The Newer Never-Ending PublishAmerica / America Star Books Thread

Thing is, PA has always been careful to operate on this side of the legal line (at least in every way they're likely to get busted). Not filling orders jumps straight into fraud territory, though, and increases the likelihood of them getting busted. So they may be doing this in order to get all those back orders filled and keep out of trouble.

(This is all a WAG on my part, of course).

This seems normal and expected

To me, I thought they would go back to LS and just continue on like they used to. It never made sense to print their own books. It is expensive and not in their business model.

BT will be doing exactly what LS did, only in NC.

The email posted above from BT is almost exactly like the email LS sent me when I inquired about the number of copies my book had sold.

The order, print, and sell will work just fine, now.

The best thing they did was eliminate the trouble.

On another subject. I thought Willem was leaving. He is quoted in that press release.

Ready, set, go!!

a "cut and paste" fresh from my inbox.

Weekend Only: FREE Hardcovers at PublishAmerica‏
From: PublishAmerica Author Support ([email protected])
Sent: Fri 2/05/10 11:50 AM
To: [email protected] ([email protected])

Dear Author:

This Super Bowl weekend only: FREE hardcovers!

From our bookstore for those who prefer to have extra books on hand: buy 15 softcovers, get 5 hardcovers for FREE! Hardcovers are officially off the market, but we can make one last-minute exception. Use our special coupon, and take 40% off the softcover list price. The five FREE beautiful hardcovers are our SuperBowl gift for you.

Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your book, click on it, then add to cart, indicate quantity, and use this coupon: SuperBowl40. Note: the free hardcover books don't show in your cart, but the SuperBowl40 coupon automatically triggers their printing and shipping! Then click Recalculate and finish the transaction. Minimum order volume is 15 softcovers. Sorry, fullcolor books are excluded. All hardcovers are handcrafted, so allow for extra production and shipping time. No need for hardcovers? Check out this week's Double40 offer: buy one, get one free. No minimum volume required.

Offer expires Sunday night.

Enjoy the game!

SO! I went to the link as stated in the offer and thisis what I found.

"copied directly from the webpage"

Attention Authors:
You must call or mail in your order if you wish to receive your discount. If you choose to mail in your order, please calculate your total based on the retail price and not the special price, as stated in your contract.
Orders placed in the online store will not be given the discount.
The system automatically charges your credit card and the process cannot be undone once you click the submit button and obtain an order number.
To place your Author order, you may call (301) 695-1707.

WAIT A MINUTE, I'M NOT THE SHARPEST PENCIL ON MY BLOCK BUT I CAN READ.

The e-mail specifically gives me a link to to this page, and not the on-line store.

so I paged back to the e-mail and read it again. This time I went directly to my favorites and went to the on-line bookstore, heeding the warning above and went to the "cart" ordering form.

ater filling out the form to see what I was geting into, I found that they charge $1.99 for each book shipped (flat book rate for my book is $1.66, as I have shipped more than 10 already), which amounts to $29.95 to ship a 10 pound package, which will fit in the largest flat rate box for $13.95.

Gotta' go, my wife is calling, back at ya later. Keep on keeping on...

narcolepticgi said:

Attention Authors:
You must call or mail in your order if you wish to receive your discount. If you choose to mail in your order, please calculate your total based on the retail price and not the special price, as stated in your contract.
Orders placed in the online store will not be given the discount.
The system automatically charges your credit card and the process cannot be undone once you click the submit button and obtain an order number.
To place your Author order, you may call (301) 695-1707.

Click to expand...

What does this mean?

If you choose to mail in your order, please calculate your total based on the retail price and not the special price, as stated in your contract.

Click to expand...

What does this mean?

Click to expand...

It basically means you get chit on either way.

There is a clause in the PA contract that states what an authors discount is on a certain number of books purchased. For instance... 1-20 copies = 30% discount... 21 or more = 40% or at least it used to. PA is saying that if you order through the mail you can only take the discount listed in your contract for the number of books you buy at its retail price, and can't take advantage of their "special" prices.

kaitie said:

What does this mean?

Click to expand...

That PA is not a vanity printer that sells almost exclusively to its own writers?

Nah, that can't be it.

PA keeps telling them it's NOT a vanity printer.

Often.

WOW :S I am so glad I found this site! PA was one of the companies I was thinking of going with when I finished my book. I am so glad I learned about there evil ways! They have a BBB rating of F what dose that tell you?

Glad to hear it, Little1. Welcome to AW - you'll find a lot of help here when you're ready to query that book. And there are some great beta readers to help get it in shape.

Welcome Little1!!!

tlblack said:

It basically means you get chit on either way.

There is a clause in the PA contract that states what an authors discount is on a certain number of books purchased. For instance... 1-20 copies = 30% discount... 21 or more = 40% or at least it used to. PA is saying that if you order through the mail you can only take the discount listed in your contract for the number of books you buy at its retail price, and can't take advantage of their "special" prices.

Click to expand...

So essentially they're saying that they'll offer you a special deal, but you can't take the deal because your contract states you'll get a discount? Or are they saying that you can get the discount, but if you do you can't get the one stated in your contract? If it's the latter, how does that not go against the contract? If it's the former, it's basically saying, "We're offering you a discount you can't actually take to get you to buy books?"

I'm missing something here...

They are just saying that in order to get the special offer, (which may mean PA has offered them a reduced price plus a discount) they have to call the phone number. If they choose to order by mail then they must refer to the discount offered in their contract and take that percentage off the retail price.

And they can keep repeating to themselves, "PA is not a vanity operation, PA is not a POD press, they want my book, not my money..."

tlblack said:

They are just saying that in order to get the special offer, (which may mean PA has offered them a reduced price plus a discount) they have to call the phone number. If they choose to order by mail then they must refer to the discount offered in their contract and take that percentage off the retail price.

Click to expand...

Ooookay. That makes more sense. I wasn't getting that it had to do with method. I wonder why. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? Unless to call by phone you have to use the 900 number and pay to order.

Might as well just order directly through the website. If you call the 900 number, you're getting socked the toll for the call and since you'd be paying through the nose for the shipping, what "discount" are you getting? It all cancels out.

Is it me, or are these offers getting more and more convoluted....

Dear Author:

One-time only: PublishAmerica's Blizzard Treat:

Buy one book, get TWO books FREE!​

A unique offer from our bookstore for those who prefer to have extra books on hand.


Buy one (1) book, and we will ship THREE (3) books to you. Two (2) of those are our Blizzard Gift to you. Plus we will ship the FREE books to you for FREE.

Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your book, click on it, then add to cart, indicate quantity, and use this coupon: Triple30. Note: the free books don't show in your cart, but the Triple30 coupon automatically triggers their printing and shipping! Then click Recalculate and finish the transaction. There is NO minimum order volume.
Oh, and did we say that you'll receive a 30 pct discount, too?

Example: if you order ten copies, we will print thirty, give you 30 pct discount on the first ten, and 100 pct discount on the other twenty, plus we'll ship the free books to you for free!
​

Offer expires Sunday night. Hardcovers and fullcolor books are excluded.

Thank you,

PublishAmerica Author Support Team

Click to expand...

Oh and WELCOME Little!!!!!

BenPanced said:

Might as well just order directly through the website. If you call the 900 number, you're getting socked the toll for the call and since you'd be paying through the nose for the shipping, what "discount" are you getting? It all cancels out.

Click to expand...

Does anyone know what PA is charging for their 900 number?

LexiCan said:

Is it me, or are these offers getting more and more convoluted....

Click to expand...

No, it's not you. Next up: "do all the above, but only at midnight while standing on the grave of a newly-buried man; afterward turn three times in a circle and spit."

Let's see, typical PA book is $30, so 30% off that is $21, plus $4 shipping and handling, so $25 for three books, shipped.

Sounds like Baker and Taylor is giving them a pretty decent deal here, actually. That's quite a bit better than the usual PA special offer where the shipping covers the whole price of the book. Somebody who wants three books fro $25 will end up with nine for $75 though, I can tell.

Sounds to me like PA doesn't want to fire up its printer (or whatever) for just one copy.

Is PA finally learning that price really does matter?

I bought a PA book today. I visited a multi-author booksigning at the local Barnes and Noble, and a PA author was there. I'm a former PA author and have read other PA books, but I have never read anything so pitiful in my life.

She was cute as a bug and happy as a dead pig in the sunshine, with family and friends. They were taking pictures and there was a good crowd. I talked to her a little and invited her to come over here. She didn't know what Absolute Write was, had to write it down. She hadn't heard of Preditors and Editors and she had written a 76 page book that I think I paid $16.95. I bought a second book from an author with Llumina Press, a self-publishing company.

After buying the books, I bought overpriced coffee from Starbucks and sat down with the PA book. One of those where PA puts in the disclaimer: "Publish America has allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended verbatim, without editorial input."

The story line is not bad, but the grammar and punctuation was so bad I don't have words to properly describe it. Dialogue not punctuated. Sentences cut in half. No periods at the end of sentences. No commas anywhere. Contractions without apostrophes. Capital letters where they shouldn't be. Lower cased letters that should have been capitalized. Some sentences completely garbled. And on, and on.

I sat where I had a view of the signing table and watched that little girl while I read her book and tears came in my eyes. I thought of all those people that knew her and was going to open that book, and it made me want to go to her and say gather these things up and get out of here. Don't let anyone see this, but of course I couldn't.

And then I thought of PA, not so much that they stole any dreams here. They didn't. But the fact that they let this mishmash out for public perusal. No self-respecting publishing outfit, with any quality control should allow this to happen. There should be something in publishing law that makes it a criminal offense to allow such a farce.

I know there are writers who come through here that have taken up the banner against PA without having read one of their books (and there are some good PA books), but until you have read a book like I read today, you can never know just how bad a product they can let on an unsuspecting public. And the embarrassment. Lord have mercy!

Arkie said:

I thought of all those people that knew her and was going to open that book, and it made me want to go to her and say gather these things up and get out of here.

Click to expand...

She might also hear from the people who don't know her and are going to open that book - in other words, readers who review. And they have no real reason to soften the blow, especially if they paid so much for the book.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Howdy all,

I am taking a women's study course in school, and the first day each student had to introduce himself/herself and give an interesting fact about them. One male student, 19, said he was a published author, a book of poetry. I had mixed emotions about this information (as I aspire to one day publish a novel), so last week I finally asked him about it.

He told me it was published through PublishAmerica, but he didn't go into great detail. I looked up the website and perused a while. It sounded very promising, yet I found myself skeptical. Too good to be true?

I then googled it and found more information than I knew what to do with. The search led me here, and I must say...THANK YOU. This website helped me from making a fatal mistake.

I look forward to reading posts and getting to know many of you.

Hank

Hi Hank, and welcome to AW! Glad you steered clear of a pitfall. What do you write?