VDM Publishing AKA Lambert Academic Publishing & Co

So, this morning, I woke up to an email from Lambert Academic Publishing, AKA LAP. The writer told me she was researching publishable academic papers at my old grad school and came across my PhD thesis, that she worked for LAP and would I consider cooperating with them towards a worldwide marketed publication of my work. Oh and that I should reply including an email address where I can be contacted.

My first thought was "oh great, another VDM-esque publisher", and then I scrolled to the bottom, where no, it turns out that LAP is just another name for VDM, who manypeople have blogged and talked about already, its been the subject of mainstream newspaper articles (German), and basically, in the words of Victoria Strauss, is nothing but a great big author mill for academics.

All that aside, I'm amused at the lengths these folks go to and just how half-assed they are. I'm in my second job since leaving grad school, and my academic email address has changed twice since that point, and yet they've managed to contact me on my current (not well publicized) email address, and then they ask for a contact email address and offer to publish my thesis. Which, as a matter of fact, has already been published as peer-reviewed journal articles. So, its enough research to get my thesis title and a current email address, but not enough to realize its all already published! D'oh!