PA board said:
Hello everyone,
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wilbert F. Quick, I teach various writing courses at Oklahoma State University, and I am the author of Jacy’s Girl. While I have been a published author for some time now, my previous publications have been short stories and college writing text books. I have never had to really market my work other than to speak at a few conferences.
So he doesn't have experience in trade publishing. I sincerely hope he doesn't advocate Publish America in the writing courses he teaches.
With this said, I have been reading your posts for a couple of years and feeling your pain. In fact, I chose not to publish with publishamerica.com initially because of all of the negative information I read on this board. Publishamercia.com had my manuscript for over a year before I decided to sign the contract. So, while I am not the old hand at this that you all must be, I have a take on it from outside looking in that predates many of your experiences here.
He was reluctant initially to go with PA because of the negative information he read on the PA board? It's a shame he didn't get to the negative information posted about PA on the rest of the Internet.
Also, I worked as a Handleman book rep to Target and Service Merchandise for a while, which gives me an idea of what goes on in the book peddling industry. Still, if I am wrong about any of this as it pertains to publishamerica.com, please set me straight.
Let me begin with a question. What would you do if an online retailer, such as amazon.com, offered to sell our books exclusively and no other publisher’s authors would be allowed to compete with us for e-shelf space? You’d probably wet yourself. Right? Well, an online book retailer has made us that offer. Publishamerica.com provided us with this. The problem is, nobody has every heard of them.
Nobody has heard of them because they only market themselves to their authors. They would have to change their entire business model in order to become a commercial publisher.
All we have to do to make our dream come true is to make publishamerica.com as famous as Amazon. To start with, lets all stop calling Publishamerica.com PA. Amazon.com would not have achieved such a status by calling themselves “A”. By the way, I hope you all have a publishamerica.com bumper sticker on your car. If not, I am ashamed of you.
I buy books from Amazon because I've heard of the book and have pretty much made up my mind to buy it. If Amazon had none of the books I wanted, I wouldn't buy from them no matter how famous a retailer they were.
Beyond this, allow me to share with you some facts that every publishamerica.com author needs to consider.
FACT #1
Publish America is in the same plight as the rest of us. They are fighting to gain respect (and a market space) in an ocean of competition that does not want to let them into the game. They do not do the same volume as the big guys, and they do not have the resources to promote themselves so much. I guess you all got the email that we have now paid out a million dollars in royalties? Well, a lot of places pay that out in a week. Right after that email, I got one trying to sell me a large volume of my books at a huge discount and I could not help but see that as a cash flow stabilizer at the semiannual royalty cashout. What you witnessed was a growing pain, but it was also evidence that our house is not getting rich off of our work. (I have read much grumbling to this effect, and the evidence simply is not there to support it. If they were getting rich as some have claimed, the accountant would have run off with the boss’s wife by now.)
PA isn't fighting to gain respect in the commercial publishing industry. They're not a part of that industry. The one million dollars in royalties mean that the authors are making very little money, not that PA is strapped for cash.
FACT #2
I asked over 400 people this week if they had heard of publishamerica.com. Not one of them had. When this changes, the respect we get as publishamerica.com authors will change. If publishamerica.com cannot do this for us, then we have to do it for them. (I don’t think they can. If they could, they would have done it already). Maybe the problem is that I am not a big fan of Jamie “Klinger” Farr and I don’t watch Hollywood Squares (I didn’t even know it was still on. I don’t think it is in this market). However, I have never seen an advertisement for publishamerica.com, and I suppose that must be because they cannot afford it. The problem we must solve is not how to get our books into book stores, but rather it is how to get the name of our market venue (publishamerica.com) into the heads of book buyers so that they can find the shelf that already, virtually as it may be, has our books on it. Someone noted earlier that only 30 percent of books sold are sold on line. That is about a three thousand percent increase from a little over a decade ago. I wonder what percent are sold by b and n. It can’t be much more than that and the number is swinging away from them.
I think this author is trying to make sense of Publish America's business practices. He would find they make perfect sense once you understand its entire business model is to sell books to its own authors. PA does not need to get its books in stores, it doesn't need to promote to the general public. It needs to market to two groups, its own authors and writers who might sign with Publish America.
FACT #3
Just getting your book into a bookstore is not going to make you rich. You have a better chance of winning the lottery. However, if getting our books on a particleboard shelf is what we want, then what we need is to get our house respected enough that the brick and mortars will want our books in their stores. But I must refer you back to FACT #2. If we promote our house properly, the sales will take care of themselves. I feel confident that publishamerica.com would offer our books at a competitive rate (including shipping) once the volume reached a point where it was economically and fiscally feasible. Once volume levels reach that point, it would be foolish of them to do otherwise. (I add this for any conspiracy theorists who might be lurking nearby).
Respect has nothing to do with why Publish America books are not stocked on shelves in brick and mortar stores. It's the bogus return policy, ridiculously short discounts, no vetting of the quality of the books, a lack of real editing, poor cover design, an uncompetitive cover price, and so on. PA chose these policies because they allow them to make the most money from their own authors.
FACT #4
All publishers are POD these days. It’s just that some of them have much bigger Ds. If we want to be successful authors, we must increase the demand for our books. Increasing the visibility of one book and one author (even if it is your book and you) will not do this. We must concentrate our effort on getting the name publishamerica.com into the heads of people who buy books. Be a proud representative of our house.
Commercial publishers may use digital technology in instances where it makes the most sense for them to do so. That doesn't make them print on demand. They don't wait for readers to find out about the book and then print up a copy once they have the money in their hot little hands. They put their books on bookshop shelves where readers can find them. They create the demand for their books by placing the books in front of readers, with attractive covers and realistic price tags.
A special note on fact 4: Have you noticed that it is the vanity presses that keep calling publishamerica.com a vanity press?
No. Where?
And it is these vanity presses that keeping calling publishamerica.com a POD as if it is a bad thing.
Warnings about the drawbacks of PODs that I've read have never come from vanity presses.
This is a logical fallacy. Picture if you will a blue duck trying to tell everyone that a blue elephant is “just like me.” A POD and a vanity press are not the same thing. Remember, a square may be a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.
On this same note, POD is both the state of the art and the historical standard simultaneously.
Writer/publisher Benjamin Franklin printed his work on demand. I wish I could cite a source for you on this one, but I recall seeing a sketch of him printing his newspaper one copy at a time and selling it to the next person in line waiting to get a copy.
POD technology makes sense financially for short print runs. It doesn't make sense when you're planning to sell a lot of books to the general public.
Similarly, I offer this for encouragement. I have a text book that is being used in college writing classes. It is doing pretty well for a first edition college text. However, you will not find it in any bookstores other than those at the schools.
Why would bookshops sell books that weren't designed to be sold in bookshops?
Amazon doesn’t even carry it. When a school needs more books, the publisher (fountainhead) prints them on demand, boxes them, and sends them out federal express. It takes two to six weeks to complete the order. So, I ask you, does this mean that I am not a real text book author? Maybe this will help. I use books from Prentice Hall in some of my classes, and they all print on demand. So please stop thinking the issue has anything to do with publishamerica.com being a POD. The issue is us doing our part toward earning and demanding respect for our house. If we have doubts about the worth of our house, we sure as heck won’t be able to get anyone else to respect it.
Publish America sells its books to its own authors. I wouldn't have a problem with that if it didn't go out of its way to portray itself as a commercial publisher, and treat its authors like dirt when they asked legitimate questions. I could never respect a company like that. The power to change PA into a commercial publisher resides with its owners, not its authors.
So stop thinking like an individual. You are part of a team. As for getting your books into book stores, start trying to get publishamerica.com into the heads of book buying clientele. True, every publishamerica.com book that finds its way into a bookstore is advertising for the rest of us, and in that light, I am wondering how many of you have walked into barnes and noble and asked them for a publishamerica.com book that wasn’t your own, but the main task at hand for us is building up what we already have, not wishing we had published through b and n.
Published through b and n? Huh?
I'm sure he's sincere. But it isn't going to work.
