I understand you have a competitor in the scene. Whether it’s a scam or not: I don’t think it’s appropriate and professional to accuse someone without him/her being able to defend him/herself.
For your interest: I’ve been approached by a couple of galleries (London, Rome, New York) after they’ve seen me published in the “Inspiration: International Art Book”. On the other hand, I’ve been searching the internet about the WWAB. What you write about the “Inspiration: International Art Book” is almost exactly written by a dozen of artists about WWAB…”

Op dit stuk tekst werd in een volgende e-mail niet meer ingegaan.
Wel werd kort nog ingegaan op de vraag wat de hoge kostprijs rechtvaardigde en ook op mijn vraag of de prijs voor één uitgave is of voor alle drie:

“Our prices are different from the Inspiration book because our business is real and the cost of doing what we do is high while this guy just puts the money in his pocket only.
As for your question about the cost per page, 1 page in one book costs $985 and 2 pages cost $1,685.
If you apply for 2 or more books, you will get a discount of 10% for all of them.”

Merk op dat de kostprijs voor twee pagina’s nu ineens $300 lager ligt…
Het is me echter nog niet duidelijk wat het verschil is tussen de drie uitgaven: “Interational Contemporary Masters”, “Current Masters” en “Important World Artists”. Het antwoord was even helder als verwarrend:

“There’s no difference: in all three books we publish photos”.

Waarom dan drie verschillende titels?

Inmiddels had ik alweer een andere e-mail gekregen om een korting van $600 te kunnen krijgen wanneer ik voor 31 augustus reageerde. Op de 30e augustus gaf ik aan om, ondanks het nare gevoel in mijn onderbuik, een stap verder te willen zetten. Daarop werd er door de curator op mijn website gekeken en binnen vijf minuten had zij haar keuze gemaakt en een e-mail gestuurd:

“Hi Tjeerd,

You have been approved for all the books and it is up to you to decide which one you prefer.
The books are all similar and the only difference is the date of release and the number of installments you can pay at this point.
If you can pay in two installments I suggest the book International Contemporary Masters 11 which will be released this December 2016.
If you prefer to pay in more installments, the second choice is the book Current Masters 3 which will be released in October 2017 and you can pay in 11 installments.
If you sign up for more than 1 books you will get a 10% discount.

We have made a pre-selection but if you don’t agree, you can submit the specific images you prefer because all your photos are great.
Here are the selected:
Terra (0120)
Julia Merel and Roos (0102)
45 (Favorites 120)
40 (favorites 119)
Clartjee (1621)
17 (Favorites 157)”

Met een beetje moeite begreep ik wat er met de laatste vier titels werd bedoeld. In ieder geval was er ook nog ruimte om een eigen keuze te doen.
Bij de e-mail waren twee Word documenten bijgesloten die ingevuld diende te worden. Wat opviel was dat titels en data niet klopten. Daarnaast wilde men van mijn creditcard een soort van pincode hebben (drie cijfers op de achterkant van de creditcard). In feite kan je dan met het gewone nummer van de pas én die drie cijfers overal bestellingen doen… Misbruik ligt dus op de loer. En om nu dit bedrijf op hun blauwe ogen te vertrouwen….?

Oh ja, en de korting van $600 ging aan mijn neus voorbij omdat:
“Hi Tjeerd,
I am afraid you missed the deadline for the special discount which was August 31.
…. send you another applcation though, because you are a Nominee on artavita in the last contest and you get a 20% discount. Please fill out that application and send it back.

Please feel free to submit different images. I already told you in my previous message if you want to do it, it is up to you.
We can’t present more than 3 images on each page because that will result in all images to be smaller and the page very crowded. We prefer to make a nice presentation and attract people to visit your website (the link will be on your page)

As for the payment, we don’t have online payments.
You have to send us your credit card information and we will charge it manually. You will receive the receipt immediately from our credit card company (Heartland).
If you don’t want to send the 3 digit code of the card, you don’t need to.
If you don’t feel comfortable paying with a credit card (which is the safest way you can pay by PayPal or send us a check.”

Dit was het moment waarop ik het eigenlijk wel had gehad met World Wide Art Books maar besloot er nog wel een mailtje aan te wagen.

“First: I already mentioned that to me there’s a lot of money involved. I’m a person who doesn’t want to buy something with a loan. The amount of $1,985 is simply too much for me. So I was glad to read that there was a discount on the two page package which reduced the price to $1,385. This is also a lot of money, but something to consider. When we contacted each other via email, in which I wrote that I was interested, it was exactly one day before the date the discount would expire. In my opinion that is the date we are into business. The approval of the images of mine came at September 6th and as far as I can see, to your company that’s the date we’re into business and hence the discount is, according to your company, expired. I think we have a disagreement about this. Because I opted in on a contest at Artavita, I could get a discount of 20%, but this is still more than the $1,385 mentioned earlier.
Second: The Word document for the application to the 11th Masters that was send to me, doesn’t excel in professionality. Considering the big amount of money involved, I would have expected a more professional layout or a way to upload my images online.
Third: The way my images were approved, makes me frown. I can see in my datalog of my website, that it took exactly four minutes to choose my images. The webpages that were visited were “Portretten”, “50 best inspirations YouPic” and “Portfolio op 500px”. I would have expected a more thorough curation. The images are not of the best quality because of the downsizing for the internet, so how can someone curate the quality of my images purely based on internet images? Beside that, I would have expected to send a couple of images which I picked that represents the style of my work.

The last couple of days, I started to fill in the Worddocument but every now and then I stopped. The amount of money involved makes me hesitate and doesn’t feel good. Maybe I’m too suspicious. Perhaps when the price was still $1,385 I would have given it the benefit of the doubt.”

En het antwoord:

“Hi Tjeerd,
I am sorry you missed the deadline for the special discount.
As I told you it was only for a short time and it was a very special offer.
As for the forms that don’t look professional to you, I have to tell you that we have them in pdf where they look great but many people don’t know how to fill out a pdf so we keep it simple.
If you think that a pdf form shows professionality, I will send it to you!
As for the quality of the images on your site, it really doesn’t play any roll in the selection.
The curator has over 40 years of experience and she only needs a few minute to select art.

All the best”

Hiermee is het boek van World Wide Art Books” wel gesloten, dunkt me.

Aanvulling 4 december: saillant detail is overigens dat men voor het boek, waarvan de geplande verschijningsdatum december 2016 zou zijn, nog steeds kunstwerken kan indienen. De zaken lopen blijkbaar niet zo goed als verwacht. Rara hoe kan dat?