Independence Books

Chris P

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Folks: I'm pasting this email in it's entirety. I got it two minutes ago. PA can't even stand it's own stench anymore. Check this sh*t out:

Dear author:

Sometimes a book deserves a new start.

Not labeled in book vendor databases as POD.
A low list price.
A new publisher.

Introducing:

Independence Books.

Independence Books is our new subsidiary. It is treated as an independent publisher. Not registered as POD in vendor databases. Not registered as PublishAmerica. Uniform list prices are $14.95.

Want a new start for your book? We will cause it to be published as an Independence Books title. It will receive a new ISBN and the new $14.95 list price. It will not show as POD. It will not list as PublishAmerica. ISBN-fed databases will show that your book is an Independence Books book, readily available from Independence Books.


Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your softcover, add to cart, use this discount coupon: IndyBooks40. Minimum volume is 7 softcovers. For 12 or more softcovers use the IndyBooks45 coupon.


This will cause your book to be published as an Independence Books title. It will no longer be available from us as a PublishAmerica softcover. (Your book's paperback or hardback versions, if already activated, will keep their PublishAmerica designation.) Your order today will be printed under the new Independence Books logo ( www.publishamerica.com/independence), with its new ISBN. Transfer may take up to 6-8 weeks to be completed and will be permanent. Book remains under contract with PublishAmerica. Use this coupon for your softcover only; other applications will not be processed. PublishAmerica's online bookstore will re-list the book as an Independence Books title generally within 24 business hours. Other vendors may do so at their discretion.

Thank you.
--PublishAmerica Author Support Team


This will go in the Carousel Thread too, but this thread has been much more active today.
 

James D. Macdonald

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All Independence Books will be available at a uniform price of $14.95.

Really?

How about discounts and returnability? How about distribution?

This is going to end in tears.

(Larry, I mean it: You should hire me as a consultant. You and Miranda are way out of your depth.)
 

thothguard51

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Wait-a-minute...

If the book is already published with PA and has a ISBN number, can they reregister the same book with another ISBN number and say its a new book?
 

Chris P

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Wait-a-minute...

If the book is already published with PA and has a ISBN number, can they reregister the same book with another ISBN number and say its a new book?

I wondered. Maybe not a legal issue, but what happens when a Google search of the book's title brings up different versions from "separate" publishers? Nobody is going to be fooled for a minute.
 

Gillhoughly

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Book remains under contract with PublishAmerica.

Oh, damn. Are you legally allowed to DO that, Stooges?

[ PublishAmerica's online bookstore will re-list the book as an Independence Books title generally within 24 business hours. Other vendors may do so at their discretion.

Meaning they likely WON'T.

Does this mean PA won't notify them of this big change?

Does it mean the titles will continue under the old ISBN on Amazon, etc., with the same old "out of stock" on the page?

Does it mean PA will flood their customers' writers' emails with shiny new discount offers?

I'd say the last one will be a resounding yes.
 

James D. Macdonald

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With legitimate publishers every new edition of the same title, every format, has its own unique ISBN.

PA has never really had a firm grasp on ISBNs, but this is actually reasonable. New cover, new ISBN.
 
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Bubastes

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This reminds me of Amway's sort-of-name change to Quixtar. Different name, same stench.
 

thothguard51

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Uncle Jim...

So how does the Library of Congress keep up with cataloging? Same book, same title, same author, just different editions?
 

James D. Macdonald

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The Library of Congress catalog number has nothing to do with ISBNs. (Incidentally, PA books in general aren't cataloged by the Library of Congress, because the LOC doesn't catalog vanity publications.)
 

Birol

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That's a good question right now.
Sounds like too many people know what PA is all about, so they're changing the name in order to snare a new batch of unsuspecting individuals. They're using PA's titles to seed the new business name.
 

plunderpuss

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I think Atlanta Nights should be a yearly thing, and this year, it should be a gritty noir mystery about a fictional publishing company and the slimeballs using it to shield their meth-addicted hooker puppy mill. (I think that has more pizazz than even the sleaziest of POD presses, so you know... artistic license.)
 

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Uncle Jim...

So how does the Library of Congress keep up with cataloging? Same book, same title, same author, just different editions?

Multiple answers:

1. They don't typically catalog PA books, or similar books. Neither do the Open Catalog Consortium, or the BNF or the British Library or the CNL.

2. ISBNs don't really matter; they are part of the cataloging record, but don't affect the LOC number.

3. A different edition of the same book may have a decimal point and one digit higher, and a different date, but usually, a different date is enough, to wit:

Richard Lanham. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. UC Press, Berkeley, CA.

1st ed 1968 hardcover
PE 1680 .L27h 1968

1st ed 1969 paperback
PE 1680 .L27h 1969

2nd ed 1991
PE 1680 .L27h 1991

The In the LOC cataloging system PE signifies the over all topic ("English"), the number 1680 the specific topic ("Modern English"), the L27 is the shelf number--this will vary by library; the L is for Lanham, the author's name, the h specifies the short title "Handlist" since the author has other titles that might be very close to this one on a shelf, and the last four digits are the date of publication.

Sometimes the date will be followed by lower case letters to indicate something special about that edition.
 
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kaitie

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Sounds like too many people know what PA is all about, so they're changing the name in order to snare a new batch of unsuspecting individuals. They're using PA's titles to seed the new business name.

Sounds to me like they've found a way to require up front that you buy copies of your own book before your book is published. That was the only thing allowing people to say they weren't an official vanity press, wasn't it? The fact that the contract didn't specify that you had to buy your own copies? Now they're saying "You're required to have copies to have your book published."

The sad thing is they're going to get a LOT of customers with this. Every single author out there who's thinking "If only I could get a lower list price," and all the authors who have been turned down by bookstores because they don't stock POD or PA books, they're all going to want to get into this.

It's one last way to bite into the hope. The thing is, bookstores still probably aren't going to buy them, are they? The books are still vanity press books and they're still being produced POD even if they're not calling it that (is that even okay? wouldn't the bookstore find that out?).

I have a feeling what we're going to see is a LOT of authors buying into this as a way to try to give their books one last desperate chance, and then they're going to get their hearts broken again.

Most interesting to me, though, is the basic admission that PA is looked down on and seen as negative. They're basically saying "You're screwed because you've got our name on your books, so we'll change the name and no one will ever know."

Anyone else want to bet that they keep this imprint separate, still bring people in under the PA contract, and then use this to require them to buy books if they want their books listed in bookstores? They can still say they don't "require" you to buy your own books that way. The same way they don't "require" you to pay for edits, but then add in mistakes and make you pay to change them.

This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.
 

Old Hack

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Just you wait: the next thing they'll introduce is a requirement that you have had your books published by PA for six months or a year before you're eligible for IB: that way they get sales from honeymooners before they get the transition sales from the desperate.

This won't make one jot of difference to the sales of these books--apart from the sales to the authors.
 

kaitie

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Oh geez. I feel like we probably just gave them another idea.
 

allenparker

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Doesn't anyone remember this from before? Independence isn't new. It has been around since 2002. It was the label given to authors who sold 1000 books. It had a return policy and was available in some stores, if of course the author pushed them.

A New Little Story:
The pirate ship Pounding America has run aground and the Pirates have seized the HMS Independence, a cleaner ship with no reputation for privateering. Shifting their ready, willing and able cargo to the new ship, they pick up a few extra pieces of eight by selling passage on the lovely looking ship. They ditch the old stuff by ransoming the poor duckies for 99 pieces of eight.

As the cargo boards the fine, new vessel, passing the freshly painted facade, they find it is just the old garbage barge without a means of propulsion.

Meanwhile, all the pursuits by the local authorities are halted as the ship is no longer the Pounding America, but the Independence. Pounding America is shortly stripped of old and worn out equipment and the carcass is left to rot at the shore line with all the garbage thrown from the other ship.

And they all lived happily ever after tied to the dock feeding on the cargo. Did I mention these were lazy pirates?

Isn't fiction fun? Now y'all try a story.
 

Marie Pacha

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This just got more convoluted.

I was looking for Independence Books on Google, and I found this: http://www.robtex.com/dns/publishamerica.net.html

There's a link there to Publishers Printing House. http://www.publishersprintinghouse.com/
Under services it says:
Our super low prices are typically based on page counts. For instance, we print a 200-page 6x9 or 5.5x8.5 perfect bound paperback for well under $4. Turnaround time is between 24-48 hours, or within 12-24 hours if required.

There's a cover on one of the machines there, Free Men Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1424128080/?tag=absolutewritedm-20 Guess who the publisher is?
 

Fallen

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They're basically saying "You're screwed because you've got our name on your books, so we'll change the name and no one will ever know."

:roll:

I love plain English.
 

CaoPaux

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This just got more convoluted.

I was looking for Independence Books on Google, and I found this: http://www.robtex.com/dns/publishamerica.net.html

There's a link there to Publishers Printing House. http://www.publishersprintinghouse.com/
Under services it says:
Our super low prices are typically based on page counts. For instance, we print a 200-page 6x9 or 5.5x8.5 perfect bound paperback for well under $4. Turnaround time is between 24-48 hours, or within 12-24 hours if required.

There's a cover on one of the machines there, Free Men Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1424128080/?tag=absolutewritedm-20 Guess who the publisher is?
Score! Domain was registered in '07, which coincides with their "we've bought our own printer", I believe.

Looking the other PA domains, I'd forgotten about http://www.authorsmarket.net/index.htm, from 2003.

ETA: I'm gonna have to add some names to the Index, ain't I.
 
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christwriter

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Is there any way the restructuring could fix PA's credit woes? If there's some kind of disconnect between PA the publisher and PA the parent company, could creating a third company give them (or at least, the third company) a blank enough slate to get a printer to start working with them again?

Forgive me if the idea is dumb. I just got off shift. (one more goddamn person in a goddamn pair of oversized basket ball shorts asks me if I've seen that goddamn Dunkin' Doughnuts commercial, I am going to take a doughnut and [CENSORED])
 

Chris P

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This just got more convoluted.

I was looking for Independence Books on Google, and I found this: http://www.robtex.com/dns/publishamerica.net.html

There's a link there to Publishers Printing House. http://www.publishersprintinghouse.com/
Under services it says:
Our super low prices are typically based on page counts. For instance, we print a 200-page 6x9 or 5.5x8.5 perfect bound paperback for well under $4. Turnaround time is between 24-48 hours, or within 12-24 hours if required.

There's a cover on one of the machines there, Free Men Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1424128080/?tag=absolutewritedm-20 Guess who the publisher is?

All of the books I could Google in that pic are PA books: The Enemy Called 'They' by Randall C. Hale, Kentucky, the mountains I call home by Joyce Bowling and The Nail That Sticks Up by Nancy Wadsworth Duncan.

Is there any way the restructuring could fix PA's credit woes? If there's some kind of disconnect between PA the publisher and PA the parent company, could creating a third company give them (or at least, the third company) a blank enough slate to get a printer to start working with them again?

It might have something to do with this. I'm not sure how legal it is to assign assets from PA Corp or PA LLLP to Independence Books without transferring its debt too. That's not an accusation, I truly don't know.

ETA @ allenparker: 2002 was over seven years ago. There can't be more than a handful of PA authors from that time who are still under contract. They're betting nobody remembers.
 
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