After publisher JoJo Marengo of Umbrella Publishing violated his contract with me, swindling me out of money and also appropriating some of my intellectual property without crediting me for it, I could in touch with writers advocate Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly, BookLocker and Whispers & Warnings.
Ms. Hoy asked Mr. Marengo for his side of the story. He lied to her. He told her that my contractual e-mail agreement called for him to pay me for "several" articles over the course of a year.
I was able to send Ms. Hoy Mr. Marengo's original e-mail to me in which he stated he would be using and paying for four articles from me in the November/ December issue of his magazine Orange County's Best.
Not only that, but the one article of mine that Mr. Marengo published, he published without a by-line. When I first pointed that out to him, he sent me an e-mail that simply said "terribly sorry."
Now that I have raised the issue with Ms. Hoy, however, Mr. Marengo is saying "There was never an agreement to use his by-line."
This unethical publisher actually believes that he does not have to give writers credit for their work when he publishes it. He contracts writers for articles according to normal conditions, which is to say, not with work for hire agreements, and then he behaves as though he had a work for hire agreement with the writers.
A publisher must try hard to be less ethical than that. The term "snake in the grass" does not even begin to describe what writers are dealing with when the deal with JoJo Marengo and Umbrella Publishing.
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