Help for a friend

Hi Delcat, and welcome to the board.

It's very difficult to convince someone in the honeymoon stage with PA that they've made a mistake. In fact, warning them about PA sometimes pushes them in deeper, since they might have bought into the us-vs-them mentality common to the PA flock. By expressing any negative sentiment about the wonderful, wonderful publisher who loved their book and gave them a chance, you become the bad guy, the basher, the naysayer.

That's a risk I might take with someone whom I don't know personally, especially if they've been asking questions about PA that go unanswered, but with a friend I would step far more cautiously. Assuming that a friend of mine got suckered into PA, I would first check whether he had signed the contract or not. If not, he might still have a chance. If he's signed it and sent off the manuscript, too late.

Under those circumstances, I would congratulate him and let him know that if he had any questions about the business, any at all, it would mean a lot if he shared those with me. This could work in my favor, since PA's Author Support Team (ha!) is often too overworked to respond. You see threads in their forum all the time where new authors ask veterans for help since their emails go unanswered.

That's an opening for someone with more honesty or awareness to gently tell such a honeymooner some of the facts about publishing or to introduce them to the horror stories, whichever one works best for the person in question.

Best of luck!

Delcat, hi and welcome.

I'm afraid your post may get lost here. Maybe putting it on Office Party could get more responses. Or you could post on the newbie forum.

Meanwhile, Queen of Swords has said some of the things I would say. I did lose a friend over something similar when she chose to go with a publisher that I rejected. It turned out that I was right, and that caused resentment.

Could you tell your friend to look at the PA threads here? That way, he'd be hearing the bad stuff from someone other than yourself.

Welcome, Delcat.

What QoS said.

You can be there for your friend when reality hits.

Keep in mind that it never does for some people. There are some who just want their two copies, or those who are happy if three or four people read the book. They probably got what they wanted.

I know this is a sticky situation, but offering support for your friend is probably the best way to go, IMO.

Hi Delcat and welcome!

If your friend hasn't already signed a contract with PA, it might be possible to ask a few questions: How much is your book going to cost for a reader to buy it? Would you be willing to pay that much for a book? Will it be on bookstores shelves? I don't mean to ask these questions in a firing range kind of way, just as casual food for thought in case your friend hasn't really thought about these things.

I know the rush of euphoria when a company you think is a publisher wants to publish your book. It's a nice little high. I didn't understand the way PA worked at the time and didn't realize that they wanted to sell books to their authors, not the public, and so they actually discourage sales to bookstores and other venues.

Reading through the threads here about PA and Googling Publish America complaints was a real eye opener.

I wish you luck and hope your friend either doesn't sign a contract with PA or signs a contract, but has expectations of only selling/giving books to family and friends.