The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

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xhouseboy

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From the PA board.

have been cruising PA’s BB’s reading this and that from a lot of very intelligent and talented people. Some of you have been at this for a good number of years.
I feel kind of bad, I started my book a little less then a year ago, nine months or so really. One day for no apparent reason, a lot of time on my hands I suppose, I just started to bang out a story on the old PC and wham, almost twelve hundred pages later, here I am.
Anyway, I am not a writer by anyone’s stretch, a Manufacturing Engineer by trade and getting on by, well hell anybody’s standard, I’m damn near sixty.
Being I’m new to the world of book writing is this normal or am I a weirdo?
I guess what I’m asking is how did you get started?


1200 pages? That's gonna cost an arm and a leg. Would PA actually publish a book this length? They must be considering it if he's permitted on the forum. So how much would it sell for? Any ideas?
 

judithmoose

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A New Twist With Publish America

I ran across two ads today for an author who has published a book with Publish America. His first ad was asking for a seasoned publicist who deals with the motion picture industry to represent his new film based on the book that Publish America did for him. He said the movie was already in the works and had been contracted with a studio for production. The second ad was for a screenwriter to take the same above mentioned book and adapt it to a screenplay.

So I guess my questions would be -

A) Is there ANY book Publish America has put out that might stand a chance of being picked up by one of the studios?

B) Anyone else finding it a little odd that this person is advertising for a publicist claiming that the movie is already in pre-production and is also advertising for a screenwriter. Forgive me, but if the movie has already been picked up, shouldn't it already be a screenplay?

I answered the publicist ad and will report back to you with what the author has to say. He's also directing people to his website for more information and it's one that Publish America put together for him. Judging from the site, I sincerely hope they do a better job on books than they do on web design...LOL!!!

Have a good night everyone!
Judith
 

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A--highly unlikely. Of course there is always a chance of a miracle.

B--Don't know anything about movie production or screenwriting, but it does sound odd.

The authors put together their own PA web sites. PA only supplies them with the space and template.

I suspect this might be the same author who was offering his book for sale on EBay @ I mil for movie rights or something like that.
 
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Peekay

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Update

For any that might be folowing the progress of the novel submitted to PA versus the novel sent to the small press... PA sent two (!) mails this morning just to say the manuscript was being looked at and I would be contacted shortly. Our lovely little small press has yet to even acknowledge a submission in any way whatsoever.

Thats: Nada zip silence bupkiss nothing whatsoever at all not one damned thing.

Advantage, PA.
 

Peekay

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"One-third of the novels that come into the agency are rejected because they're too long or short,"


Dear God.

There is a serious serious serious confusion between artistic excellence and salability-they are not the same thing.

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

And before anyone accuses me of egomania, my books are neither!

But, this utterly crass statement highlights the philistine nonsense parroted by publishers and their appurtenances. Commodification is not a good thing and it is running amock.
The tail is wagging the dog, the emperor is naked etc etc.

Replying "Yessir! How high?" When a publisher says jump is not professional it is merely supine.

It is nonsense like this statement that PA is living off of, in addition to flattering the talentless.
 

aruna

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Peekay said:
For any that might be folowing the progress of the novel submitted to PA versus the novel sent to the small press... PA sent two (!) mails this morning just to say the manuscript was being looked at and I would be contacted shortly. Our lovely little small press has yet to even acknowledge a submission in any way whatsoever.

Thats: Nada zip silence bupkiss nothing whatsoever at all not one damned thing.

Advantage, PA.

That's normal. Most legitimate presses or agents don't acknowledge the submission of manuscripts. Why should they?
Quite likely you will also receive an acceptance from PA long before the small press has replied one way or the other. That is because, as I understand, PA does not read the submitted manuscripts.
 
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Peekay

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aruna said:
That's normal. Most legitimate presses or agents don't acknowledge the submission of manuscripts. Why should they?
Quite likely you will also receive an acceptance from PA long before the small press has replied one way or the other. That is because, as I understand, PA does not read the submitted manuscripts.



That is my point, PA are gaining authors through at least a show of basic civility. How difficult can it be to institute even an auto reply? Writers are human too and beleive it or not some of them don't like being treated ike (Fill in expletive of choice). The Small Press in question can't read a manuscript because they haven't asked for one, they rejected me by silence after being told it was a book.
If we are able to recognise 'legitimacy' only through the amount of incivility, high handed lordliness and condescension supplied then the time for a writers revoution is indeed upon us.
 

AnnaWhite

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Peekay said:
That is my point, PA are gaining authors through at least a show of basic civility.

If we are able to recognise 'legitimacy' only through the amount of incivility, high handed lordliness and condescension supplied then the time for a writers revoution is indeed upon us.
PA is very civil and friendly with you only until your book is released and you buy at least 50 copies of it.

The reason they are nice to you until then is that they want your money.

Have you ever been hit by a salesperson?

Once you've bought your books, they couldn't care less about you.

In my own experience, until I bought 100 copies of my book they used to answer my emails within a couple of days, afterwards they started to either ignore my emails completely or answer them very briefly and incompletely many weeks later (up to two months sometimes).

With the small press, you are not their customer, maybe you are their work partner. They're not after your money. All you have is a book that they might publish for you, but the money comes from the book-buying public.

If anything, you could deplore that in our modern society people tend to be more civil when they think they can make a buck off you.
 

Peekay

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James D. Macdonald said:
I'm going to beg everyone's indulgence for getting a little bit farther afield from PublishAmerica just for a minute.

Peekay, I notice that you had an earlier book published: [font=verdana, helvetica, arial]Sigurd: Death of a King [/font](ISBN [font=verdana, arial, helvetica][size=-1][font=verdana, arial, helvetica][size=-1]0-9711915-0-6)[/size][/font][/size][/font] from Lighthouse Press, Deerfield Beach, Florida, 2001.

Excuse me for my curiosity, but were you represented by an agent for that sale? And if so, may I ask the name of the agent/agency?


No, it was made by a personal 'meeting' with the publisher online without an intermediary. 'Lighthouse press' had not the slightest idea what they were doing and used POD technology to pre-print books. They made persistent attempts to get their writers to 'help them out' by buying their own books and ended up vituperative toward and accusing of said writers as they sank out of sight. The whole experience was extremely depressing.
 

aruna

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Peekay said:
That is my point, PA are gaining authors through at least a show of basic civility. ....

If we are able to recognise 'legitimacy' only through the amount of incivility, high handed lordliness and condescension supplied then the time for a writers revoution is indeed upon us.

What AnnaWhite said.

Yes, PA is very interested in gaining authors, as authors are their customers. So it does make sense to honey them up before the contract is signed. It's an author mill, and they have to be nice to keep the numbers flowing.

Have you read any of the rude and abusive mails PA has sent to these customers, once it's too late? If not, you really should. Perhaps someone here can dig up a few of those.

So you are going the PA route becuase of their basic civility? Good luck.
 

Peekay

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AnnaWhite said:
PA is very civil and friendly with you only until your book is released and you buy at least 50 copies of it.

The reason they are nice to you until then is that they want your money.

Have you ever been hit by a salesperson?

Once you've bought your books, they couldn't care less about you.

In my own experience, until I bought 100 copies of my book they used to answer my emails within a couple of days, afterwards they started to either ignore my emails completely or answer them very briefly and incompletely many weeks later (up to two months sometimes).

With the small press, you are not their customer, maybe you are their work partner. They're not after your money. All you have is a book that they might publish for you, but the money comes from the book-buying public.

If anything, you could deplore that in our modern society people tend to be more civil when they think they can make a buck off you.




But what good does it do any company of any kind to antagonise their potential source of revenue before the fact?

If the way to keep PA civil to me is to purchase no books from them
then we are in for a very long and happy association! LOL

But really... Auto reply can be set up in almost any e-mail program, it would take two minutes and make for a far more pleasurable experience.

My point is that 'they' the smal press in question can have absolutely no idea to whom they are offering their rudeness, and their filter system merely assures that they are receiving submissions from a particular mind set i.e. thick skinned careerist persisters.
I can think of no evidence that suggests the best books are written by thick skinned careerist persisters, Artists in all realms tend to be otherwise.
Setting a filter to discourage all but the hardiest might work in evolutionary terms but to attract diverse and individualist writers it is like surrounding your office with a high brick wall and publishing only those that can get over it. You end up publishing only books by strong handed non vertiginious persons. It cannot function as any measure of literary excellence and come to think of it, may well explain the dire state of the publishing world.
 

Peekay

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aruna said:
What AnnaWhite said.

Yes, PA is very interested in gaining authors, as authors are their customers. So it does make sense to honey them up before the contract is signed. It's an author mill, and they have to be nice to keep the numbers flowing.

Have you read any of the rude and abusive mails PA has sent to these customers, once it's too late?

Well, as a customer I certainly should have seen plenty, but I'm afraid not. Never a one. Wish I had.




If not, you really should. Perhaps someone here can dig up a few of those.

So you are going the PA route becuase of their basic civility? Good luck.


I am 'going it' for very simple reasons.
Because they actually answer mails and the result last time was three books for my shelf.
The alternative seems to be no books and staring at my e-mail client
wondering why there is no response. Neither are exactly great but one is marginally preferable to the other. Beggars as they say, cannot be choosers.
 

AnnaWhite

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Peekay said:
But what good does it do any company of any kind to antagonise their potential source of revenue before the fact?

If the way to keep PA civil to me is to purchase no books from them
then we are in for a very long and happy association! LOL
I admit that I'd only had about four rejections before falling into the PA hole and losing my book. The publishers who rejected me did so pretty civilly, as far as I remember, even though it did hurt. For myself, I can say that being rejected did not hurt even a fraction as much as I've been hurt by PA. Because while the book was mine, I still had hope. Now there is no hope...

I suspect that if you don't buy your own book during the two weeks just before release when you have the special offer of 50% discount, you might be classified as one who won't buy his own book, and treated even worse...
 
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Peekay

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AnnaWhite said:
That's a brilliant article, Linda! :Trophy:


If I were a 'legitimate' publisher, (and post that elusive lottery win I could soon become one! Money is all it takes after all.) Under those joyful crcumstances, I am almost certain that one of the things I would probably want to do is see book submissions! Otherwise I am a little hamstrung to say the least of it.
Instead the ritual would seem to be that I should avoid manuscripts at all costs! Less the better!
My point is this, given that at some time in the remote past I actually enjoyed books and writing could I not make a web site where warmth and support for writers was the theme? Why does PA know the psychology so well and yet others that will remain nameless act as if the writer is their sworn enemy?
 

AnnaWhite

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My plan, BTW, had been to submit to however many publishers/agents I could find who dealt with the fantasy genre, and if every single one rejected my ms I was planning to self-publish - but real self-publishing, not POD printing with a vanity publisher. I know what you mean by wanting to see your ms in book form. I wanted that too, before. Now I so much wish it was still in ms form!

There's a very interesting website about the pros and cons of vanity publishing versus self-publishing, including a Free Advice Pack (Johnathan Clifford's website). It's written specifically for authors in the UK, but I guess many things would be similar in the USA.
 

Peekay

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AnnaWhite said:
I admit that I'd only had about four rejections before falling into the PA hole and losing my book. The publishers who rejected me did so pretty civilly, as far as I remember, even though it did hurt. For myself, I can say that being rejected did not hurt even a fraction as much as I've been hurt by PA. Because while the book was mine, I still had hope. Now there is no hope...

I suspect that if you don't buy your own book during the two weeks just before release when you have the special offer of 50% discount, you might be classified as one who won't buy his own book, and treated even worse...


I have never bought anything from them whatsoever and cannot recall receiving even the advertisments to purchase cut rate copies although I may have done and forgotten it. They were hardly traumatising.
After all tis time I must by now be classified as one who will not purchase his own book, which I most certainly am, (I've already read the thing after all, its awful!) and yet their new mail specifically greets me as a 'valued returning author' or somesuch flummery. I am perfectly willing to beleive that maybe in my respect their machine is broken. Equally it is difficult to accept them as the source of all the evil in the world, especially when their 'legitimate' counterparts are far from blameless.

I cannot for the life of me understand how the publishers have gotten themselves this golden reputation for infallible good taste and discernment, given the evident nonsense that they do sanction.

In other realms of endevour, (Comics or music) the
'maverick independent publisher' stereotype or even (Heavens) a 'self publisher' is a rather approved of figure, even romantic.
No one castigates (by random example) Jeff Smith for self publishing 'Bone' and opines how much better the comic woud be were it editied by Marvel Comics!
In fact outside of literature the conglomerate media empires are rather mistrusted, no one says I like that CD but I won't buy it because it doesn't come from EMI! Consumers just buy what they like to hear, they like the small label odities. Readers by contrast are seldom offered that choice, they can only buy what they are deluged with and seem in fact to be rather fed up with it, considering that the practise of reading at all is dwindling fast.

It is time for a change, and PA are most probably not it, although to some they look like it.
But that does not mean that it is not still time.
 

AnnaWhite

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Peekay said:
My point is this, given that at some time in the remote past I actually enjoyed books and writing could I not make a web site where warmth and support for writers was the theme?
I think a few small presses may have originally been writers who self-published, and then went on to publish other people's books. AFAIK, you have to register a publishing business in order to self-publish - so there you are, on the way to becoming a publisher.

I don't believe it's such an expensive thing to publish a short run. With what I paid PA to buy 100 copies of my book, I could have self-published a short run, which would have stood a far better chance of selling in bookshops because they would not have looked like vanity POD books from Lightning Source, they would not have had the name of a disreputable publisher attached to them, and the back-cover price would have been about 66% cheaper.
 

Peekay

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AnnaWhite said:
My plan, BTW, had been to submit to however many publishers/agents I could find who dealt with the fantasy genre, and if every single one rejected my ms I was planning to self-publish - but real self-publishing, not POD printing with a vanity publisher. I know what you mean by wanting to see your ms in book form. I wanted that too, before. Now I so much wish it was still in ms form!

There's a very interesting website about the pros and cons of vanity publishing versus self-publishing, including a Free Advice Pack (Johnathan Clifford's website). It's written specifically for authors in the UK, but I guess many things would be similar in the USA.




PA is my way of self publishing without making a cash outlay!

I freely admit to being not much of a business person, not especially self promoting or thick skinned or incredibly zealous and 'thrusting'! Just one glance at the online Agents lists etc etc fill me with profound depression! However, I am not left with the opinion that only hard minded business graduates should write or publish books, the two mind sets are often mutually exclusive it seems to me.
 

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AnnaWhite said:
I think a few small presses may have originally been writers who self-published, and then went on to publish other people's books. AFAIK, you have to register a publishing business in order to self-publish - so there you are, on the way to becoming a publisher.

I don't believe it's such an expensive thing to publish a short run. With what I paid PA to buy 100 copies of my book, I could have self-published a short run, which would have stood a far better chance of selling in bookshops because they would not have looked like vanity POD books from Lightning Source, they would not have had the name of a disreputable publisher attached to them, and the back-cover price would have been about 66% cheaper.



Had I the fiscal wherewithall to buy 100 copies from PA I might well have self published! No arguement there, but with only this computer and a hungry cat to my name, options are limited!
Actually, I am not sure how much longer I will have this computer considering the strange noises issuing from it currently....
I like the idea of becoming a publisher, except that it would make all the writers hate me.
Except it wouldn't of course, they would all go around saying what a splendid fellow I was for ignoring them and praising me for those uncanny editing skills that they mysteriously lack!
 

Christine N.

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I'll admit, most legitimate publishers don't reply when a ms is recieved. Why? They would have to spend all day doing it,and have no time left to read manuscripts! Most of them are buried (someone please find the pic of the Tor offices) under query letters and submissions. Which is why most big houses don't take unsolicited ms's anymore - they only want to read projects that intrest them.

It's not about being rude or uncivil. You, the author, have to realize that you are not the only person to submit. I have seen a certain few agents/publishers, those that accept e-subs, set up an auto-reply. Most only take partials on paper; and in those cases if you include a SAS postcard that says they received your ms, they will drop it in the mail when they open your envelope.

Please don't let them off the hook b/c they're polite and personable. Ted Bundy was polite and charming too.
 

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Christine N. said:
I'll admit, most legitimate publishers don't reply when a ms is recieved. Why? They would have to spend all day doing it,and have no time left to read manuscripts! Most of them are buried (someone please find the pic of the Tor offices) under query letters and submissions. Which is why most big houses don't take unsolicited ms's anymore - they only want to read projects that intrest them.

It's not about being rude or uncivil. You, the author, have to realize that you are not the only person to submit. I have seen a certain few agents/publishers, those that accept e-subs, set up an auto-reply. Most only take partials on paper; and in those cases if you include a SAS postcard that says they received your ms, they will drop it in the mail when they open your envelope.

Please don't let them off the hook b/c they're polite and personable. Ted Bundy was polite and charming too.




'They only want to read projects that interest them. '
Granted, but how can they tell the difference without actually looking at them?
This small press has no manuscript from me, thay have one e-mail politely inquiring as to whether I could mail it or not. It seems rude to mail it anyway but that seems to be my only option!
The mail is only a few words long not even my stumbling incompetence with the English language can be so evident from so very little?
I am most assuredly not the only person to submit but I have not as yet been granted that esteemed boon. Oh, the hell with it, I'll post it anyway, they might as well ignore the whole thing as well, eh?
 
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