PAMB and its quotes

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CatSlave

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Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:31 pm Post subject: Sales DELIVERY (or lack of) Horror Story http://bb.publishamerica.com/viewtopic.php?t=20121

Being a newly published author at PublishAmerica, I have had ONLY ONE really bad experience with the PublishAmerica firm~

Friends who have ordered books and paid for those books, have NOT received the books !!

One friend ordered three books on February 7, 2007, as of today, March 11, 2007, she still has NOT received her book order~
After repeated calls to PublishAmerica and several emails to authorsupport, she still has NO IDEA when her book order might arrive !!
She has literally gotten the royal runaround from the customer service department~

Another friend ordered at the same time and STILL has not received her order of my book either !!
She will be contacting them tomorrow~

It is just beyond belief that I, as the author, ordered 100 books on March 1, 2007 and received them within 6 days ... and friends cannot get their books from PublishAmerica~

That is not good customer service and certainly does nothing to make me want to ask people to place their orders with PublishAmerica !!

Being well aware, that the publishing route was handled efficiently ... it is just disheartening to know that those who bought my book directly from my publisher can't seem to get the product delivered in a timely manner~

I have written several emails to author support about this issue and have not had the courtesy of a reply .... can anyone tell me what the problem is ?

Folks who ordered from Barnes & noble and from Amazon got their books within three to five days ...~
Even folks who ordered my book from The Netherlands and from Italy and from Australia got theirs from these firms !!

PublishAmerica .... what gives ?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
from the PA message board
 
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ResearchGuy

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. . . Avon and Random House are in an agony of worry over the hordes of PA authors who're on the verge of darfing them. . .
Here's the thing, and a close study of the Random House website will prove it: Random House, and the rest, are so desperate that they have actually given up the struggle to snaffle waves of new authors into their folds, and instead have directed their sites entirely toward readers of the books they already are publishing! Readers! Targeting readers! Not authors! They have left the field clear for PublishAmerica to direct all of its efforts toward drawing in authors rather than readers!!!!!

Oh, the humanity!

If this goes on, PublishAmerica and its ilk will have 99 percent of the authors, and Random House and the rest of those stick-in-the-mud old-style publishers will be left with 99 percent of the readers and book buyers! Or more!

--Ken
 

Alien Enigma

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Gravity, I didn't post anything in SYW. That was someone else. I don't even know who he is. Anyway, I wanted to drop in and say hello. Where's my old friend, Endless Rewrite?
 

VGrossack

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One has to imagine that the people moderating the PAMB doesn't want their happy authors to find AW. Even an unhappy mention of AW will get people to look at it.
 

James D. Macdonald

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I started a thread yesterday about how I was banned from www.absolutewrite.com forums and it disappeared.

Why?

Do you want to tell him, or should I?

Meanwhile:

Friends who have ordered books and paid for those books, have NOT received the books !!

That's because PA isn't set up to actually sell books. That isn't their main interest. It's a sideline they have in order to make it appear to casual observers that they're a publisher.

They send off the author's hundred copies quick enough -- that's a thousand dollars in their pocket, right then and there. Amazon sends the books quick enough, because they order them direct from LSI. (How that's going to work after PA starts printing their own, heaven only knows.) But when an individual calls PA to order a book? My best guess is that whoever took the order (whoever was standing around the coffeepot beside the one telephone in the building) wrote the order on a yellow Post-It and stuck it on the wall. Every couple of weeks, whoever doesn't have anything else to do comes by, picks up those notes, and makes a batch order to LSI.

This isn't a new problem with PA. They've had a hard time filling orders made directly to them for years. Even bookstores who order just a few at a time by phone have a hard time getting the books. Weeks-to-months-to-never are common reports.

PA is in the business of selling authors' books back to the authors themselves at an inflated price. Everything else is window-dressing.
 

e.dashwood

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Here's the thing, and a close study of the Random House website will prove it: Random House, and the rest, are so desperate that they have actually given up the struggle to snaffle waves of new authors into their folds, and instead have directed their sites entirely toward readers of the books they already are publishing! Readers! Targeting readers! Not authors! They have left the field clear for PublishAmerica to direct all of its efforts toward drawing in authors rather than readers!!!!!

Oh, the humanity!

If this goes on, PublishAmerica and its ilk will have 99 percent of the authors, and Random House and the rest of those stick-in-the-mud old-style publishers will be left with 99 percent of the readers and book buyers! Or more!

--Ken

To amplify on this, go to any of the major publishers, and most of the legitimate small presses, and it requires the skills of Sherlock Holmes to figure out how to submit. And with the majors, if you find something it will likely say they don't accept unsolicited submissions, and to work with an agent. They actively discourage writers from submitting.

The aforementioned Random House does have a link to "submissions" on its home page, but an eager author will be dissatisfied to read, "If you would like to have your work or manuscript considered for publication by a major book publisher, we recommend that you work with an established literary agent."

Penguin USA is not too encouraging either: "Penguin Group (USA) Inc. imprints do not normally accept unsolicited manuscripts. On rare occasion, however, a particular imprint may be open to reading such. The Penguin Group (USA) web site features a listing of which imprints (if any) are currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts." But when you browse the imprints, which are hide to find, since marketing their books is their main motivation and few buy based on imprint, none of them ask for submissions.

And here's a second-tier but highly admired non-profit publisher, The New Press, whose mission in part is to find serious books that might not find a home elsewhere.You'd think they'd be open to submissions? Just a little: "Please keep in mind that while we do look at all work we receive, The New Press very rarely takes unsolicited manuscripts as far as publication."

I wonder how big a look they actually take--more likely a steel-eyed squint.

As hard as it is to submit, it's very easy to buy a book at their web pages which are all about commerce, promotion, brand identification, and patting themselves on the back for awards like Pulitzers and Nobels.
 
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James D. Macdonald

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I started a thread yesterday about how I was banned from www.absolutewrite.com forums and it disappeared.

Why?

And ... the thread's vanished! Looks like InfoDump got to work at 9:00, fired up the computer at 9:03, and pushed the button on him at 9:05.

I wonder how long his password is going to keep on working over there?

People who are interested in abominationerupts' interactions here can check out this thread or this one or this one.
 
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Christine N.

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Oooo, I liked the part where he told Lisa- the medieval scholar - was wrong about her medieval facts.

Wow. Just, wow. Dude, the first rule of critique is: if you're not going to accept the criticism with grace, don't ask. Even if you don't agree, don't argue.
 

Old Hack

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To amplify on this, go to any of the major publishers, and most of the legitimate small presses, and it requires the skills of Sherlock Holmes to figure out how to submit. And with the majors, if you find something it will likely say they don't accept unsolicited submissions, and to work with an agent. They actively discourage writers from submitting.

(Snipping a little here...)

And here's a second-tier but highly admired non-profit publisher, The New Press, whose mission in part is to find serious books that might not find a home elsewhere.You'd think they'd be open to submissions? Just a little: "Please keep in mind that while we do look at all work we receive, The New Press very rarely takes unsolicited manuscripts as far as publication."

I wonder how big a look they actually take--more likely a steel-eyed squint.

As hard as it is to submit, it's very easy to buy a book at their web pages which are all about commerce, promotion, brand identification, and patting themselves on the back for awards like Pulitzers and Nobels.

Sorry, e, you've got things wrong there.

It's not difficult to work out how to submit work to a publisher, or to an agent. Most will list their requirements on their website, or in the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (here in the UK--I know there's a USA equivalent). If you can't find a detailed breakdown then a query letter followed by three chapters and a synopsis will usually do the trick.

Most don't take unagented work because they get submerged by submissions all ready. Preferring agented work means that what they read is filtered, so the editors don't have to read through the stuff which is completely unsuitable. Meaning that the editors have more time available to work on the books which they have signed.

Most submissions that were made to me when I worked as an editor were entirely inappropriate for us. We specialised in packaging esoteric adult non-fiction: yet the submissions included children's books, fiction of all kinds, books about engineering, building and car maintenance... they didn't get read. It would have been a waste of my time. The proposals which suited our remit were read. If they looked promising, they were read by several people.

And as far as promotion goes, publishers' websites are marketing tools. Publishers are in the business of selling books to readers. They have to do that to earn the money to publish the books. That's why they announce the prizes their books have won, and reinforce their branding. They want to attract more readers, not more writers. Writers will always find them.
 

Rolling Thunder

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From the pipe smoking guy:

When the subject of getting an agent comes up I always mention that meeting one face to face at a workshop, seminar or convention is the best way, one that is tried and true.
Two of them - Susan Graham (About Words Agency) and Michael Mancilla (Greystone Literary Agency) - will be at the 34th annual Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana July 26, 27 and 28.

Researching is far better than a face to face meeting. I found AWA in background checks but am missing out on learning about Greystone. Is this one swing, one hit it the quote, regarding agencies?
 

Christine N.

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Writer's Market, I believe, would be the US equivelent. But I can understand e.dashwood's confusion - most of the time it is harder to find the submission guidelines, they're tiny links, because the sites are about selling books, not selling writers on submitting to them. ;)

Oh sheesh. And even Miss Snark said, just recently, that agents don't go to conferences to really look for clients. They find so few that way, especially with a thousand writers throwing pages at them. Research the agency, write a good query, write a good book. Three steps to getting an agent (well, there's some luck involved too).

But the conventions can be fun and productive for writing, so they're not a bad idea.
 
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e.dashwood

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Dear Old Hack, I don't see how what you say is in opposition to my post. I said the big publishing houses discourage or don't accept direct submissions--only agented submissions. I said their web pages are all about commerce. You are correct in saying that most--but not all--agents list their submission requirements. I should have added that many publishers, other than the big NYC trade houses do accept unsolicited direct submsissions from authors--particularly for nonfiction.

So where was I wrong?
 

Jersey Chick

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Sometimes, the submission guidelines are all the way at the bottom of the home page - you have to really look for them.

As for accepting unagented material, it also depends on the genre - I think romance is one of the few who still takes unagented work. Some won't even look at unagented queries, but there are still a few who do.

I don't know about other genres, though.
 

e.dashwood

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Sometimes, the submission guidelines are all the way at the bottom of the home page - you have to really look for them.

As for accepting unagented material, it also depends on the genre - I think romance is one of the few who still takes unagented work. Some won't even look at unagented queries, but there are still a few who do.

I don't know about other genres, though.

The academic presses will take unagented submissions, generally from academics with advanced degrees.

Textbook and reference publishers will often take unagented submissions.

These types of books pay minimal advances, so they're not worth it for agents, but the expert qualifications required serve as sort of a built-in gatekeeper.

University presses often pay higher royalties than trade publishers. The idea is that their books can become perennial references, paying at the backend forever--or for a long time.

And the smaller presses--again because of low advances--don't require agents.

But for all legitimate presses submissions are not the problem. Too many submissions are the problem, and their web pages are for commerce. They make their money from selling books, not from signing authors.
 

Ken Schneider

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Dear Old Hack, I don't see how what you say is in opposition to my post. I said the big publishing houses discourage Snip...

So where was I wrong?

I've been called an old hack, but not the one you seek.

I don't see how they discourage anyone from submitting unless you mean that writers who don't have agents are discouraged. Is one discouraged because I've tried to get an agent and have been turned away a thousand times?

If one can complete a good workable ms, they darned sure should be able to figure out how to submit.

I'm not discouraged if their guidelines say no unagented subimissions. It is my responsibility to get an agent, or choose to only seek a house that accept unagented.
Every publishers site gives guidelines which one should follow to the letter when submitting. There are even sites that list only publisher's guideline pages.

Here, A to Z http://www.fictionaddiction.net/listings/printqr.html
 

CaoPaux

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Just in case it needs to be said: "no unsolicited submissions" does not mean "you need an agent". It means "you need to query first".
 
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