Son of PAMB and its quotes

Dear Author,
Alright, alright, slow down!

Phones are ringing off the hook. So we'll give it two more days, and then it's done.

This is our final special sales offer for all authors. If you want to benefit, as more than 11,000 authors have done in the past twelve months, this is the week to do it. Two more days, that's all the time you'll have. After that, we're going back to regular pricing on most titles!

Here's our final special 2-day-only offer for all authors:

Those who choose to have copies of their own book on hand are now given 45 percent discount on all orders. Plus this:

We will double all orders. Buy one book, get one FREE. Example: if you purchase 9 books, we will send you 9 EXTRA, for a total of 18 books. If you purchase 25 books, we will send you 25 EXTRA, for a total of 50 books, etc. You can do the math: effectively this gives you a discount of roughly 70 pct on each book!

Phone orders only, at 301 695 1707, between 9am - 5pm EST. Hardcovers are excluded; full-color books restricted to discount only. Selected books may qualify for future special sales offers. Code: Numbers. Be very quick: this final offer for all expires the day after tomorrow, Friday, April 24.

Thank you!

PublishAmerica Author Support Team

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Yea....Then two weeks from now, they will have some new FINAL amazing sale, that authors just HAVE TO BUY IT.

Then another week and we will get another one.
PLEASE!!! BUY THESE MOTHER F#$%$ BOOKS!!!! WERE GOING BROKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol.

Kaji said:

PLEASE!!! BUY THESE MOTHER F#$%$ BOOKS!!!! WERE GOING BROKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol.

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** giggling madly **

We will double all orders. Buy one book, get one FREE. Example: if you purchase 9 books, we will send you 9 EXTRA, for a total of 18 books. If you purchase 25 books, we will send you 25 EXTRA, for a total of 50 books, etc. You can do the math: effectively this gives you a discount of roughly 70 pct on each book!

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PA: But don't think we're going broke!

We'll make up that "discount" for books that cost us 3.00 to print by charging individually for each book shipped--and charging far more than ordinary media rate at that!

Order one book and your shipping charge is 8.99!

Order two books and your shipping is 17.98!

Order THREE and shipping is ONLY 26.97!!

Of course it costs us about 5 bucks to ship three of them, but the rest covers "handling" and the price of the boxes. (Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket!)

Aren't we lucky that you think this is perfectly okay to do, even though OTHER businesses offer shipping discounts for large orders!

But, hey, YOU are paying for PA's many services, y'know. (Stop that employee from laughing so loud before someone notices.)

So make an order already. The Stooges have a golf date to get to and you're holding things up!

Gillhoughly said:

. . . Order one book and your shipping charge is 8.99!

Order two books and your shipping is 17.98!

Order THREE and shipping is ONLY 26.97!!
. . .

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Are you being facetious, or are they really charging that much?

Sounds like that "Second whatchamacallit free, just pay additional shipping and handling" gimmick that the TV pitchmen use.

--Ken

There's at least one product sold on TV that offers a second item free except for shipping and handling. You can bet that they're not losing anything because of that. I started to order that one product. That's how I found out how much the shipping and handling was on each. I canceled the order.

These PA "final" offers are just plain funny!

Phones ringing off the hook my butt =)

Oh, their phones WERE ringing off the hook. It was me calling every five minutes to ask for the rights to my book back!

LOL You guys crack me up. Their ACTUAL shipping rates are as followed.

First book to ship is 4.99 and every book after that is 2.99. ( OUCH ) you can see how that would get very expensive. So for your 25 books ( which you get 25 free ) at the average PA cost of a paperback, so say 24.95.
24.95 * .045 = about $11.2 per book
$11.2*25=$280.50
2.99*49=146.51 + 4.99 =151.50
So the grand total. of $280.50 + $151.50 = $432

Yea....isn't that reasonable??? Almost $500, for 25 copies ( plus some free ones ) that you will only end up selling about 6, probably to family members too. lol


NO THANKS PA. NICE TRY THOUGH!!!!!!!!!! * sticks tongue out and runs around laughing madly*

Kaji said:

LOL You guys crack me up. Their ACTUAL shipping rates are as followed.

First book to ship is 4.99 and every book after that is 2.99. ( OUCH ) you can see how that would get very expensive. So for your 25 books ( which you get 25 free ) at the average PA cost of a paperback, so say 24.95.
24.95 * .045 = about $11.2 per book
$11.2*25=$280.50
2.99*49=146.51 + 4.99 =151.50
So the grand total. of $280.50 + $151.50 = $432

Yea....isn't that reasonable??? Almost $500, for 25 copies ( plus some free ones ) that you will only end up selling about 6, probably to family members too. lol


NO THANKS PA. NICE TRY THOUGH!!!!!!!!!! * sticks tongue out and runs around laughing madly*

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Now see, we were having a good time with the phones ringing and the final final offers, and you had to go and depress us with these shipping costs.

Now see, we were having a good time with the phones ringing and the final final offers, and you had to go and depress us with these shipping costs

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lol. Aww. Me sorry.

Thanks for the actual figures, Kaji. I didn't have time to look them up.

Yanno, I did some checking on shipping for a case of books I planned to order a couple months ago

It worked out to .30 a copy for plain old UPS ground shipping.

Shame on you, PA.

(I know, like they're gonna lose sleep on that.)

http://bb.publishamerica.com/viewtopic.php?t=29715

Word of the "Espresso" Book Machine hits the PA message board. The poster is hopeful that their books will soon be available for printing through them.

That would mean that PA would not only not be able to set the price of the books, but they wouldn't be able to charge for shipping, either.

James D. Macdonald said:

Even if PA's whole inventory was included, they'd still have negligible sales.

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Yeah, but the writers would certainly have a better chance of turning a profit on the ones they did manage to sell themselves. If this post is right, the cost per book is roughly 1cent/page and takes all of 4 minutes to print (sounds about like a POD publisher's cost/time ratio). That means maybe $5/book with no shipping costs.

POD without the middleman.

(Though it looks like the publishers have to submit the titles to the company for use in the machines, so .... yeah....)

If I read the FAQ correctly, the publisher will have to reach an agreement with the manufacturer of the machine in order to add their books to the EBM catalog. Wonder if PA would go along with that?

The Espresso brochure says that you can print books from the Internet, or a CD. There must be more to it than that, as the files would have to be set up properly and in PDF format. And last I heard they were having trouble with their glue, although that was a while ago and they may be straightened it out. Still, this is really cool. Aside from the tens of thousands of vanity press books that will be out there now for less, books will never have to go out of print again.

Edit to add:

Oh, and the cost to the consumer has to include the cost of the machine itself, so if I read things correctly, books actually end up cost more than a penny a page. All the current machines out there are custom and being tested, so the machine doesn't even have a cost yet. But it's probably in the hundreds of thousands, so if it's called on to print a thousand pages a day for a year, you might have to add a dollar to every thousand pages to cover machine costs. This doesn't include the clerks to operate it and profits that make it worthwhile to have such a thing in your building in the first place. So add a dollar or two, at least.

Cover artwork is going to become even more important if the catalog for these machines provides that as a sales teaser which is what it is anyway in current use. I doubt if PA's stitched together generic clipart covers will stand the test of the market.

Likewise, if the catalog provides a first page or two from each book so a reader can have a literary taste, PA's books are certain to fail muster because of the substandard to total lack of editing on so many of them. Even if a few are exceptionally well edited and strong values for reading, the PA name on the book will be enough to scare off readers from even finding them since the odds favor them finding the poorly produced works first.

Of course, it's doubtful that PA books will be in the catalog if a few pages are required for inspection. PA already knows the state of its editing. Should PA succeed in getting its books listed without inspection pages, it won't be long before consumers reject all PA books as inferior. I can even foresee that as causing a new standard in returns with the publisher required to refund the cost of printing to the retailer after the retailer finds himself forced to refund the customer's purchase in order to protect his own reputation. For PA, that would be an ugly sight since it would essentially boil down to a negative cashflow very quickly caused by paying a restocking fee to retailers in order to replace their stocks of covers, paper, ink, and glue.

ChristineR said:

. . .
Oh, and the cost to the consumer has to include the cost of the machine itself. . . .

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Not to mention retailer markup. Production cost is, I'd expect, a fraction of selling price per copy.

--Ken

My publisher told me that if I want extra copies of my hardback novel, I can get them for two or three dollars each, with media mail shipping.

The penny per page figure is probably for consumables - ink and paper, in other words. Then there's the machine, the cost for someone to run it, electricity, overhead, and on. On top of that is whatever deal they make with the publisher for payment. And that may be the rub for PA authors. I dunno.

I don't think it'll be as cheap as people seem to think, at least in the short run. But if they can get it to the same price as (or lower than) what a POD book costs through Amazon with shipping, it'll work.

kullervo said:

My publisher told me that if I want extra copies of my hardback novel, I can get them for two or three dollars each, with media mail shipping.

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Sure. Marginal cost of those copies is relatively tiny, many will not (usually, as I understand it) be sold anyway (they will eventually be remaindered), and it is in the publisher's interest to have the author doing promotion (getting books into helpful hands) and to get surplus out of the warehouse. IMHO, based on observations and inferences.

Essentially none of that applies to a strictly POD book.

--Ken

I'm wondering how the format would differ from the format I used to put my books on Google Book Search. You submit your file in .pdf format in three files: cover, back and then all inside pages. You can view all of these things online (you choose how much of your book you want someone to be able to read). I'm just wondering how much more difficult it would be to then print what you've submitted, since it all looks print ready. I know looks can be deceiving, but maybe this whole idea isn't as difficult as it sounds.

merrihiatt said:

I'm wondering how the format would differ from the format I used to put my books on Google Book Search. You submit your file in .pdf format in three files: cover, back and then all inside pages. You can view all of these things online (you choose how much of your book you want someone to be able to read). I'm just wondering how much more difficult it would be to then print what you've submitted, since it all looks print ready. I know looks can be deceiving, but maybe this whole idea isn't as difficult as it sounds.

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I think that's probably all you need. The one thing I would say isn't quite right is your cover. It appears that they print front and back cover in one piece, and back cover needs to be backwards so that it will look right when they fold it in half.

Also, if it's a perfect bound book where the cover incorporates the spine, you'll have to know the final thickness of the book block, and incorporate into your image. That's how perfect bound covers are normally made. But maybe they can do this automatically? It wouldn't be that hard to set up.

It's called a wrap, I believe.