The New Never-Ending PublishAmerica Thread (NEPAT)
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Christine N. said:
Is PA Forum Thread Deleter an official job description by now?
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I'm told that PublishAmerica's records are in such disarray as to be effectively unauditable.
Shades of Northwest Publishing.
Shades of Northwest Publishing.
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janetbellinger said:
Things must be going downhill at PA.
Jessica forgot to tell you to "have a nice day!"
Nancy
James suggested I should post the following in this thread. Basically, I have a MS (sci-fi genre) which I had given up on. I've long since accepted that it will not be published (not enough sex or violence, basically). Anyway, I had submitted it to a number of agents and publishers, and have a bevy of rejection notices (or, no response at all), and have since "shelved it." I know it will not be published.
However, I have periodically received emails from PA, and have always ignored them. Now, I finally responded. I told them what I think and that they would never get my story. They sent me a long email defending themselves. I have to admit that, after all my heartache with this thing, I sent them my MS (no response yet, and nothing signed yet....it's still less than 2 weeks). However, I'd like to have some feedback on the email they sent me, and that is what James said it would be OK to post here. So, without any alterations, here it is (any comments after a carat > sign are from my original email to them):
--Start--
Thank you for finally answering our emails. Your email address begins
with "mystified", and I must say that we are concerning your
misconceptions that are so strong as to shelve a book rather than
submit it to a traditional publisher for consideration.
>If you wonder why, go to Editors and Preditors on the internet and
read about yourself, as well as a host of other sites.
The organization and websites to which you refer have long ago lost
credibility, and it would appear that they are rarely taken
seriously. We've seen them mocked many times. They are very small
with very little traffic and even less influence. Fortunately, few
people take them seriously, and we rarely hear their name mentioned
from any of our 17,000 happily contracted authors or the hundreds of
prospective authors with whom we are routinely in contact. These
consist of hundreds of professional people, including lawyers,
doctors, and professors, plus many previously published authors and
celebrities.
No day goes by without PublishAmerica authors making news. Every
single day our authors and/or their books appear in newspapers all
around the country. In part this is the result of PublishAmerica now
sending out approximately fifty press releases every day, but more
than that it is the result of an astonishing amount of word of mouth,
originating from our 17,000 happy authors and their readers.
More than any other publishing company, PublishAmerica is a
grassroots publisher. Whatever the scope of our success may be, it is
primarily the success of our authors, talented writers who dwell in
Main Street America and who had been shunned and rejected by
mainstream publishers before they found PublishAmerica. They have
become known in and beyond their local universes, they have made
other people talk about them and their books, and now together they
have made the world listen.
Among them are celebrity authors such as actor Jamie Farr, Agathe Von
Trapp of the singing family who were made famous by the movie The
Sound Of Music, Hedda Nussbaum, or Pulitzer Prize winner William
Coughlin. Others are making celebrity names for themselves, such as
author Benjamin Frazier whose book "Shelly's Diary" is being turned
into a Hollywood movie, or authors Victoria Grossack and Alice
Underwood whose book "Iokaste" is being translated into Greek by a
major publisher in Athens, Greece. Imagine having two versions of
your book on your coffee table: English and Greek! Or Korean, as has
happened to about a dozen of our titles. For more success stories see
http://www.publishamerica.com/upinlights.htm.
PublishAmerica books are sitting on coffee tables, nightstands, or
book shelves in more than a million American households. They are
being ordered by bookstores once every three minutes, twenty-four
hours per day, seven days per week. Our champion bookstore customer
is Barnes and Noble who lately have been increasing their orders at
breakneck speed. Borders and Books A Million are our second and third
largest customers.
PublishAmerica's growth has been unique, and it has caught the
industry's attention. After the world's largest book wholesale
company had managed to acquire the printing rights for virtually all
PublishAmerica's titles, Ingram's chairman, John Ingram, announced,
"I am proud to be associated with such a forward thinking company
that is bringing the reality of traditional book
publishing to many thousands of new authors." Seventeen thousand, to
be more precise, and their number is growing each day.
PublishAmerica does not advertise its name anywhere. Yet roughly a
hundred new authors come knocking on our door every day, hoping to
join our legions of published authors. Although we will not sign a
contract to almost eighty percent of them, they all know that
PublishAmerica has dramatically lowered the barrier for new authors
te become published at no cost to them. In 2005, this fact alone
attracted thirty thousand authors to query us, more than any other
publisher in the world.
PublishAmerica underwrites all costs that are involved with
publishing books, down to the last penny. We charge our authors
nothing, ever, earning our income by selling books only, which is the
true hallmark of traditional publishing. Our contracts are industry
standard and have been scrutinized and greenlighted innumerable times
by attorneys all over the fruited plain, which helps explain why we
count hundreds of lawyers among our authors.
Our authors are changing an industry, and as with every change, this
creates an occasional ripple of opposition. No wonder, if you look at
the big picture. Until PublishAmerica arrived on the scene, authors
who were denied access to mainstream publishing had only one
alternative available to them: vanity, or subsidy, publishing where
they were required to fork over substantial dollar amounts in return
for seeing their book in print. It came with not only a much lighter
wallet but with a bad stigma as well: pay to publish is not
considered equal to being paid and published.
With the traditional concept of PublishAmerica now available as an
option to everyone who has written a quality work, to date almost
twenty-five million dollars have not gone into the coffers of vanity
houses, but stayed in the pockets of our authors instead. It is not
very hard to determine whose feathers this continues to ruffle.
Neither is it difficult to predict which publishing concept rides the
wave of the future, theirs or PublishAmerica's. And the vote is
already in: see http://www.publishamerica.com/testimonials/.
As for promoting our books, PublishAmerica sends marketing
information for each new title to RR Bowker's Books In Print, Ingram,
Baker & Taylor, The Brodart Company, Barnes & Noble.com, Amazon.com
and through our printer in the United Kingdom to wholesalers in all
main markets in Europe where our books are made available to more
than 200 million European readers. This marketing information is
distributed to each and every book retailer and library across the
country. Consequently, your book is available through each and every
bookstore in the country, and all those bookstores have all pertinent
information at their fingertips.
In addition, PublishAmerica creates a direct mail letter with book
release marketing information, which is sent to individuals and
businesses across the US, including magazines and newspapers. These
efforts have helped generate thousands of feature articles and/or
reviews about our authors and their books, some of which are posted
on our web site: http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/index.htm. Our
Public Relations department discusses new releases with news media
every day. Also, they send thousands of books, gratis, to legitimate
reviewers at magazines, newspapers, television, and radio shows.
Furthermore, we have launched a showcase website for all of our
authors, called PublishedAuthors.net. It gives individual web pages
to each and every author, highlighting them and their books. The
content of these pages are edited by the author individually and are
password protected. Not only that, but it also gives every author
their own e-mail address, @publishedauthors.net. This innovative new
service, plus all of the above, is free, of course, as you have come
to expect from us.
Such is the story of PublishAmerica. We have, obviously, an excellent
record with the Better Business Bureau
(http://www.bbbonline.org/cks.asp?id=105060194339), with a complaint
rate of only .005 percent, out of more than one million customers
served, with all complaints resolved, but by now this shouldn't
surprise you. We are in the business of serving authors and their
readers, as it seems you have no inclination to now be an author, we
have taken your information out of our databases and wish you the best.
Best regards,
Steve Little
Assistant Acquisitions Editor
PublishAmerica
--end--
***Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated....thanks in advance***
However, I have periodically received emails from PA, and have always ignored them. Now, I finally responded. I told them what I think and that they would never get my story. They sent me a long email defending themselves. I have to admit that, after all my heartache with this thing, I sent them my MS (no response yet, and nothing signed yet....it's still less than 2 weeks). However, I'd like to have some feedback on the email they sent me, and that is what James said it would be OK to post here. So, without any alterations, here it is (any comments after a carat > sign are from my original email to them):
--Start--
Thank you for finally answering our emails. Your email address begins
with "mystified", and I must say that we are concerning your
misconceptions that are so strong as to shelve a book rather than
submit it to a traditional publisher for consideration.
>If you wonder why, go to Editors and Preditors on the internet and
read about yourself, as well as a host of other sites.
The organization and websites to which you refer have long ago lost
credibility, and it would appear that they are rarely taken
seriously. We've seen them mocked many times. They are very small
with very little traffic and even less influence. Fortunately, few
people take them seriously, and we rarely hear their name mentioned
from any of our 17,000 happily contracted authors or the hundreds of
prospective authors with whom we are routinely in contact. These
consist of hundreds of professional people, including lawyers,
doctors, and professors, plus many previously published authors and
celebrities.
No day goes by without PublishAmerica authors making news. Every
single day our authors and/or their books appear in newspapers all
around the country. In part this is the result of PublishAmerica now
sending out approximately fifty press releases every day, but more
than that it is the result of an astonishing amount of word of mouth,
originating from our 17,000 happy authors and their readers.
More than any other publishing company, PublishAmerica is a
grassroots publisher. Whatever the scope of our success may be, it is
primarily the success of our authors, talented writers who dwell in
Main Street America and who had been shunned and rejected by
mainstream publishers before they found PublishAmerica. They have
become known in and beyond their local universes, they have made
other people talk about them and their books, and now together they
have made the world listen.
Among them are celebrity authors such as actor Jamie Farr, Agathe Von
Trapp of the singing family who were made famous by the movie The
Sound Of Music, Hedda Nussbaum, or Pulitzer Prize winner William
Coughlin. Others are making celebrity names for themselves, such as
author Benjamin Frazier whose book "Shelly's Diary" is being turned
into a Hollywood movie, or authors Victoria Grossack and Alice
Underwood whose book "Iokaste" is being translated into Greek by a
major publisher in Athens, Greece. Imagine having two versions of
your book on your coffee table: English and Greek! Or Korean, as has
happened to about a dozen of our titles. For more success stories see
http://www.publishamerica.com/upinlights.htm.
PublishAmerica books are sitting on coffee tables, nightstands, or
book shelves in more than a million American households. They are
being ordered by bookstores once every three minutes, twenty-four
hours per day, seven days per week. Our champion bookstore customer
is Barnes and Noble who lately have been increasing their orders at
breakneck speed. Borders and Books A Million are our second and third
largest customers.
PublishAmerica's growth has been unique, and it has caught the
industry's attention. After the world's largest book wholesale
company had managed to acquire the printing rights for virtually all
PublishAmerica's titles, Ingram's chairman, John Ingram, announced,
"I am proud to be associated with such a forward thinking company
that is bringing the reality of traditional book
publishing to many thousands of new authors." Seventeen thousand, to
be more precise, and their number is growing each day.
PublishAmerica does not advertise its name anywhere. Yet roughly a
hundred new authors come knocking on our door every day, hoping to
join our legions of published authors. Although we will not sign a
contract to almost eighty percent of them, they all know that
PublishAmerica has dramatically lowered the barrier for new authors
te become published at no cost to them. In 2005, this fact alone
attracted thirty thousand authors to query us, more than any other
publisher in the world.
PublishAmerica underwrites all costs that are involved with
publishing books, down to the last penny. We charge our authors
nothing, ever, earning our income by selling books only, which is the
true hallmark of traditional publishing. Our contracts are industry
standard and have been scrutinized and greenlighted innumerable times
by attorneys all over the fruited plain, which helps explain why we
count hundreds of lawyers among our authors.
Our authors are changing an industry, and as with every change, this
creates an occasional ripple of opposition. No wonder, if you look at
the big picture. Until PublishAmerica arrived on the scene, authors
who were denied access to mainstream publishing had only one
alternative available to them: vanity, or subsidy, publishing where
they were required to fork over substantial dollar amounts in return
for seeing their book in print. It came with not only a much lighter
wallet but with a bad stigma as well: pay to publish is not
considered equal to being paid and published.
With the traditional concept of PublishAmerica now available as an
option to everyone who has written a quality work, to date almost
twenty-five million dollars have not gone into the coffers of vanity
houses, but stayed in the pockets of our authors instead. It is not
very hard to determine whose feathers this continues to ruffle.
Neither is it difficult to predict which publishing concept rides the
wave of the future, theirs or PublishAmerica's. And the vote is
already in: see http://www.publishamerica.com/testimonials/.
As for promoting our books, PublishAmerica sends marketing
information for each new title to RR Bowker's Books In Print, Ingram,
Baker & Taylor, The Brodart Company, Barnes & Noble.com, Amazon.com
and through our printer in the United Kingdom to wholesalers in all
main markets in Europe where our books are made available to more
than 200 million European readers. This marketing information is
distributed to each and every book retailer and library across the
country. Consequently, your book is available through each and every
bookstore in the country, and all those bookstores have all pertinent
information at their fingertips.
In addition, PublishAmerica creates a direct mail letter with book
release marketing information, which is sent to individuals and
businesses across the US, including magazines and newspapers. These
efforts have helped generate thousands of feature articles and/or
reviews about our authors and their books, some of which are posted
on our web site: http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/index.htm. Our
Public Relations department discusses new releases with news media
every day. Also, they send thousands of books, gratis, to legitimate
reviewers at magazines, newspapers, television, and radio shows.
Furthermore, we have launched a showcase website for all of our
authors, called PublishedAuthors.net. It gives individual web pages
to each and every author, highlighting them and their books. The
content of these pages are edited by the author individually and are
password protected. Not only that, but it also gives every author
their own e-mail address, @publishedauthors.net. This innovative new
service, plus all of the above, is free, of course, as you have come
to expect from us.
Such is the story of PublishAmerica. We have, obviously, an excellent
record with the Better Business Bureau
(http://www.bbbonline.org/cks.asp?id=105060194339), with a complaint
rate of only .005 percent, out of more than one million customers
served, with all complaints resolved, but by now this shouldn't
surprise you. We are in the business of serving authors and their
readers, as it seems you have no inclination to now be an author, we
have taken your information out of our databases and wish you the best.
Best regards,
Steve Little
Assistant Acquisitions Editor
PublishAmerica
--end--
***Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated....thanks in advance***
Last edited:
Califman,
Have you reached your hundredth rejection yet? The 100 mark is usually where I've heard is a good point, if there is one, to consider giving up. (Also, if my words strike a little ambition into your heart, rewrite your query from the bottom up if you haven't already -- or even if you have already.)
All that aside --
If you want proof that PA is lying, ask any person here who's signed with them to tell you what has happened.
There is one VERY simple reason that even if you've given up on conventionally publishing your book, you shouldn't do it with PA: Lulu.com offers the same basic services with no pretenses, and a lower book price. And they do not make you sign away your rights to the book. They are a printer. So is PA, but PA is very bad at it (regularly, from reports, botching covers and typesetting) and also lies about their purpose.
I don't have the time to go through their email point by point, but I'm sure I can count on someone here to go through it. Similar emails have been dissected before, by the way; it will take you several days to read both the threads about this company (and that pretty much counters "very little traffic", right there) but what's several days, compared to the seven years they're asking for?
Lastly, just ask yourself why they're trying to sell themselves to you, and not to bookstores. A business only stays in business by selling their services to the people who pay money for them.
I wish the best of luck to you and your book, and hang in there!
Have you reached your hundredth rejection yet? The 100 mark is usually where I've heard is a good point, if there is one, to consider giving up. (Also, if my words strike a little ambition into your heart, rewrite your query from the bottom up if you haven't already -- or even if you have already.)
All that aside --
If you want proof that PA is lying, ask any person here who's signed with them to tell you what has happened.
There is one VERY simple reason that even if you've given up on conventionally publishing your book, you shouldn't do it with PA: Lulu.com offers the same basic services with no pretenses, and a lower book price. And they do not make you sign away your rights to the book. They are a printer. So is PA, but PA is very bad at it (regularly, from reports, botching covers and typesetting) and also lies about their purpose.
I don't have the time to go through their email point by point, but I'm sure I can count on someone here to go through it. Similar emails have been dissected before, by the way; it will take you several days to read both the threads about this company (and that pretty much counters "very little traffic", right there) but what's several days, compared to the seven years they're asking for?
Lastly, just ask yourself why they're trying to sell themselves to you, and not to bookstores. A business only stays in business by selling their services to the people who pay money for them.
I wish the best of luck to you and your book, and hang in there!
Okay, here are some of my thoughts.CalifMan said:
Amazing! All of the watchdog sites, including P&E, have lost credibility and are rarely taken seriously. Seems that PA doesn't want to mention that some of those sites were cited as evidence in Encyclopaedia Britannica's civil suit against PA for trademark infringement against which PA folded like an empty soggy paper bag.
As far as traffic goes, we'll put our numbers against PA's any day. After all, PA consistently bases its claim on how many writers it's victimized. Were it not for P&E along with the other fine watchdog sites, PA's claim would be ten times as much. As far as influence goes, can PA make the same claim, without lying, about being recommended in major conventions for writing and publishing as P&E, Writer Beware, Absolute Write, and others? Oh, let's not forget that PA now claims their authors are happy only when they were contracted. Evidently, once that phase is over, the sadness creeps in with reality.
As for the mocking, most of that was produced by PA in a futile attempt to influence their own writers from visiting sites with real information about publishing and writing. After all, they've deleted posts in their own forum that mention P&E and have even banned their authors for doing so.
Of course, we shouldn't miss this opportunity to point out the inadequacy of PA's editing. After all, one would expect them as the largest publisher they claim to be to have expert editors handling not only their manuscript editing functions, but to also look over their correspondence. So, if that's the case, then why does PA have to add "lawyers, doctors, and professors" into the professional category when most people recognize that to begin with? This only goes to show that PA is targeting people without that knowledge in an effort to impress them.
Plus, how many celebrities constitutes "many"? Two? Three? Would other publishers have only "some" celebrities as authors?
Let's not forget, either, that many of PA's authors were previously published even though PA doesn't say who they were published with. If it's true, PA, then give out something more like which publishers those were. Did I hear a whispered ILP? Aw, PA, say it's not so.
Califman - rest assured your manuscript will be accepted -assuming their daily quota isn't filled up-, but it won't mean a darned thing as far as your knowing whether your writing is any good or good enough to be published or not.
All it will mean is that in x months or so you can show your friends and family a book with your name on it. An overpriced and unsaleable book.
If all you want is to hold your manuscript in book form, you can do it a heck of lot quicker and with far less pain and stigma - by avoiding Publish America. There are other options if you are determined to go the self-publishing route.
But an even better option, friend, is to keep learning the craft and keep the dream alive - PA will kill the dream and your book stone-dead.
Welcome, and check out the Share Your Work and other Forums. And the Writing with Uncle Jim thread.
I, Califman, like you and many others here, am unpublished. I just accept my writing isn't good enough yet, so I keep learning the craft. I get better and I'll be published one day. My candle's running short on wick, but I'm damned if I'm going to give up, throw in the towel and let my dreams be shattered by those parasites at PA.
Welcome to the club.
All it will mean is that in x months or so you can show your friends and family a book with your name on it. An overpriced and unsaleable book.
If all you want is to hold your manuscript in book form, you can do it a heck of lot quicker and with far less pain and stigma - by avoiding Publish America. There are other options if you are determined to go the self-publishing route.
But an even better option, friend, is to keep learning the craft and keep the dream alive - PA will kill the dream and your book stone-dead.
Welcome, and check out the Share Your Work and other Forums. And the Writing with Uncle Jim thread.
I, Califman, like you and many others here, am unpublished. I just accept my writing isn't good enough yet, so I keep learning the craft. I get better and I'll be published one day. My candle's running short on wick, but I'm damned if I'm going to give up, throw in the towel and let my dreams be shattered by those parasites at PA.
Welcome to the club.
Last edited:
In that case, post those bounced emails on this forum and others to show other writers how PA responds or doesn't. The more you embarrass PA in front of other potential victims, the sooner they'll want to terminate your contract. Just do a cut and paste of the entire email. Blank out only your own email address so you won't get spammed.janetbellinger said:
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Audit
As A simple suggestion to every aUthor, auDits keep people honest. Never be afraId to say, "I am coming on Friday to audiT the bookS."
With PA, you have to Give thEm 7 days notice. I requesTed an audit and was surprise at the outcome.
Most authors will not have the expeRiEnce to know what to audit. Take an accountant with you! FortunateLy for mE, my wife is involved with AuditS evEry weekS.
If you audit, you need to know Several things.
1. How many books were printed
2. How many books were sold. If you are paid on net, you need to know the % of discount for each place and where the books were sold.
3. How many promo books were given and to who.
4. How many books you bought.
5. How many books you were paid for.
Once you have this information, you can get real close on your royalty payments.
It is important to see the printer invoices and the numbers of books printed. Any publisher that refuses this number is probably hiding something. To accomodate this without leting the author know what they pay for the boks, most simply black out the dollar amount.
As I am very new at this, I assume that one of the old sages here will correct any misinmformation or ommisions I let slip in. (I am not an accountant and I don't play one on TV. I'd write about one if they weren't particularly "not funny.")
James D. Macdonald said:
As A simple suggestion to every aUthor, auDits keep people honest. Never be afraId to say, "I am coming on Friday to audiT the bookS."
With PA, you have to Give thEm 7 days notice. I requesTed an audit and was surprise at the outcome.
Most authors will not have the expeRiEnce to know what to audit. Take an accountant with you! FortunateLy for mE, my wife is involved with AuditS evEry weekS.
If you audit, you need to know Several things.
1. How many books were printed
2. How many books were sold. If you are paid on net, you need to know the % of discount for each place and where the books were sold.
3. How many promo books were given and to who.
4. How many books you bought.
5. How many books you were paid for.
Once you have this information, you can get real close on your royalty payments.
It is important to see the printer invoices and the numbers of books printed. Any publisher that refuses this number is probably hiding something. To accomodate this without leting the author know what they pay for the boks, most simply black out the dollar amount.
As I am very new at this, I assume that one of the old sages here will correct any misinmformation or ommisions I let slip in. (I am not an accountant and I don't play one on TV. I'd write about one if they weren't particularly "not funny.")
Hi Janet.....
Do not let it depress you. They ignored me for several months after I pressed for real answers to my questions. Yes, they will give you the "song and dance" re the royalties. Uncle Jim and others are right but, like me, you live in Canada and we have a problem getting there to audit their books. I agree with Dave, publish their rude remarks and your "ignored e-mails". They hate the publicity! Also write letters of complaint to any and all - I do.
As for your comments, CalifMan - - I am sorry but my response as a PA Author, whom they will not let go, is "ha! ha! ha! to that bunch of malarkey they poured into your ears". Stay far from them, that's my advice, and if you have to use them to be PRINTED, do not buy any of your books. Use them as a rather expensive PRINTING service.
PA, listen up, I know for a fact you read the comments on this Board. What proof can you provide for calling us "17,000" Happy Authors? How can you possibly ignore the likes of Encyclopedia Britainica who successfully beat you at your own game (of ignoring e-mails, etc). Phil Dolan showed your Lawyer and CEO up in a less than flattering light! AND how can you possibly call Writer Beware, P&E and AW "unimportant sites"? The word is out no matter what claims you make, and you would be out of business tomorrow, if everyone did their homework before signing with you. Unfortunately, I did not do a good enough job of researching and am paying for it now, but I won't be shut up and, Janet, do not let them shut you up. I hope you read this, CalifMan, and note what you are dealing with.
I categorically state that: "I am not one of PA's 17,000 Happy Authors". Take the pledge with me, PA Authors. Start or end every post with those words.
postshy/Roberta
Do not let it depress you. They ignored me for several months after I pressed for real answers to my questions. Yes, they will give you the "song and dance" re the royalties. Uncle Jim and others are right but, like me, you live in Canada and we have a problem getting there to audit their books. I agree with Dave, publish their rude remarks and your "ignored e-mails". They hate the publicity! Also write letters of complaint to any and all - I do.
As for your comments, CalifMan - - I am sorry but my response as a PA Author, whom they will not let go, is "ha! ha! ha! to that bunch of malarkey they poured into your ears". Stay far from them, that's my advice, and if you have to use them to be PRINTED, do not buy any of your books. Use them as a rather expensive PRINTING service.
PA, listen up, I know for a fact you read the comments on this Board. What proof can you provide for calling us "17,000" Happy Authors? How can you possibly ignore the likes of Encyclopedia Britainica who successfully beat you at your own game (of ignoring e-mails, etc). Phil Dolan showed your Lawyer and CEO up in a less than flattering light! AND how can you possibly call Writer Beware, P&E and AW "unimportant sites"? The word is out no matter what claims you make, and you would be out of business tomorrow, if everyone did their homework before signing with you. Unfortunately, I did not do a good enough job of researching and am paying for it now, but I won't be shut up and, Janet, do not let them shut you up. I hope you read this, CalifMan, and note what you are dealing with.
I categorically state that: "I am not one of PA's 17,000 Happy Authors". Take the pledge with me, PA Authors. Start or end every post with those words.
postshy/Roberta
Last edited:
I am NOT HAPPY either, Roberta. The whole matter is out of my hands, now and in the hands of an attorney. If I have to let them publish my poetry book, it simply won't sell any copies, unless PA markets it, because I am not going to buy a single copy. Obscurity is preferable to PA.
What interests me is that no PA writer has yet walked into his police department to file a criminal charge against PA for fraud. After all, PA can't hide behind contract clauses requiring arbitration when it comes to criminal conduct.
As for me...
I am NOT one of the 17,000 happy authors at PA and I doubt very very seriously if there are 1700 happy authors at PA.
Bonnie
I am NOT one of the 17,000 happy authors at PA and I doubt very very seriously if there are 1700 happy authors at PA.
Bonnie
CalifMan,
There are so many LIES in that letter it just makes my head spin. RUN. If you are so desperate to get your book in print that you would consider going to publish america, go with LULU there is no contract, there is no abuse, there is no lies.
I would rather see every one of my other books rot, then place another book with PA. They are horrible.
There are not 17,000 happy authors. I am thinking less than 5000. Only one or two authors who have been with PA for more than a year are still happy. That weeds out about 10,000 authors right there.
They don't send out the press releases for every book, I don't think they have even sent them out for fifty books. They never sent anything about my book save a sales pitch and order form to my friends and family. It's pathetic. They refused to contact the local media. They give horrible cover arts. They ADD mistakes into the manuscripts.
Larry Clopper even said at one point that he was out to ruin as many writer's careers as possible.
The one million customers is bull! They barely sold one million books and the vast majority of them were sold to their authors. So more around at this point 20,000 customers.
The 25 million dollars didn't go into the pockets of other vanity presses, it went into the pockets of the top three at PA.
Marketing is useless with Publish America. Without the backup of a publisher your wheels might as well be in reverse because you are going to lose more than you gain. Their system is set up to make you FAIL.
Your book will NOT appear in bookstores unless there it is there on consignment or you have a very liberal bookstore, and even then it will only be in your local area.
The cost of the books are outrageous. 20 dollars for a 230 page book and 24 for a 270 page book! The first of which was around 380 in my word processor and the second was over 400 pages. And these are for soft cover not hard cover.
Then add another 5 dollars for shipping and handling.
They rule their message board with an iron fist, say anything bordering the truth and you'll get flamed.
The mentality is like a cult, and they try to make you believe that the rest of the industry is jealous of you. PLEASE! Yes a multi-billion dollar book industry that can sell more of one book than what PA has sold of thousands is jealous of 1 million books sold between 17,000 authors most of which was to them And quite a few of those authors have more than one book with PA.
Larry Clopper is out to snear at the publishing industry. If you have that attitude, well you'll fit right in.
They say many celebrities and previously published authors. The only ones they have are the ones listed.
Jaime Farr is no longer in good graces with PA has not been for quite some time, yet they still use him name.
I can believe that there is one author in a newspaper on average every day. They have 17,000 of them and only 365 days in the year.
They are not the most requested, the highest submission, or publish the most in the publishing industry. That is a lie. Author House has well over 25,000 authors.
They coined the term "Traditional Publisher" It means nothing. The word they are trying to compare it to is Commercial. The top publishers are Commercial.
"We treat our authors the old fasion way: we pay them!"
Should be, we shake them down, slap them around, and make them smile as we are robbing them, of not only their money, but their hopes and dreams.
Seriously, RUN. If you can't learn from all of our experiences then you are in for a world of hurt.
Oh and the testimonial page was lifted from e-mails during the honeymoon period. Most of those authors do not stand by their testimonials today.
Sara
There are so many LIES in that letter it just makes my head spin. RUN. If you are so desperate to get your book in print that you would consider going to publish america, go with LULU there is no contract, there is no abuse, there is no lies.
I would rather see every one of my other books rot, then place another book with PA. They are horrible.
There are not 17,000 happy authors. I am thinking less than 5000. Only one or two authors who have been with PA for more than a year are still happy. That weeds out about 10,000 authors right there.
They don't send out the press releases for every book, I don't think they have even sent them out for fifty books. They never sent anything about my book save a sales pitch and order form to my friends and family. It's pathetic. They refused to contact the local media. They give horrible cover arts. They ADD mistakes into the manuscripts.
Larry Clopper even said at one point that he was out to ruin as many writer's careers as possible.
The one million customers is bull! They barely sold one million books and the vast majority of them were sold to their authors. So more around at this point 20,000 customers.
The 25 million dollars didn't go into the pockets of other vanity presses, it went into the pockets of the top three at PA.
Marketing is useless with Publish America. Without the backup of a publisher your wheels might as well be in reverse because you are going to lose more than you gain. Their system is set up to make you FAIL.
Your book will NOT appear in bookstores unless there it is there on consignment or you have a very liberal bookstore, and even then it will only be in your local area.
The cost of the books are outrageous. 20 dollars for a 230 page book and 24 for a 270 page book! The first of which was around 380 in my word processor and the second was over 400 pages. And these are for soft cover not hard cover.
Then add another 5 dollars for shipping and handling.
They rule their message board with an iron fist, say anything bordering the truth and you'll get flamed.
The mentality is like a cult, and they try to make you believe that the rest of the industry is jealous of you. PLEASE! Yes a multi-billion dollar book industry that can sell more of one book than what PA has sold of thousands is jealous of 1 million books sold between 17,000 authors most of which was to them And quite a few of those authors have more than one book with PA.
Larry Clopper is out to snear at the publishing industry. If you have that attitude, well you'll fit right in.
They say many celebrities and previously published authors. The only ones they have are the ones listed.
Jaime Farr is no longer in good graces with PA has not been for quite some time, yet they still use him name.
I can believe that there is one author in a newspaper on average every day. They have 17,000 of them and only 365 days in the year.
They are not the most requested, the highest submission, or publish the most in the publishing industry. That is a lie. Author House has well over 25,000 authors.
They coined the term "Traditional Publisher" It means nothing. The word they are trying to compare it to is Commercial. The top publishers are Commercial.
"We treat our authors the old fasion way: we pay them!"
Should be, we shake them down, slap them around, and make them smile as we are robbing them, of not only their money, but their hopes and dreams.
Seriously, RUN. If you can't learn from all of our experiences then you are in for a world of hurt.
Oh and the testimonial page was lifted from e-mails during the honeymoon period. Most of those authors do not stand by their testimonials today.
Sara
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Line By Line
This person had submitted a work, then ignored their (repeated) contract offers. You'll all recall how PA kept pestering Dee Power to allow them to publish her sting manuscript.
I'll see if I can clear up some of Steve's concerns. As we know, because Larry himself admitted it, the term "traditional publisher" is meaningless. Larry and Willem made it up. Nor are the writers who won't accept PA's contracts under any misconceptions whatever. Again, I'll be happy to discuss any of these points with anyone.
This is what's generally called "a lie." P&E is frequently referred to by legitimate publishing sources. Entities such as the AP, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Encyclopedia Britannica have all taken them seriously (as PublishAmerica knows only too well).
By PublishAmerica staffers pretending to be authors, on PublishAmerica's boards.
Let's see about that.
I'm going to http://www.alexa.com to look for site statistics.
Traffic Rank for absolutewrite.com: 17,305
Traffic Rank for publishamerica.com: 91,273
Those ranks follow the Amazon model, where the lower the number shows higher traffic.
Sure. That's because the hundreds of prospective authors are the ones who haven't checked out PublishAmerica. I'm glad to see that they're talking about happily contracted authors. Those authors stop being happy shortly after they're published.
The reason you seldom hear their names mentioned on your boards is because y'all erase all the mentions of them as soon as they appear.
Hundreds, out of thousands possible? Ah, well. We've discussed the previously-published authors before, as well as the celebrities (distinctly minor celebrities, I might add -- and other vanity presses also boast their own lists of similarly previously-published authors and minor celebrities).
Being a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, or another professional person, doesn't make one capable of writing a readable manuscript. The slushpiles of New York are full of unpublishable manuscripts from those same classes of people. Writing is a true meritocracy. All you have to do is write something that lots of other folks want to read. It doesn't matter if you're a professor, an insurance salesman, a single mom on welfare, or a guy working nights in an industrial laundry.
This is meaningless. It is a pure appeal to vanity.
This too is an appeal to vanity.
Those press releases, mail-merge forms, sent out long before the book will become available, are useless as sales tools. Most of the press happens for two reasons: small newspapers need copy to keep the ads from running into each other (my local newspaper prints the school lunch menus and reports on Cub Scout pack meetings), and "local man writes book" is a sure-fire human interest story.
Meaningless.
You got that right, bucko. Any book sales are made by the authors themselves, out of the trunks of their cars, pestering bookstore owners to take copies on consignment, buying tables at flea markets, and all the rest of the heartbreakingly desperate schemes they indulge in.
Or, who foolishly sent their manuscripts to Publish America first. Rejection is nature's way of telling you to write a better book. If you have written a book that a lot of people want to read, you can get legitimately published. If you haven't, no vanity-publisher on the planet will help you.
Made the world listen? Well, Encyclopedia Britannica listened. The American Arbitration Association listened ... oh, you didn't mean that?
What are other people saying? "Uh oh ... here comes Bill. Watch out, he's going to try to sell you a book."
Jamie Farr, splendid a man as I'm sure he is, isn't a major celebrity. That book by Agathe von Trapp had been previously vanity published, Hedda Nussbaum isn't so much famous as infamous (and her fifteen minutes were up years ago). William Coughlin never won a Pulitzer Prize. Calling him a "Pulitzer Prize winner" is a straight-up lie.
Not a Hollywood movie. A local independent movie that's still looking for financing.
Congratulations to those authors! PublishAmerica had nothing to do with their sale of foreign rights.
That Korean thing was part of another of PA's long-gone promotional efforts.
Distinctly minor, and misleading. Any examination of that list I might do could be seen as attacking the authors, which they certainly don't deserve.
Really? That's assuming that each of the slightly-over-a-million copies you've printed is each in a different household, and no household has more than one Publish America volume. I'd suggest that most of them are in the backs of their own authors' closets (or in their basements, attics, or garages).
That works out to 175,320 per year, or about ten books per author. Or -- your average author can expect to sell less than a book a month from all the bookstores in the world, combined.
Barnes and Noble has a corporate policy against shelving PublishAmerica books.
Books A Million won't even order PublishAmerica books for in-store pickup. They will only special order Publish America books prepaid, for delivery directly to the customer's home.
The industry has ignored PublishAmerica. They're a laughingstock in those places where they are known.
"Had managed to acquire"? As if they were bidding for it. Print on demand books, printed by Lightning Source International. Wow. LSI is a POD printer. It's what they do. People who want POD services seek them out, not the other way around.
I'd like to see the full context of those remarks.
The Bandwagon Fallacy, in its pure form.
Oh, BS. PublishAmerica is all over Google's AdSense keyword advertising. PublishAmerica has bought ads in Writer's Digest. PublishAmerica constantly advertises itself in those "press releases" that they're so proud of.
Desperate, deluded, and naive authors will do that. You should see how many manuscripts real publishers get. Heck, folks who aren't even publishers get hopeful authors sending them manuscripts. I've had a would-be author press his manuscript into my hands while I was standing in the hotel lobby at a writing conference.
That isn't the same thing as saying that they will reject anyone. For example, the person that supplied this letter isn't going to be signing a contract with them. But it's probably true that they don't accept everything. There aren't enough hours in the day for them to format and print everything that comes in with their staff on hand.
No cost other than the price of registering the copyright. PublishAmerica publishes the slushpile. That's one of the reasons that the good books that they publish (and PublishAmerica does publish some) are rejected by the real arbiters of publishing -- the readers.
More than any other publisher in the world? Oh, I doubt that. I seriously doubt that.
Except registering copyright.
Relying instead on the well-known fact that, with every other avenue choked off, the authors will buy their own books. Not content with passively hoping authors will buy their own books by the case, Publish America regularly sends hard-sell advertising to their authors urging them to buy even more copies.
When an author buys his own books for resale, that's the model of vanity publishing. Publish America is a vanity press.
But to whom do they sell those books? Despite the misleading talk about Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Books A Million above, most of PublishAmerica's books are sold to their own authors.
This is a lie.
Love that fruited plain. Those attorneys don't specialize in publishing law. "Innumerable times" merely means that you can't count them (because not all of them are reported). It doesn't mean that it happens a lot.
Hundreds of attorneys are also desperate, deluded, or naive. What of it?
No, you aren't.
The prime opposition comes from your own broken-hearted authors.
PublishAmerica is a vanity press like all the others. But aren't you forgetting self-publishing? Or the other alternative -- learning to write?
Very true. Now ask yourself why being published by PublishAmerica comes with a stigma.
Quality work... Atlanta Nights, the Purple Pony, Prevent Cancer Today ....
That's tricky reasoning. Assuming that anyone who was published by PublishAmerica had as their alternatives PublishAmerica or another vanity press. PulishAmerica claims to make between four and six million dollars a year. They've been in business since 1999. That's around $35 million dollars that have gone into the pockets of ... a vanity press!
Who? The vanity presses?
Straight-up POD vanity press AuthorHouse (28,481 titles) has more than twice as many books than PublishAmerica (14,044 titles).
La-di-dah. The process you're referring to is called "putting on an ISBN." And in the quantities PA buys 'em, ISBNs are cheap.
That is, the books have ISBNs. This is not the same as printing a catalog and sending out sales reps.
Meaningless, and useless. As PublishAmerica's own statistics prove. Less than a book a month per author.
They send out an ad.
Dealt with elsewhere. Short version: useless and meaningless.
Only if those reviewers specifically request those review copies, and even then the books are sent late or not at all. This all but guarantees that PublishAmerica books won't get major reviews. In fact, only two PA books have ever been reviewed by Library Journal -- and that was years ago.
Useless, meaningless, and cheap for PA.
The Better Business Bureau doesn't treat authors as customers -- that's considered a business-to-business transaction. The BBB is generally meaningless as far as literary scams.
No, Steve, your correspondent has every inclination to be an author. What he did was turn down a vanity publishing deal. You yourself said that authors should avoid the vanity press.
Woo! Lucky escape! But that won't stop you from being added to that "eighty percent" that"we will not sign a contract" with.
Hey, Steve -- tell me a little about yourself. How long have you worked for PublishAmerica? What's your previous experience in publishing?
This person had submitted a work, then ignored their (repeated) contract offers. You'll all recall how PA kept pestering Dee Power to allow them to publish her sting manuscript.
I'll see if I can clear up some of Steve's concerns. As we know, because Larry himself admitted it, the term "traditional publisher" is meaningless. Larry and Willem made it up. Nor are the writers who won't accept PA's contracts under any misconceptions whatever. Again, I'll be happy to discuss any of these points with anyone.
This is what's generally called "a lie." P&E is frequently referred to by legitimate publishing sources. Entities such as the AP, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Encyclopedia Britannica have all taken them seriously (as PublishAmerica knows only too well).
By PublishAmerica staffers pretending to be authors, on PublishAmerica's boards.
Let's see about that.
I'm going to http://www.alexa.com to look for site statistics.
Traffic Rank for absolutewrite.com: 17,305
Traffic Rank for publishamerica.com: 91,273
Those ranks follow the Amazon model, where the lower the number shows higher traffic.
Sure. That's because the hundreds of prospective authors are the ones who haven't checked out PublishAmerica. I'm glad to see that they're talking about happily contracted authors. Those authors stop being happy shortly after they're published.
The reason you seldom hear their names mentioned on your boards is because y'all erase all the mentions of them as soon as they appear.
Hundreds, out of thousands possible? Ah, well. We've discussed the previously-published authors before, as well as the celebrities (distinctly minor celebrities, I might add -- and other vanity presses also boast their own lists of similarly previously-published authors and minor celebrities).
Being a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, or another professional person, doesn't make one capable of writing a readable manuscript. The slushpiles of New York are full of unpublishable manuscripts from those same classes of people. Writing is a true meritocracy. All you have to do is write something that lots of other folks want to read. It doesn't matter if you're a professor, an insurance salesman, a single mom on welfare, or a guy working nights in an industrial laundry.
This is meaningless. It is a pure appeal to vanity.
This too is an appeal to vanity.
Those press releases, mail-merge forms, sent out long before the book will become available, are useless as sales tools. Most of the press happens for two reasons: small newspapers need copy to keep the ads from running into each other (my local newspaper prints the school lunch menus and reports on Cub Scout pack meetings), and "local man writes book" is a sure-fire human interest story.
Meaningless.
You got that right, bucko. Any book sales are made by the authors themselves, out of the trunks of their cars, pestering bookstore owners to take copies on consignment, buying tables at flea markets, and all the rest of the heartbreakingly desperate schemes they indulge in.
Or, who foolishly sent their manuscripts to Publish America first. Rejection is nature's way of telling you to write a better book. If you have written a book that a lot of people want to read, you can get legitimately published. If you haven't, no vanity-publisher on the planet will help you.
Made the world listen? Well, Encyclopedia Britannica listened. The American Arbitration Association listened ... oh, you didn't mean that?
What are other people saying? "Uh oh ... here comes Bill. Watch out, he's going to try to sell you a book."
Jamie Farr, splendid a man as I'm sure he is, isn't a major celebrity. That book by Agathe von Trapp had been previously vanity published, Hedda Nussbaum isn't so much famous as infamous (and her fifteen minutes were up years ago). William Coughlin never won a Pulitzer Prize. Calling him a "Pulitzer Prize winner" is a straight-up lie.
Not a Hollywood movie. A local independent movie that's still looking for financing.
Congratulations to those authors! PublishAmerica had nothing to do with their sale of foreign rights.
That Korean thing was part of another of PA's long-gone promotional efforts.
Distinctly minor, and misleading. Any examination of that list I might do could be seen as attacking the authors, which they certainly don't deserve.
Really? That's assuming that each of the slightly-over-a-million copies you've printed is each in a different household, and no household has more than one Publish America volume. I'd suggest that most of them are in the backs of their own authors' closets (or in their basements, attics, or garages).
That works out to 175,320 per year, or about ten books per author. Or -- your average author can expect to sell less than a book a month from all the bookstores in the world, combined.
Barnes and Noble has a corporate policy against shelving PublishAmerica books.
Books A Million won't even order PublishAmerica books for in-store pickup. They will only special order Publish America books prepaid, for delivery directly to the customer's home.
The industry has ignored PublishAmerica. They're a laughingstock in those places where they are known.
"Had managed to acquire"? As if they were bidding for it. Print on demand books, printed by Lightning Source International. Wow. LSI is a POD printer. It's what they do. People who want POD services seek them out, not the other way around.
I'd like to see the full context of those remarks.
The Bandwagon Fallacy, in its pure form.
Oh, BS. PublishAmerica is all over Google's AdSense keyword advertising. PublishAmerica has bought ads in Writer's Digest. PublishAmerica constantly advertises itself in those "press releases" that they're so proud of.
Desperate, deluded, and naive authors will do that. You should see how many manuscripts real publishers get. Heck, folks who aren't even publishers get hopeful authors sending them manuscripts. I've had a would-be author press his manuscript into my hands while I was standing in the hotel lobby at a writing conference.
That isn't the same thing as saying that they will reject anyone. For example, the person that supplied this letter isn't going to be signing a contract with them. But it's probably true that they don't accept everything. There aren't enough hours in the day for them to format and print everything that comes in with their staff on hand.
No cost other than the price of registering the copyright. PublishAmerica publishes the slushpile. That's one of the reasons that the good books that they publish (and PublishAmerica does publish some) are rejected by the real arbiters of publishing -- the readers.
More than any other publisher in the world? Oh, I doubt that. I seriously doubt that.
Except registering copyright.
Relying instead on the well-known fact that, with every other avenue choked off, the authors will buy their own books. Not content with passively hoping authors will buy their own books by the case, Publish America regularly sends hard-sell advertising to their authors urging them to buy even more copies.
When an author buys his own books for resale, that's the model of vanity publishing. Publish America is a vanity press.
But to whom do they sell those books? Despite the misleading talk about Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Books A Million above, most of PublishAmerica's books are sold to their own authors.
This is a lie.
Love that fruited plain. Those attorneys don't specialize in publishing law. "Innumerable times" merely means that you can't count them (because not all of them are reported). It doesn't mean that it happens a lot.
Hundreds of attorneys are also desperate, deluded, or naive. What of it?
No, you aren't.
The prime opposition comes from your own broken-hearted authors.
PublishAmerica is a vanity press like all the others. But aren't you forgetting self-publishing? Or the other alternative -- learning to write?
Very true. Now ask yourself why being published by PublishAmerica comes with a stigma.
Quality work... Atlanta Nights, the Purple Pony, Prevent Cancer Today ....
That's tricky reasoning. Assuming that anyone who was published by PublishAmerica had as their alternatives PublishAmerica or another vanity press. PulishAmerica claims to make between four and six million dollars a year. They've been in business since 1999. That's around $35 million dollars that have gone into the pockets of ... a vanity press!
Who? The vanity presses?
Straight-up POD vanity press AuthorHouse (28,481 titles) has more than twice as many books than PublishAmerica (14,044 titles).
La-di-dah. The process you're referring to is called "putting on an ISBN." And in the quantities PA buys 'em, ISBNs are cheap.
That is, the books have ISBNs. This is not the same as printing a catalog and sending out sales reps.
Meaningless, and useless. As PublishAmerica's own statistics prove. Less than a book a month per author.
They send out an ad.
Dealt with elsewhere. Short version: useless and meaningless.
Only if those reviewers specifically request those review copies, and even then the books are sent late or not at all. This all but guarantees that PublishAmerica books won't get major reviews. In fact, only two PA books have ever been reviewed by Library Journal -- and that was years ago.
Useless, meaningless, and cheap for PA.
The Better Business Bureau doesn't treat authors as customers -- that's considered a business-to-business transaction. The BBB is generally meaningless as far as literary scams.
No, Steve, your correspondent has every inclination to be an author. What he did was turn down a vanity publishing deal. You yourself said that authors should avoid the vanity press.
Woo! Lucky escape! But that won't stop you from being added to that "eighty percent" that"we will not sign a contract" with.
Hey, Steve -- tell me a little about yourself. How long have you worked for PublishAmerica? What's your previous experience in publishing?
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Califman....
First, welcome to the AW boards. It's good to meet you, and I hope you enjoy the site.
Second, I wouldn't be too willing to listen to PA's rhetoric about what they do to promote your work. What they say they do above is, in fact, the extent of what they do. They do not advertise your work, except on their own site. When they say they make a book available at brick-and-mortar bookstores, this does not mean they are on bookstore shelves. Rather, they are available for ordering. If a PA book appears on a bookstore shelf, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that those books were put there because of the author's efforts, not PA's.
Third, I would recommend to you, not to sign with them. PA is disreputable for a reason, and they put down watchdog sites for a reason. The reason is that they want to keep people from finding out the truth about them until it's too late. As a former PA'er (Oh, how I have longed to type that!) I can tell you from experience that their marketing and their other business practices are some of the most dishonest I have ever run into.
I hope you find a good publisher for your work. And I hope PA doesn't get your business, no matter how many emails they send you. They're not worth the cost over seven years of your lifetime, nor are they worth the bad things they'll do to your hard work.
Again, welcome to AW, and I hope you enjoy the site.
Califman said:
First, welcome to the AW boards. It's good to meet you, and I hope you enjoy the site.
Second, I wouldn't be too willing to listen to PA's rhetoric about what they do to promote your work. What they say they do above is, in fact, the extent of what they do. They do not advertise your work, except on their own site. When they say they make a book available at brick-and-mortar bookstores, this does not mean they are on bookstore shelves. Rather, they are available for ordering. If a PA book appears on a bookstore shelf, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that those books were put there because of the author's efforts, not PA's.
Third, I would recommend to you, not to sign with them. PA is disreputable for a reason, and they put down watchdog sites for a reason. The reason is that they want to keep people from finding out the truth about them until it's too late. As a former PA'er (Oh, how I have longed to type that!) I can tell you from experience that their marketing and their other business practices are some of the most dishonest I have ever run into.
I hope you find a good publisher for your work. And I hope PA doesn't get your business, no matter how many emails they send you. They're not worth the cost over seven years of your lifetime, nor are they worth the bad things they'll do to your hard work.
Again, welcome to AW, and I hope you enjoy the site.
Hmmm, here's another idea for a cool project that will help reveal exactly just how impotent PA is compared to commercial publishers. We could gather up some sales numbers to show the average number of sales per author with various commercial publishers and then list the PA average beside those. It ought to be a rather lopsided listing if the numbers are what I anticipate those might be. Anyone know any sources where those numbers can be found or any publishers willing to state, "We have x number of writers and sold y number of books total."?
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I was an unhappy Pa author. I was not happy with the book cover, which I let them know and they refused to fix. I was not happy about the major errors in my already published book, that they refused to correct. I was not happy, that I couldn't get a review from the web sites that promoted my genre because the book was published by PA. I thought when I signed, my book would be in stores on their shelves which was not true. I was not happy with the size of my book or the price for a paperback book. I am an unknown author and need all the help I can get to get my book read. Over pricing it is not the way to go. I could not in all good coconscious sell my book to family, friends or strangers at that price with all the mistakes in it. So no matter what they promise or say to sell themselves to you, please note once you are sucked in, it is hard to get out so you can really do something with your book. Please go to the PA board and read about all the royalty checks that was received for 0.00 amount. PA authors make very little money on their books. You would have to do all the leg work yourself, so the way I see it, if you don’t mind doing that, go with LuLu or some other self-publishing company so you can set your own price and give your book a chance in a competitive sense.
Another way they are dishonest, is I got my contract back March 15th. After a few days I emailed them and ask them to take my book off the market and they informed me that if anybody wanted to buy it, it would come up unavalible. Well, I got an e-mail from B&N today telling me that my book is still avalible for purchase, I need to get a hold of my publisher. Now if my book is selling, I will recieve no money on it because I am no longer a PA author. Yet it can still be ordered, so who gets the money? They cheat the authors they publish.
Glenda
Another way they are dishonest, is I got my contract back March 15th. After a few days I emailed them and ask them to take my book off the market and they informed me that if anybody wanted to buy it, it would come up unavalible. Well, I got an e-mail from B&N today telling me that my book is still avalible for purchase, I need to get a hold of my publisher. Now if my book is selling, I will recieve no money on it because I am no longer a PA author. Yet it can still be ordered, so who gets the money? They cheat the authors they publish.
Glenda
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Glenda, talk to your local prosecutor. Show him your contract and explain the facts to him. Then ask and urge him to prosecute PA for fraud letting him know that you will testify. Besides, I'll bet that your city could use some additional funds in its coffers from the fines that PA would have to pay when convicted.
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Over on the PAMB, I don't think this post will last. It is an answer to how other authors get their books into bookstores:
PA lurkers: This is what a publisher is supposed to do! Is PA doing this for you?
PAMB said:
PA lurkers: This is what a publisher is supposed to do! Is PA doing this for you?
CalifMan said:
I stopped reading after this. Because, as we all know, the only fiction that's published has lots of sex and violence.
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