But I've seen PA books available in online stores

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself; and I've actually looked up some of their books in online stores to ensure they're actually there; and they always are. isn't that what matters the most? and you also must DO your own promotion. besides that, I don't understand what is so bad about them. I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters? I'm not trying to be difficult, i just don't understand. What does traditional publishers offer that's different? Besides the huge advance???

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Promotion shouldn't just be paid for by you. A real publisher will send the bookstore a box of books for you to sign. PA makes you buy those books, whereas a real publisher won't.

Editing should be done by the publisher. That's not an "option". Secondly, real publishers typically don't add mistakes when they edit, something which routinely happens with PA.

Distribution is the key. A real publisher has a distributor, which means that your book will be sitting on a bookstore shelf where it can be found by anyone quickly and easily.

Hi, leah75, and welcome to AW.

leah75
isn't that what matters the most? and you also must DO your own promotion.

[SNIP]

I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters?

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Unfortunately, the majority of book sales don't come from on-line, they come from within book stores, and PA does not distribute books to book stores unless a customer orders them. Where PA books are on bookstore shelves it's due to the efforts of PA authors and usually on a local basis.

As regards promotion, although it is usual for authors to be involved in promoting their book, they should not be the sole means of promoting the book. Commercial publishers will have a marketing plan for each title, including getting copies out to reviewers. PA does not do any of this. In fact, there have been instances of PA authors having to buy copies of their book in order to send them to reviewers (and in any event, it is the exception rather than the rule for respected reviewers to review what are regarded as self-published titles).

If you're only looking to make a handful of sales to friends and family, then there are other self-publishers to go with apart from PA. If you're looking to try and make some money from your book then your best bet is to try and get an agent who can get you a deal (although there are a couple of commercial publishers out there who will take unagented submissions).

As it is, PA is only geared towards selling books to the authors, their friends and their family. It's source of income comes from the authors and many authors find themselves shelling out a lot of cash before they realise that they're not getting a return on it.

MM

Hi leah75, and welcome to the board! Don't worry about asking questions - you're not being difficult, you're being intelligent.

"Traditional publisher" is a term that PA coined to make it appear as though they're not a vanity press. It's not used in the actual publishing industry. I'd refer to real publishers as commercial publishers.

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself;

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It's not always advisable for writers to edit their own books, because we tend to be so close to the material that we can't always step back and look at it objectively. I've read one PA-printed book (and reviewed it on my blog) which was published without editing. I can't begin to count the number of errors in that book.

and I've actually looked up some of their books in online stores to ensure they're actually there; and they always are. isn't that what matters the most?

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Online stores carry a lot of books. Readers are only likely to find the PA-printed books if they're specifically searching for these - if they already know about the book and/or the author. Otherwise, those books will be a drop in the ocean.

Also, PA isn't going to supply books to Amazon or B&N for the "look inside" option. PA isn't going to provide blurbs for those books (and not all writers can write effective blurbs that make their books competitive with all the other books out there). PA isn't going to ensure that those books have reviews. So even when they're in the online stores, they're unlikely to be found, and if they are, they're not going to be up to the same standards as other books.

Don't just make sure that the books are in online stores. Check their sales ranks and see how well they've sold.

and you also must DO your own promotion.

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True, but tell me which kind of promotion you would rather do.

1. The book is priced the same as other similar books on the market, can be obtained directly from the publisher or found of the shelves of bookstores, has professional reviews, has a professionally designed cover and has been edited. The publisher's sales and marketing department is also working to advertise and market the book.

2. The book is priced much higher than other similar books on the market, although it has not been edited or professionally reviewed. A stock image has been used for the cover (please see my thread on PA's stock image covers for examples of PA actually reusing stock images for different titles). Bookstores don't want to shelve this and readers ordering directly from the publisher isn't an option given the cost and difficulty of doing so. Therefore, the writer ends up buying the books in bulk from the publisher and selling them. The publisher has no sales and marketing department, so the writer gets no help in this regard and foots all the costs.

Which kind of promotion sounds easier? Which kind sounds as though it's going to leave the writer with enough time to work on their next book?

besides that, I don't understand what is so bad about them. I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters?

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There are many ways in which PA is a bad choice for writers. As well as the ones I've mentioned, PA doesn't give free books to writers now. That's something real publishers, even small ones, provide. Books are highly overpriced (compare the prices of PA-printed books with those put out by commercial publishers) and shipping costs are excessively high too, when writers order their own books from PA for booksignings or to sell.

Finally, there are several cases where royalties paid by PA do not match the number of people whom the writers know bought their books. That's not something I'd look for in a publisher.

If all writers want is to see their books in an online store and to be able to advertise, market and sell the books themselves, there are far better options than PA. I'd recommend Lulu or even one of the honest vanity presses. Hope this helps you!

Hello, Leah, and a big welcome to Absolute Write!

You're quite right to ask these sorts of questions, and no-one here is going to think you're trying to be difficult. You're just doing what any intelligent writer does and research what's good and bad practice.

As far as PA goes, Khazarkhum, Momento Mori and QoS have already made several key points, but there are others:
I'm afraid that your books being 'available online' is not all that matters. Any vanity publishing outfit can offer this facility - ie if someone knows your book exists (somehow), knows they'd like to read it (somehow), and is prepared to order a copy printed specially for them, that can be done.

A real publisher will make your book available in offline stores - those actual physical shops that sell books. A real publisher will make sure bookstores know about your book and order many copies of it. A real publisher will promote your book for you - and though you may be asked to help (eg attend a book-signing they've set up for you) the bulk of the work is done by them. A real publisher will work to get you reviews in major national press. They spend the money - not you.

A real publisher will sell your book at a price the public are willing to pay for it, not at a price only your closest friends and relatives are prepared to fork out to support you. This is the one that gets me most - PA counts on decent, good people paying hugely over the odds to support someone they love. Do you ever get those Nigerian scam e-mails that pretend to be from some dying Christian woman who needs your help? The people who exploit the best in human nature for their own profit are (in my personal opinion) the worst kind of scum society can spew up. PA are among them.

But there are real experts here who will put all this much better than I can. There's a thread here on The Reasons We Don't Recommend PublishAmerica and another on Alternatives to PublishAmerica, both of which I thoroughly recommend.

If you're signed with them, Leah, no-one here is going to judge or criticize you - no-one is going to feel anything but sad and angry on your behalf. PA suck in some first-class writers, and many others who could become first-class if their writing weren't just shoved out unedited as if they never needed to do another stroke of work on it. If you haven't signed with them, then give yourself a big cheer, and rest assured we'll all be cheering right along with you.

Either way, welcome. You are among friends.

Louise

leah75 said:

What does traditional publishers offer that's different? Besides the huge advance???

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Promotion, marketing, distribution, editing, royalties, sales, and readers.

Most promotion by authors is a waste of time, energy, and money for those authors. They should be spending the time and energy on writing their next books, and they should be spending the money on groceries.

Remember that "editing" is not just checking spelling-and-grammar.

Khazarkhum said:

Promotion shouldn't just be paid for by you. A real publisher will send the bookstore a box of books for you to sign. PA makes you buy those books, whereas a real publisher won't.

Editing should be done by the publisher. That's not an "option". Secondly, real publishers typically don't add mistakes when they edit, something which routinely happens with PA.

Distribution is the key. A real publisher has a distributor, which means that your book will be sitting on a bookstore shelf where it can be found by anyone quickly and easily.

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Everyone who answered Leah was right. But I just had to quote the above.

If you really want to do all the promotion yourself and are more concerned about getting your book listed online, why not go through Lulu and do the "published by you" option? This costs a little money, but you'll be able to set your own price - and make it competitive.

That leads to another thing a commercial publisher can do for you: Price. A story of mine is an an anthology that will be published next week. It's a hardcover pushing 500 pages. The publisher set the price at $25.99, and Amazon is selling it for $17.15.

The publisher has also made it available in several electronic editions - including Kindle. Unless you can unbundle those rights from your PA contract you won't be able to offer your book in other formats. These days, they don't seem interested in doing that.

Whatever route you take, please read the contract through and be sure you understand it all before you sign.

Just to give you an idea of what it means to be in an online store, this is also on Amazon:

Organometallic Chemistry Reviews: Organosilicon Reviews v. 2 (Journal of organometallic chemistry library)

Being online means your book has an ISBN and nothing more. That's like saying people should be able to find my website simply because it exists. Mine and two hundred million others.

PA doesn't do anything you can't do yourself. You could convert your document to .pdf form. You can slap together a stock image cover. So if PA doesn't do anything you can't do yourself, and you don't want to be commercially published, why not go with a better vanity printer? At least then you could price your books competitively, have more control over the cover art and page layout, and not have to worry about your book being under a draconian contract.

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself;

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No, leah, you really can't. Editing is an extremely large set of skills, and editors do much more than most readers know. Don't confuse editing with proofreading.

Moreover, the books aren't typeset which means that they are difficult to read, and the text looks odd. They are also twice or three times as expensive as they should be. A small book is twenty dollars, and the way it's constructed, the book will fall apart with very little use.

Most books are still bought by people going into stores. Libraries generally do not buy books online, because the books do not come with catalog data, and it's expensive and time consuming for libraries to have to generate that themselves.

If you really just want to have your book printed, and you only want a few copies, use Lulu or a local printer. PA books are poorly produced and grossly overpriced.

Commercial publishers do most of the promotion for you. They have sales staff who actually go to stores and persuade stores to stock your book. They have catalogs that are made specifically for book stores and for libraries. They take out ads in magazines that target bookstores and libraries.

They agree to accept back the books that don't sell. This is standard practice for publishers, and has been since the 1700s.

They have typesetters and book designers who make the book look like a book should look--and the typesetters make the pages look lovely and use less paper, which helps control the book of the cost. They have a professional artist create the cover, and the cover is printed using a printer that is 8 to 16 times better than the four-color laser print on mid-level quality cover stock that PA uses.

They use a high-quality hot glue to join the pages together and to the binding. They don't laminate the covers with a coating that will flack off in even slightly humid weather, leaving chips of white space behind.

leah75 said:

What does traditional publishers offer that's different?

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More than you think. Here is a link to agent Nathan Bransford blog about how a book gets sold to a major bookstore.

This is all a part of marketing, of which promotion is a very small part. What outfits like PA do is claim that "every author has to promote", but then make you do all of the marketing (planning, advertising, distribution/shipping, sales, warehousing, and promotion).

That is what is so different.

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself;

But, they say that they do edit (unless the author opts out). For the edited books, it's usually an auto spell checker, which has made some embarrassing mistakes (from the author's POV) - especially where place names and characters are concerned.

and I've actually looked up some of their books in online stores to ensure they're actually there; and they always are. isn't that what matters the most?

It wouldn't matter so much IF they clearly stated that the only place IN a bookstore people will see their book is in the B&N computer when someone goes and places an order, but they don't. The wording is tricky.

As for "always" being there -- they're so always there that they've occasionally considered to sell books to which they have no rights, so NO, it's not what matters the most. Good business practices are.

Also, anyone can put a book up online, you don't need an overpriced company to do that for you.

and you also must DO your own promotion.

When an actual published author does promotion, it's in conjunction with a publisher that has already done some marketing for the book. The book has been sent out for reviews in legitimate publications (as opposed to "peer" reviews or ones paid for by the author) and they've gotten published authors to provide cover blurbs. The publisher sends out professional ARCs (advance reader copies) that don't have to be ordered or paid for by the author. The publisher also gets the book into catalogs so that bookstores can actually order and stock it and libraries can shelve it. All of the publisher's part is done MONTHS in advance of the book hitting shelves -- that's one reason it takes so long from acceptance to publication in the real world.

besides that, I don't understand what is so bad about them. I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters?

What matters is the way they present themselves and the way they treat their customers. Banning people for the crime of asking questions, only allowing positive comments to remain in public view, and altering posts already made so that they skew positive (and not allowing people to alter their own posts) is NOT professional - nor is having the MB in the first place. Real publishers don't do that. Real publishers don't exist to bolster authors' self-esteem or attract new business. They're there to publish books that are worth buying. (And a MB that belittles its writers or calls them liars is a bad thing anyway - and that's not "nonsense")


They say they don't require authors to pay to be published, but the way they're set up, the ONLY way the author will ever see a physical book is to buy one. PA doesn't give them a single copy. Real publishers send many. Real publishers don't charge for things like galleys (basically a print out of the book) or make the author pre-purchase books for signings. Real publishers don't refuse to send authors a computer file of their book, or spend less than several months editing


Real publishers don't have people trying to figure out how to finnagle space in a book shelf by either having relatives call to place multiple orders they have no intention of picking up or slipping a copy onto the shelves when no one's looking so if someone tries to buy it, a mystery ensues. Real publishers don't make book store owners cring or pull out the "we don't stock POD" rule book

Real publishers also care about quality control. People submit to a real publisher for a CHANCE to publish. Places like PA publish the slush pile - of which 99% isn't fit for publication. Everyone who writes a book seems to think that means someone has to buy it, but real publishing only has room for the best. If enough garbage gets slapped into covers, then even the good stuff becomes garbage by association.

Aside from the "sting books" showing that PA will publish just about anything, there's no customer service. They balk at replacing damaged goods (or ones where the wrorng book is inside the cover). Real publishers would just send the customer a new copy.

I'm not trying to be difficult, i just don't understand. What does traditional publishers offer that's different? Besides the huge advance???

There's no such thing as a traditional publisher - PA made it up to create an "us vs. them" dynamic, and the phrase has been picked up a load of vanity presses.

Those advances aren't usually huge - just a lot bigger than PA's. What they are is an estimate of what the publisher thinks they will make on a book over its print run. A $1 advacne is pretty much zero expection front.


Real publishers also get an actual designer to make an actual cover that's not just badly photoshopped clip art. (For a while there, most of them weren't even that - they were solid colors.)

just curious. Thanks. by the way, i'm unpublished. (for now)

And here's the Catch-22 of a company like PA. IF someone hands them a MS for publication and it goes through the whole line. They start calling themselves a "published author" - YAY....only they're not. PA doesn't count as a publishing credit with ANY legit writer's organization or agency. Those books can't be used for entry into the national groups for each genre.

So the person ISN'T PUBLISHED... BUT .... THEIR BOOK IS.


By signing that contract, and getting an ISBN, first rights are GONE. The book can't be resold as a new book even if it only sells one copy you great aunt Agnes. Names have to be changed, places have to be changed, and plot has to be altered - at the end of 7 years (unless the person gets their rights back)


EDIT: oh, yeah the seven-year contract is crummy. I forgot.

And yes, 7-years from the outset is an awful contract. Of course if your book sells well enough with a real publisher that they have to keep making new print runs for 7-years, everyone wins

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Do yourself and your book a favor. Keep doing your homework, make it as awesome as you can, and get it with a real publisher so you can be a real published author.

To be in online stores like Amazon, all you need is an ISBN. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, and is the barcode on the back of your book. You can get one yourself for about $30; PA buys them in bulk and pays much less.

When you get your ISBN you fill in info about your book and how to get it and send it to Amazon. It's not really hard to do, and printers like Lulu will do it for you.

Promoting and selling your own book is hard, and we haven't even started talking about editing, typesetting, and all that technical stuff. The failure rate for people who try it is much higher than the failure rate for people who send their first book off to a publisher. But even if you want to try this route, don't go with PA. They are rude and deceitful. You can go with a company like Lulu or Createspace instead.

So to summarize: the do it yourself route is a bad choice for most people, and there are much better ways to do it than to use PA.

Welcome, Leah75!

Everyone has already covered the points I was going to make, so let me ask you this: What kind of promotion will you be able to do without distribution for your book if you sign with PublishAmerica? I purchase a lot of books online, but it's because I already know what the book is about, have heard of the author, like the lower price, or have read portions of the book from the "look inside" feature. My PA book is priced too high, doesn't have the "look inside" feature on Amazon, nobody has heard of me and they'll only know what my book is about from the back cover blurb. That's not enough for me to buy a book, so how can I expect someone else to purchase it? Just food for thought.

I hope you'll stick around and check out other areas of AW, too. It's a big place with tons of good information.

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself;

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Others have responded to this - no doubt you CAN do a better job editing than PA, but that's not saying a lot. And don't they SAY they DO edit manuscripts? If you know they don't, then you know right there they're outright lying. You wanna do business with a company you know from the start is lying to you?

With real commercial publishers you get galley prints, uncorrected proofs, and/or advance reader copies (all at the publisher's cost, free to you), and you can go through these and have any misspellings, typos or other last-minute edits fixed before the commercial edition of the book is finally printed. From what I've read about PA, you don't get that, someone "edits" your book (as someone said, using a quick run through with a spelling checker, perhaps "fixing" a misspelled word by putting in the wrong homonym) and the first "printing" you would see is the final form of the book PA sells. PA won't do more edits, even though each copy is printed from a computer file where it would be trivial to do small edits. They don't want to take the time.

With PA you're guaranteed to get a book with many times more errors than a commercially published book.

leah75 said:

and I've actually looked up some of their books in online stores to ensure they're actually there; and they always are. isn't that what matters the most?

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Have you actually ordered any of these books and received it? You may or may not get it. I've heard about PA's fulfillment "problems" - PA doesn't want to sell books to anyone but the author, because (as I understand it) PA makes the most money by selling to the author.

1. How do you find new fiction?
2. Will you ever encounter a PA book that way?

End of story.

I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters?

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What matters is that you write the book, you edit the book, you promote the book, you sell the book. Yet, PA takes 92% of the sale price in those online bookstores.

92% is going to fuel the hell-o-copter for doing nothing and 8% is coming to you for doing everything. That is the problem.

If you want to write, edit, promote, distribute, and ship your books then you should be making the lion's share, not seeing it go to PA.

Publish America is not a publisher, it is an over-priced printer that does a second-rate job.

CXR

An average PA book sells less than 50 copies. Even a heavily promoted one rarely sells more than a few hundred. That suggests being in online stores is certainly not all that matters.

Another way to think of it is that having a PA-printed book listed in an online store is the same as having a phone number in the telephone directory. Doesn't mean you'll get calls from potential friends or employers or dates unless you give that phone number to them. Same thing goes for the PA-printed book.

If that's what you feel is right for you then good luck....

leah75 said:

I know that they don't edit the books, I can do that myself; and I've actually looked up some of their books in online stores to ensure they're actually there; and they always are. isn't that what matters the most? and you also must DO your own promotion. besides that, I don't understand what is so bad about them. I think as long as the books are available online and you do your own promotion, isn't that all that matters? I'm not trying to be difficult, i just don't understand. What does traditional publishers offer that's different? Besides the huge advance???

just curious. Thanks. by the way, i'm unpublished. (for now)

EDIT: oh, yeah the seven-year contract is crummy. I forgot.

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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10211

This should help you understand what's so bad about PA.

Queen of Swords said:

Another way to think of it is that having a PA-printed book listed in an online store is the same as having a phone number in the telephone directory. Doesn't mean you'll get calls from potential friends or employers or dates unless you give that phone number to them. Same thing goes for the PA-printed book.

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There was a post in the long thread a couple of months ago to this effect by someone who worked for a newspaper. He said people who went with PA and other POD companies usually wanted to be put in the paper for their "achievement" and weren't too happy when he had to tell them they achieved roughly the same thing as someone being accepted to community college because they went to the office and paid the registration fee.

The other night we went to the bookstore. We browsed the stacks for over an hour. We finally bought 3 items: a magazine, a sale book, and a third book I spotted while shelf-crawling.

If we were to go to Amazon, the only purchase would have been the magazine.

Amazon would have pointed me at similar magazines. But it would never have found either the sale book or the other title we bought.

And that's why Amazon alone is not enough.

This new blog is all the rage among the blogging agents and gives a pretty good indication why that most PA authors will never see their books on the shelves of B&N unless they get a pity copy in on consignment. Scroll down to the older posts for the wacky world of how books get sold.