The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

DaveKuzminski · Mar 23, 2005

razzirazz said:
Unless I'm wrong, LULU is an epublisher. IMO getting your book published in cyberspace where it joins all the other white noise is almost tantamount to not getting it published at all. As far as the rest of the POD vanity publishers go, why "pay" for a publisher to give you the same non service PA does?

To jump to something else --- If PA makes their money up front by having the author and his friends and relatives buy his/her book, and thereafter does nothing to promote or help sell in the bookstores, I wonder why they want to keep the rights for seven years? Anybody care to opine?

__Jim

Lulu uses the same kind of printing as PA. Furthermore, they do it honestly and without deceptive practices.

I'm speculating that PA wanted the rights for seven years in order to put more pressure on their writers to pay up for a release from the PA contract by purchasing 49 copies in stock once the authors realized that there was no way that PA would actually attempt to even get any of their books into bookstores on real shelves. Now it's nothing more than vindictiveness on their part since we've broken the PA myth about the 49 copies.

Sassenach · Mar 23, 2005

I propose we can the term 'traditional publisher'--it's another of the phony terms PA dreamed up. If you have to call yourself a traditional publisher, you're probably not a publisher at all.

James D. Macdonald · Mar 23, 2005

razzirazz said:
Unless I'm wrong, LULU is an epublisher. IMO getting your book published in cyberspace where it joins all the other white noise is almost tantamount to not getting it published at all. As far as the rest of the POD vanity publishers go, why "pay" for a publisher to give you the same non service PA does?

Lulu's books are hardcopy 6"x9" perfectbound volumes.

To jump to something else --- If PA makes their money up front by having the author and his friends and relatives buy his/her book, and thereafter does nothing to promote or help sell in the bookstores, I wonder why they want to keep the rights for seven years? Anybody care to opine?

__Jim

Yeah, I have an opinion. It's to induce despair in the authors, to pressure them into buying a case or two of their own books, because seven years looks like forever. If it was just a year or two, more authors would decide to run out the clock.

Here's why PA books aren't going to be in bookstores:

High prices
Short discounts
No returns
No salesforce
No catalog
Cash-up-front
No trade advertising
No major reviews
General low production values

keltora · Mar 23, 2005

Darn it, people, I'm in the middle of edits, trying to get two deadlines out of the way, and just sold another novel (which means I am going to have three deadlines), and y'all have added so many threads, I can't catch up.

Anything exciting in the PA pen?

Laura J. Underwood (A Little Bit of Travis Tea--My ATLANTA NIGHTS can poke out your EYE OF ARGON any day!)

DRAGON'S TONGUE forthcoming from Meisha Merlin in the Summer of 2006. Preview a copy at http://www.embiid.net.

AnneMarble · Mar 23, 2005

razzirazz said:
...IMO getting your book published in cyberspace where it joins all the other white noise is almost tantamount to not getting it published at all.

That depends on the epublisher. Some of them have surprisingly good sales numbers. It depends on the niche, of course. It's still not as good as getting something that your publisher puts into bookstores. (Then again, Ellora's Cave is now putting some of their titles into Borders and Waldenbooks, and some New Concepts are now available at Waldenbooks.)

As with any other kind of publisher, you have to do your research. Check out the site and make sure it's not a mess. Join e-publishing lists and find out if fans actually buy from that publisher. Check out e-book reviews and find out if that publisher's books are reviewed often or reviewed rarely. And so forth.

razzirazz said:
As far as the rest of the POD vanity publishers go, why "pay" for a publisher to give you the same non service PA does?

For oen thing, the better ones give you real service rather than non service. When you really know that you are paying for that cover, etc., you can demand a better cover, etc., instead of being forced to deal with rude e-mails from so-called Author Support. (Maybe we should start calling them Author Jockstrap?)

Also, because you have paid upfront, the books are priced lower. That's a boon for your potential customers.

AnneMarble · Mar 23, 2005

keltora said:
Anything exciting in the PA pen?

One of the PA authors posted a revealing photo as her avatar. That may have caused the most excitement in the past few days.

Of course, that's because I'm not mentioning my "skivvies" post. :gone:

aka eraser · Mar 23, 2005

Sassenach said:
I propose we can the term 'traditional publisher'--it's another of the phony terms PA dreamed up. If you have to call yourself a traditional publisher, you're probably not a publisher at all.

I think it's too late to can it Sass. It's entered the lexicon, at least on writers' boards. IMO the best way to deal with it is to offer an honest definition and contrast it with PA's.

(Warning: plug alert!)

In a roundabout way I tried to that with a definition of a traditionally-published author here.

DaveKuzminski · Mar 23, 2005

AnneMarble said:
Maybe we should start calling them Author Jockstrap?

Author Wedgie would be more accurate.

Larry creep. Larry creep.

needles · Mar 23, 2005

Can someone comment on this PA post? It concerns selling PA books for retail on eBay:

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/8403.htm

This response grabbed me:

HTML:

You silly girl, you have to have you book in your hands to sell it! Oh Lord, what are we going to do with you?

I'm thinking she's addressing the charge that most PA authors have to first purchase their own books in order to ensure availability for those who wish to purchase them.
But how does selling your POD book on eBay subvert this process? Either you have the book on hand and ready to ship to the buyer within a week, or you state that once you make a sale on eBay you'll alert PA that they are to ship the book directly to said buyer, which is kind of an iffy deal...

ETA: Please forgive my formatting.

Sparhawk · Mar 23, 2005

Started Reading Atlanta Nights

I have spent the last 5 days reading this thread from the first post to the end. When I came across the Atlanta Nights section I just had to download the story and read it for myself.

I bow down and salute the authors of that magnificent prose. :Trophy:

I laughed so hard I nearly pulled a muscle in my back. That was absolutely priceless. I haven't made my way through the whole work as of yet, but I will before the week is over.

Thank You for giving me such a good laugh during a tough week on the job.

-Sparhawk

underthecity · Mar 23, 2005

Reading AN on the computer screen is one thing, but actually seeing it in real book form is something else entirely. There is a lot of weird formatting in the book that doesn't come across on the manuscript pages. If you think it's a riot to read as a manuscript, it's even more of a scream when you read it actually bound.

utc

Moondancer · Mar 23, 2005

DaveKuzminski said:
I feel you missed the point I was making. By including the AG, BBB, the media, and FTC on the emails, someone in those places will soon realize that this is a situation where one company is just plain ignoring the other and that it's time for someone with authority to step in and read the riot act to PA.

Including the BBB helps to insure that PA doesn't get back into their graces because it's totally undeserved.

Including at least one media representative helps to give the AG and the FTC the incentive to do something sooner rather than later.

Including the AG and the FTC gives them some competition to see who's going to be the good government guy who gets the credit for smacking PA on the wrist.

I haven't claimed that this will get anyone out of their contract, but it would be to PA's benefit to let an author out sooner rather than later.

Sorry, Mr. Kuzminski. My post was not directed at you or anyone in particular but a general statement about the new crop of contract termination requests via email. I apologize if you think it was directed at you.

I applaud the herculean task which has been taken on. Every step that's been taken with every piece of information that's been used and disseminated has found chinks in PA's armor.

keltora · Mar 23, 2005

needles said:
Can someone comment on this PA post? It concerns selling PA books for retail on eBay:

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/8403.htm

This response grabbed me:

HTML:

You silly girl, you have to have you book in your hands to sell it! Oh Lord, what are we going to do with you?

I'm thinking she's addressing the charge that most PA authors have to first purchase their own books in order to ensure availability for those who wish to purchase them.
But how does selling your POD book on eBay subvert this process? Either you have the book on hand and ready to ship to the buyer within a week, or you state that once you make a sale on eBay you'll alert PA that they are to ship the book directly to said buyer, which is kind of an iffy deal...

ETA: Please forgive my formatting.

Hmmm, did she sell a copy for $4.00 or did she sell it for $4.00 over cost, or what?

I mean if she sold it for $4.00, then she's lost money big time. If she sold it $4.00 over what she paid for her author's copies, well...

:Huh:

I'm confused.

Laura J. Underwood (A Little Bit of Travis Tea--My ATLANTA NIGHTS can poke out your EYE OF ARGON any day!)

DRAGON'S TONGUE forthcoming from Meisha Merlin in the Summer of 2006. Preview a copy at http://www.embiid.net.

keltora · Mar 23, 2005

AnneMarble said:
One of the PA authors posted a revealing photo as her avatar. That may have caused the most excitement in the past few days.

Of course, that's because I'm not mentioning my "skivvies" post.

LOL!

See...go away for a while and the world gets crazy. :crazy:

Laura J. Underwood (A Little Bit of Travis Tea--My ATLANTA NIGHTS can poke out your EYE OF ARGON any day!)

DRAGON'S TONGUE forthcoming from Meisha Merlin in the Summer of 2006. Preview a copy at http://www.embiid.net.

keltora · Mar 23, 2005

Ick...gotta learn how to use the sig

DaveKuzminski · Mar 23, 2005

I'm surprised that no one has come up yet with the idea of selling their books through Nigerian lookalike emails. I can picture that already.

"You are no doubt surprised to receive this from me. I am the Honorable Mboto M. Mogatu, proprietor of the First Nigerian House of Publishing. Sadly, we contracted with an American author who was to sell her books that we publihsed only to discover that shortly after the print run she died leavving us with no US outlet for her books.

If you would interested be, we can arrange for the books we pulbished to be shipped to you for resale...blah, blah, blah."

I just hope they'll recognize soon enough that there are no substitutes for real distribution channels and that an author cannot be expected to write and sell at the same time. Either you're a writer or a salesman. Once you recognize that and choose, it should be easy then to determine whether PA is a publisher or a printer.

Larry creep. Larry creep.

James D. Macdonald · Mar 23, 2005

Latest entry in the "A ____ and his ____ are soon ______" sweepstakes, here's A Novel Idea Bookstore: http://www.anovelideabookstores.com/

Let's see how long it takes after it's been mentioned here for someone on the PA boards to post the news.

And let's see how long it takes for the guys who came up with Novel Idea to arrive and tell us we're all poopieheads for not calling them on the phone and hearing how they're actually benefitting authors everywhere, giving them a chance, and creating a New Publishing Paradigm.

Here's the deal: For a mere sixty bucks a year, plus five copies of your book, they promise that they'll put your book on the shelf in their bookstore. They're planning on putting 4,000-6,000 books in their store (and they're planning to start a chain of stores). That means, without selling a single book, they're looking at pulling in a quarter million bucks per year per store.

Will random strangers actually buy the books? Well, anything's possible. Me, I think that "without selling a single book" is pretty close to the way it'll go.

reph · Mar 23, 2005

underthecity said:
Reading AN on the computer screen is one thing...If you think it's a riot to read as a manuscript, it's even more of a scream when you read it actually bound.

All right, who wants to do the obvious joke about reading it actually bound? ZaZ? Are you there? Untie yourself and get over here. We're handing out assignments.

underthecity · Mar 23, 2005

reph said:
All right, who wants to do the obvious joke about reading it actually bound? ZaZ? Are you there? Untie yourself and get over here. We're handing out assignments.

Well, once you get out of your bonds, check out a bound copy of AN. It's easier and more fun to read with your hands untied.

utc

clintl · Mar 23, 2005

Vanity bookstores? Yikes!

James D. Macdonald · Mar 23, 2005

Reading Atlanta Nights bound would be an interesting experience, I suppose. All Bran might help.

(Actually, I hear that Atlanta Nights by itself is an excellent laxative. When Larry heard about it, he s--t.)

(Oh -- and AN is up to #22 on Lulu's all-time-best-seller list. Go, us!)

Moondancer · Mar 23, 2005

James D. Macdonald said:
Latest entry in the "A ____ and his ____ are soon ______" sweepstakes, here's A Novel Idea Bookstore: http://www.anovelideabookstores.com/

Let's see how long it takes after it's been mentioned here for someone on the PA boards to post the news.

And let's see how long it takes for the guys who came up with Novel Idea to arrive and tell us we're all poopieheads for not calling them on the phone and hearing how they're actually benefitting authors everywhere, giving them a chance, and creating a New Publishing Paradigm.

Here's the deal: For a mere sixty bucks a year, plus five copies of your book, they promise that they'll put your book on the shelf in their bookstore. They're planning on putting 4,000-6,000 books in their store (and they're planning to start a chain of stores). That means, without selling a single book, they're looking at pulling in a quarter million bucks per year per store.

Will random strangers actually buy the books? Well, anything's possible. Me, I think that "without selling a single book" is pretty close to the way it'll go.

/is wishing she had the whistling smiley right about now. This deserves one.

Ed Williams · Mar 23, 2005

Whoops! PublishAmerica, the WWE of the Traditional...

....Publishing World, is setting yet new standards for bulletin board author conflict, as witnessed per ye referenced thread:

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/8361.htm

Vanity bookstores? Oh man, that will end up ranking right up there with the Edsel and New Coke.

And for my main man, Zaz, I offer the following:

Dean Vernon Wormer:

Click to expand...

Greg, what is the worst fraternity on this campus?
Greg Marmalard: Well that would be hard to say, sir. They're each outstanding in their own way.
Dean Vernon Wormer: Cut the horsesh**, son. I've got their disciplinary files right here. Who dropped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.
Greg Marmalard: You're talking about Delta, sir.
Dean Vernon Wormer: Of course I'm talking about Delta, you TWERP!

victoriastrauss · Mar 23, 2005

razzirazz said:
As far as the rest of the POD vanity publishers go, why "pay" for a publisher to give you the same non service PA does?

- Better contract (one year nonexclusive, as opposed to PA's seven years exclusive)
- Lower cover prices (all PODs have high cover prices, but PA's are higher even than most PODs, especially for books over 250 or so pages)
- Higher royalties (20% of net as opposed to PA's 8% of net)
- Better accounting (for instance, iUniverse issues monthly statements, as opposed to PA's semi-annual statements)
- More frequent royalty payments (again using iUniverse as an example, payments are quarterly rather than semi-annual)
- Better-looking interior formatting (most POD books are not a prize design-wise, but PA's are worse-looking than others)
- More professional-looking cover design (again, we're not talking prizeworthy material here, but iUniverse's template covers look better than most PA covers)

These are all objectively verifiable differences that apply to everyone. I'm not including the things that authors may or may not encounter with PA, such as: difficulty ordering books, errors incorporated in the formatting process and left uncorrected, printing errors, and of course the Author Abuse Team's uniquely unhelpful way of dealing with questions and problems.

To jump to something else --- If PA makes their money up front by having the author and his friends and relatives buy his/her book, and thereafter does nothing to promote or help sell in the bookstores, I wonder why they want to keep the rights for seven years? Anybody care to opine?

Two possible reasons. First and foremost, I think that this is the amount of time they've decided is feasible for milking author-driven sales. Second, I think that at one point they were hoping to make deals to mass-sell rights. Some tentative steps in this direction were made with a Korean publisher a few years ago, but that seems to have fizzled.

- Victoria

Patricia · Mar 23, 2005

Ed Williams said:
Vanity bookstores? Oh man, that will end up ranking right up there with the Edsel and New Coke.

At least they didn't call themselves "a traditional book store."

The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

Preditors & Editors

5 W's & an H

Your Genial Uncle

Nefarious Ghost Fan

Nefarious Ghost Fan

Fish Whisperer

Preditors & Editors

Jenna's Cabana Boy

Finestkind

Preditors & Editors

Your Genial Uncle

Fig of authority

Finestkind

Represent.

Your Genial Uncle

Writer Beware Goddess

California Dreaming