PA on Twitter

DaveKuzminski · Oct 1, 2009

benbradley said:
So is PA just grabbing random PA titles to tweet, or are authors actually paying to have their books mentioned in PA's tweets?

I suspect it's inevitable for PA to eventually sell a promotion service to its authors and one of the ways they'll promote their authors will be to place announcements on Twitter. Of course, PA will use a contract that mirrors their book contract so they don't have to do anything more than necessary which would likely be a bare minimum. I can see it already when the Tweets state that Author Y's book resonates and asks others to retweet. I wonder how long it will take PA to come up with enough different promo announcements to let us play PA Bingo?

DreamWeaver · Oct 2, 2009

Someone's taken a new tack on Twitter. There's a PA author tweeting to specific media tweeps to go to [email protected] to get a free copy of his book. Wonder how that's going to play out?

@<redacted> My new book is on FIRE! "<Title Redacted>" by Reverend <Author Redacted>, It's free to media, Wendy go to [email protected]

Cyia · Oct 4, 2009

The CreativityCove posters on Twitter (ie the ones soliciting money for "disgruntled" PA Authors as an "Adopt an Author" ~~scam~~ program. Are still going strong on the #publishamerica feed. (and encouraging "multiple account tweets"). They're also handing out some of the WORST information out there:

CreativityCove If you have sold at least 500 copies of your #publishamerica book - @iUniverse will republish traditionally

DaveKuzminski · Oct 4, 2009

Clearly, they must be equating "traditionally" with vanity. I wonder if that came from one of the management team?

Cyia · Oct 4, 2009

DaveKuzminski said:
Clearly, they must be equating "traditionally" with vanity. I wonder if that came from one of the management team?

They're supposedly a group trying to raise funds for those who've published with PA so they can "afford to get published"

They're instructed to send money to a single person's Paypal account...

Cyia · Oct 9, 2009

http://twitition.com/sq4oh

A petition has been started on Twitter:

There are 30,000 disgruntled Authors of #publish America on the net. We will not give our next book to them until they: Pay royalties they owe us! Set up five Book Signings on 2nd book! Stop advertising that they are a Traditional Publisher! Stop charging twice the price of our book! Set up ISBN with Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million and other Traditional Book Stores Worldwide! CHANGE OR GO!

I'm not sure why they think threatening not to give PA another book no one will buy is going to equate leverage when there are still plenty of people out there who've yet to even give them one and have no idea that it's not a commercial publisher. I guess the "set up ISBN" mention is meant to be a demand of getting books shelved.

They have all of 2 signatures in many hours worth of waiting...

No surprising, but still sad

ChristineR · Oct 9, 2009

Cyia said:
http://twitition.com/sq4oh

A petition has been started on Twitter:

I'm not sure why they think threatening not to give PA another book no one will buy is going to equate leverage when there are still plenty of people out there who've yet to even give them one and have no idea that it's not a commercial publisher. I guess the "set up ISBN" mention is meant to be a demand of getting books shelved.

They have all of 2 signatures in many hours worth of waiting...

No surprising, but still sad

I think the "set up ISBN" part may refer to the fact that some authors have been told that their book doesn't show up in the Ingram catalog. I'm guessing that this is just a side effect of PA having to grind out so many ISBN and having it all filter down to the bookstore level, or possibly it's some sort of issue with chain policy, i.e., PA books only show up as special orders and may not show up at all in some databases.

DaveKuzminski · Oct 20, 2009

Probably just an outage but I can't see any PA topics on Twitter tonight. Can anyone else see the PublishAmerica topic on Twitter right now?

benbradley · Oct 20, 2009

How are you searching? If you use @publishamerica or the #publishamerica hashtag there's little if anything today, but just searching on publishamerica gets a plethora of tweets for today:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=publishamerica

Mostly I notice two tweeters with similar names and many repeated tweets starting with "SAMPLES FROM" a certain author's books - they're following a similar number of people (over 1,000) and have a similar number of followers (under 200) advertising the same books by the same author. These two are fairly obviously the same guy spam-tweeting (tweet-spamming?) to get PA book sales.

Then there's the one that says "got a press release from my publisher today. @publishamerica.com" - I started to feel bad for him, but I looked at his other tweets which reminds me he's the guy with an extreme potty mouth.

OTOH I do feel bad for all these authors - just because some may be bad and antisocial in various ways doesn't make it fair that PA ripped them off.

entropic island · Nov 9, 2009

...haha. PublishAmerica has a twitter. That's like Al Capone making a blog.

Pepper · Nov 9, 2009

Interesting....... *curls non-existent mo around finger*

I shall get a'spamming PA's account wheeeeeeee!

DreamWeaver · Nov 10, 2009

I can't decide if this PA author is tweeting with severe hyperbole, or if there's going to be one heck of a brouhaha at royalty time:

Purchase now before it hit the stores on Nov 14, at PublishAmerica.com online book store, 150,000 sold and it's not even in the stores yet!!

ChristineR · Nov 10, 2009

Am I reading that wrong, or did that guy tweet the claim of 150,000 sold to Oprah?

I think it's safe to say that no one has ever sold 150,000 PA books. If it really were the long-awaited PA book that "breaks out" and becomes an actual bestseller, everyone would know about it, and if he bought 150,000 copies himself, that would be millions of dollars. A minister who has millions of dollars to spend promoting and reselling his books would not be using PA. He'd have people giving him better advice.

If it's not a joke, the guy may have psychological issues--i.e., he thinks Oprah might believe it.

CaoPaux · Nov 10, 2009

I expect he's confusing sales rank with ~~sells~~ sales.

ChristineR · Nov 10, 2009

CaoPaux said:
I expect he's confusing sales rank with ~~sells~~ sales.

He has no sales rank, either on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but you may be right; he may be looking at something along those lines.

DreamWeaver · Nov 10, 2009

ChristineR said:
Am I reading that wrong, or did that guy tweet the claim of 150,000 sold to Oprah?

No, he's just replying to famous people's tweets with a sales pitch for his book. He also did the same thing with thisizLebron, The_Real_Shaq (who IS the real Shaq <G>) and TheRealJordin, whom I'm guessing is NOT the real Michael Jordan...

James D. Macdonald · Nov 10, 2009

and TheRealJordin, whom I'm guessing is NOT the real Michael Jordan...

Maybe Jordin Sparks?

DreamWeaver · Nov 10, 2009

James D. Macdonald said:
Maybe Jordin Sparks?

Yep, that could be it. In the body he spelled it Jordan, but he used it like a first name. You're probably right.

Saskatoonistan · Nov 12, 2009

They appear to protect their tweets. If that's already in this thread and I missed it, I suck. They would be the only book "publisher" on twitter that does that, I think. Odd, that.

DreamWeaver · Jan 20, 2010

Four tweets today that say, "Local Author's Book Submitted To Oprah Winfrey Show". However, looking a bit further finds all four contain exactly the same link to exactly the same press release, were sent at exactly the same time, on four Twitter accounts that have exactly the same content. So...bots strike again, and the chance that anyone is actually reading those tweets besides reciprocal bot accounts (and PA watchers, friend or foe) is low, to say the least.

benbradley · Jan 20, 2010

Saskatoonistan said:
They appear to protect their tweets. If that's already in this thread and I missed it, I suck. They would be the only book "publisher" on twitter that does that, I think. Odd, that.

(as I recall, this was discussed near the beginning of the thread as it happened) PA did have its tweets public for the first week or two, but apparently decided against it after so many other tweeters started pointing out the bad things PA does.

Cyia · Apr 5, 2010

They're ba-a-ack. After a length withdrawl from Twitter, PA is tweeting once again. And it's still protected membership. Looks like they made a couple of posts in March that went unnoticed, and now a whole bunch of them in a short burst.

Updates: record number of books sold in the first three months of the year. Almost double last year's.

(so why is the "This week's new releases" page firmly anchored at less than 30 for the whole week?)

Growing staff by more than ten percent while many other publishers are laying off employees. Also adding extra shift to printing facility.

So are they outsourcing the printing or not? Make up your mind.

PublishAmerica to attend Book Expo America next month in New York. Neighboring the Publishers Weekly booth.

And in a related story, Star Trek fan to attend Local Comicon! Yoda expected to appear.

Working hard with Baker&Taylor to feed Barnes and Noble and Borders anew. Tens of thousands of titles. B&T folks are great to work with.

Force feeding rarely works out well for the one getting their face stuffed.

BenPanced · Apr 5, 2010

PublishAmerica to attend Book Expo America next month in New York. Neighboring the Publishers Weekly booth.

And in a related story, Star Trek fan to attend Local Comicon! Yoda expected to appear.

Looking at how much it costs to get a table and display your wares, however, I'm just wondering if PA can drop that much and still hold off the villagers. Booth space starts at $3810 for 100 sq. ft. space (5 available near Publishers Weekly on the most recent floor plan), and that doesn't include extra amenities such as Featured Title promotion ($280 per title or $890 for a shelf of 8), $350 per corner for corner space, and a reusable banner starting at $470. That and hotel/food/transport costs.

Looking doubtful the more numbers I put together.

colealpaugh · Apr 5, 2010

In a small office next to a giant corn field in rural Maryland, a meeting has just begun.

"No way I'm going."

"Hey, don't look at me."

"Okay, I'll throw in an extra forty bucks. Spend it on room service, or get one of your happy ending specials."

"Not worth it."

"They'll spit on us."

"One of you is going or I'll rip the n*ts off both of you!"

Christine N. · Apr 6, 2010

It would be almost worth it to go, just to see if they really are there. I can be in NYC from my house in 3 hours by car then train. I just went a few weeks ago...

Hey, am I allowed in? Might be a nice trip.

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