The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America) [Archive] - Page 5

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 04:29 AM

Well, shucks. About time for a line-by-line commentary on this typically mendacious twaddle from InfoCenter.

<HR>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Contrary to what you may have been told by a local Barnes and Noble bookstore manager, they have no such policy at all,</BLOCKQUOTE>

Note that exactly what policy they're denying B&N has isn't specified. That makes it hard to pin down.

But no, Barnes & Noble doesn't have a policy against stocking digitally printed books. They have a policy against stocking non-returnable, overpriced, poor quality books that require payment up front (rather than in 60-90 days) and only have a short discount.

Big difference!

To quote from BN.COM's website:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Print-on-demand titles: with over one million titles already in print, and another 50,000 or more published every year, we obviously cannot carry every book that is published. Indeed, the key to print-on-demand technology is that it enables publishers to keep a vast number of titles in print and available without stocking inventory. Print-on-demand titles will continue to be featured on the Barnes & Noble.com website, and available for customer orders in our stores.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

Featured on the website, and available for order. Got that? That's B&N's policy.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
and they do not categorize PublishAmerica as anything other than what we are.</BLOCKQUOTE>

A POD vanity press....

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Not only does Barnes and Noble have no policy against stocking print on demand books, Barnes and Noble actively enbraces [sic] the entire concept of Print On Demand.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

See the quote from Barnes and Noble above.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
We see lots of misconceptions, in this thread and elsewhere, on the returnability issue. The facts refuting this are very plain and easy to offer as evidence. Non-returnable books are the direction that the industry is taking, and what you're hearing is not at all true, of course.</BLOCKQUOTE>

This is a plain lie. Offering the facts would be a refreshing change.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Just as one example, PublishAmerica has an account with Barnes and Noble and many other bookstores, including chains, and they buy our books all the time.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

Okay, so they have an account. They have to get those books that the authors' families and friends order somehow. "They buy our books all the time"? Sure, every time Aunt Mable orders one....

<BLOCKQUOTE>

Please see this thread and many others like it, and the additional info below:
</BLOCKQUOTE>

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http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/8622.htm
</BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE>

No publisher guarantees book sales to bookstores.</BLOCKQUOTE>

True enough. Much like no auto manufacturer guarantees auto sales through car lots. They don't need to make that guarantee. They're in business to sell books to the general public. How else is the general public to get those books?

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Major chain bookstores have no policy against stocking non-returnable books.</BLOCKQUOTE>

They merely refuse to do so.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Actually, Barnes and Noble has quadrupled the number of books they order from PublishAmerica during the past year. </BLOCKQUOTE>

"Ordered from" is not the same as "stocked." Note the weasel-wording. With 8,000 happy authors now (up from a claimed 5,000 last year), I can well imagine that the number of orders has increased.

A term like "quadrupled" is hard to pin down, though. A real number would be helpful. If last year one book was ordered through B&N and this year four were ordered, that would be quadrupling -- but four sales is still pretty pathetic.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books.</BLOCKQUOTE>

8,000 happy authors, each getting his family and friends to special-order their books, can work out to thousands "sold in bookstores," if by "sold in bookstores" we mean that's where the money changed hands, over at the Special Order desk. Hundreds of bookstores stock their books? (Note that distinction between "sold" and "stocked.") Let's see -- 8,000 happy authors, each pestering their local bookstores to please, please, please, stock a copy on consignment ... if 5% of those happy authors are successful, then one or another PublishAmerica book will be stocked (in dribs and drabs, by ones and twos) in "hundreds" of bookstore.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
PublishAmerica books have the same chance of making it onto a bookstore shelf as do the books of any publisher.</BLOCKQUOTE>

A lie.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
It may be of interest that less than one percent of all authors ever see their books stocked by bookstores at all. </BLOCKQUOTE>

I wonder where they get this statistic? Does it mean that most people who write books don't manage to sell them? When you figure that around 98-99% of all books get rejected -- then you figure in the textbooks and such that don't usually get bookstore distribution -- yeah, I think they're counting "all authors" as meaning "everyone who ever tried typing a book."

<BLOCKQUOTE>
For bookstores to stock all books published would mean adding 15 feet of new shelf space each and every day.</BLOCKQUOTE>

Which they make up for by stripping and returning 15 feet of books per day.

Now how big is fifteen feet of shelf space? Figure one bookshelf, twenty feet long by five rows high. 15 feet of shelf space would be 15% of that. How many linear feet of bookshelf does your average Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Books A Million superstore have? Thousands of feet? A million linear feet?

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Therefore bookstore managers must be selective, so they decide based on what that they think will sell. If they do think it will sell, they will stock it, and vice versa. So, if your book is romance and the store's shelves are overflowing with romance novels, the odds are they won't stock it. And, if your book is a history of agriculture in Tupelo County, Mississippi, the bookstore manager in Seattle may feel the same way.</BLOCKQUOTE>

The only way that your PublishAmerica book will make it on the shelves is if you're a local author and you begged. Poorly produced, unedited, overpriced books don't generally sell very well.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Bookstores will generally stock a book that they think will sell, regardless of whether it is returnable or not, </BLOCKQUOTE>

If not returnable, if the author made special arrangements, or can guarantee that Mom and Dad and the guys in the carpool will be by to buy copies. Many bookstores do indeed have "local author" shelves. When was the last time you bought a book off that shelf?

<BLOCKQUOTE>
and regardless of whether it is printed on digital or offset presses.</BLOCKQUOTE>

A total red herring.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Please do not judge a bookstore's corporate policy by what one local manager or one letter tells you.</BLOCKQUOTE>

Judge it by what bookstore managers across the country and dozens of letters tell you.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
You can find stories on our website about, for example, two Borders locations in one town: one manager insists that he cannot carry a book, the other orders 40 copies. </BLOCKQUOTE>

You can find stories on your website (until you delete them) of bookstore managers refusing to touch PublishAmerica books, and of national headquarters cancelling orders for PA books that local bookstore managers placed.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Bookstore managers are human, they have strengths and weaknesses like all of us, they can make good judgment calls and bad ones. One will like your book, the other may not.</BLOCKQUOTE>

The bookstore managers that fill their shelves with unsalable, non-returnable books ... don't last long. Figure out for yourself which ones made bad judgment calls.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Also worthy of note, most of your books are physically, actually, in stock at Ingram, with copies in their Oregon and Tennessee warehouses, and at a Barnes and Noble distribution center, ready to ship immediately.</BLOCKQUOTE>

Big whoop. That means you ran off three copies. Since you're already sending the author two "free" copies, that means for each title you're getting five printed up.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
A Vice President at Barnes and Noble wrote us a letter recently,</BLOCKQUOTE>

How recently? They've been using this same letter for at least two years.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
saying, "We very much believe in print-on-demand (POD) technology as a cost-effective tool available for publishers to extend the range of their title offerings to Barnes & Noble... We believe that POD represents an opportunity to increase the range of titles we offer... We will continue to stock every title that you publish, which enables us to rapidly replenish our stores..." </BLOCKQUOTE>

That must have been before B&N sold off its digital printing equipment to Lightning Source (last August) and before B&N decreased its investment in iUniverse from 49% to 22%.

Since it's demonstrably true that B&N doesn't "stock every title" that PA publishes, one wonders what else was in this letter, who it was addressed to, what was deleted in those elipses, and what question it was answering in the first place.

astonwest

07-09-2004, 05:40 AM

I do have to agree with the notion that bookstore managers are human...the problem comes from the fact everyone in PA-land always comes at this from the wrong side of the equation.

Corporate policy is as Jim stated, not to buy these types of books (no, there is nothing stated that says "no POD" or "no PA", but the restrictions in place make certain they don't get stocked)

Yes, bookstore managers are human, but this is not to say they *decide against* stocking PA books because of it. In fact, the opposite is true. Corporate does not want their stores to order these books, but because the managers are human, they will sometimes bend the rules for local authors.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about it anymore, because I've since given up on promoting my book, and am looking forward to getting the next one out there with an actual publisher...

Big Daddy West
:hat

lastr

07-09-2004, 07:15 AM

www.publishamerica.com/cg...n/8622.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/8622.htm)

I found this whole thread (referenced by the PA Info Center) to be extremely sad. So many people anxious to hear that a bookstore somewhere stocked a book or two. What bothers me most about the PA model is that they make their writers grateful for the crumbs they *might* brush their way. It reminds me of Fagan making those poor urchins beg for their dinner.

DeePower

07-09-2004, 07:28 AM

PA says

************************************
No publisher guarantees book sales to bookstores. Major chain bookstores have no policy against stocking non-returnable books. Actually, Barnes and Noble has quadrupled the number of books they order from PublishAmerica during the past year. Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our book
**********************************

Of course no publisher guarantees book sales BUT traditional publishers pay an advance, a new author can get five figures, we did, and the only way the advance is recouped is through books sales at book stores. Traditional book publishers WANT to sell books in the thousands of copies to bookstores.

PA does NOT want to sell thousands of copies of a title to a bookstore. If they did it would put them in a cash deficit position. They would have to pay their printer within 30 days and not receive the revenue from the bookstore or distributor for at least 90 days.

There are over 1500 independent book stores, Barnes and Noble has 800 stores, Borders has 1200 and Books-a-million has 200 stores. If PA books are in hundreds that could mean as little as 200 stores only about 5% of the available stores would have to stock PA books, that's pitiful.

PA says
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PublishAmerica books have the same chance of making it onto a bookstore shelf as do the books of any publisher. It may be of interest that less than one percent of all authors ever see their books stocked by bookstores at all. For bookstores to stock all books published would mean adding 15 feet of new shelf space each and every day.
***************************

This is a falsehood. Do PA books rank with the books of Random House Inc., Penguin USA, Simon & Schuster, Time Warner and HarperCollins ( these five companies account for nearly eighty percent of all book sales in the US.)? NO.

Bowkers says there are about 1.5 million books in print, the average Barnes and Noble store stocks 150,000 books that's 1% of the available books. So one could say that at any one time only 1% of authors are being stocked, but to say "less than one percent of all authors ever see their books stocked by bookstores at all." is a lie. The definition of an author is someone who has a book published, not a writer with an unpublished manuscript.

PA says
***********************
Therefore bookstore managers must be selective, so they decide based on what that they think will sell. If they do think it will sell, they will stock it, and vice versa
**************************

Wrong. Barnes and Noble and Borders have buyers who are experts in the fields that they focus on. The buyers make the decision to buy based on the publishers catalog, the visit by the publisher's rep and the previous sales of that particular author or that particular subject. The local bookstore manager can order a title but must go through the home office to do it. PA has NO catalog, NO sales rep, and since 99% of their authors are first time authors, no track record. Independent bookstores make the buy decision on the same factors.

PA says
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Bookstores will generally stock a book that they think will sell, regardless of whether it is returnable or not, and regardless of whether it is printed on digital or offset presses.
**************************

Not true, a nonreturnable book is simply not considered to be stocked. We surveyed 25 independent book store buyers across the country and 20 of them said they would not buy a Publish on Demand book because of the nonreturn policy and the poor quality of the book. Several of these bookstores volunteered the fact that they wouldn't even stock POD books on consigned because they hadn't been vetted, and it made the bookstores buying decision look poor.

PA says
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Also worthy of note, most of your books are physically, actually, in stock at Ingram, with copies in their Oregon and Tennessee warehouses, and at a Barnes and Noble distribution center, ready to ship immediately.
*****************************

Two, two lousy copies are stocked by Ingram. Two!

The above response is not my opinion, it is based on the research we have done for "The Making of a Bestseller," Dearborn Trade, March 2005.

Dee
www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com (http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com)

SimonSays

07-09-2004, 07:29 AM

I think you need to keep in mind, that most of those "authors" would never get published anyway.

So the crumbs they are getting at least let them taste the gourmet food, as they will never get a table at the restaurant.

Those who have a shot at real publication will wisen up eventually - many with help from boards like this one. They will take PA as a learning experience, and be savier with their next book.

It seems that a lot of the PA'ers who post on this board have done just that.

lastr

07-09-2004, 07:50 AM

The sad fact remains that the few who *wise up* pay a horrendous price to do so.

On another note, if anyone has missed the Bly threads on the PA board they have either not posted about it or the posts have been deleted. So either happy delusion or they are too afraid of Marcus Mouth to say anything.

SimonSays

07-09-2004, 08:08 AM

We ALL pay a price. We struggle, we deal with rejection.

The vast majority of first novels don't get published. They stay stashed in drawers, a learning experience for the writers.

So instead of staying in the writer's drawer, they stay in PA's drawers. PA writers do get the rights back to their books, I know it takes 7 years, but they will get it back. And in the meantime they, like the rest of us can continue to write, improve their writing. And get back out there like the vast majority who don't make it on the first pass.

Their wounds may be deep, but not any deeper than those who fail on the first attempt. The only difference is that PA'ers have and outlet for their disappointment. Without PA, chances are they would have suffered disappointment that goes just as deep - without the luxury of having someone to blame.

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 08:51 AM

Three things about PA:

1) Perhaps a couple hundred of those books PA has published could have been traditionally published.

2) The authors who are running around setting up signings and all the rest of that nonsense aren't doing what they should be doing: Writing their next books and working on their craft.

3) There are worse things that could happen to a writer than remaining unpublished.

lastr

07-09-2004, 08:57 AM

Simon I think we will need to agree to disagree on part of the PA situation. I agree the great unpublished novels in many a drawer probably do need to languish there, and a second one started as the writing craft is practiced and refined. The shame is not in PA publishing half-baked books, it is in those same books and writers never getting a golden crust on them. The loaves of creativity don't quite rise to the top of the PA pan on too many of their releases.

Someone who might have written work worth publishing has settled for fool's gold and either learns and goes on or is disillusioned and gives up. Those are the ones I feel for, the *might have beens* whose ideals are squandered for immediate gratification. I know we do not see eye to eye on this part, but in real life I have to deal with the discarded shards of people's dreams too often not to feel empathy for them. I believe in people taking responsibility for their own actions, but which is worse: the scammer or the scammee?

SimonSays

07-09-2004, 10:18 AM

I do agree with Jim that there are worse things than not being published.

But I do not think that being published by PA ranks up there with some of the other disappointments and disillusionments that can beset human beings.

I don't know what kind of wounded souls you are dealing with in the real world, Last, but I do know that the wounded souls in my life who I love are dealing with disappointments and disillusionments that make the scars of being scammed by PA seem like paper cuts.

Being abused, being discarded, being unloved, being raped, having your five year old child die in your arms. These are true deep wounds. And though it may sound insensitive to some, publishing with PA is small potatoes compared to these type of wounds.

As Jim said on another thread, you should be writing for yourself, for creative fulfillment, and that in itself should be what moves, inspires and fulfills you. The completion of the artistic expression should be the reward, publication the gravy. You should NOT be writing solely with the dream of being in Borders. If that is your motivation, if that is how you define your success and achievements as an artist, then your goals are empty and you are not a true artist.

If you are writing for personal fulfillment, then you have already received an amount of success and fullment by writing that being published by PA cannot take away from you. If not being in Borders is all that matters to you, then you karmically do not deserve to be in Borders to begin with.

There is real cruelty, real tragedy and real victims all around us. I wonder how many of you give anywhere near the time or energy to the truly wounded in this world, as you do to the PA victims on this board.

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 10:30 AM

I wonder how many of you give anywhere near the time or energy to the truly wounded in this world, as you do to the PA victims on this board.

I'm a volunteer EMT in my community.

lastr

07-09-2004, 10:33 AM

SimonSays wrote "There is real cruelty, real tragedy and real victims all around us. I wonder how many of you give anywhere near the time or energy to the truly wounded in this world, as you do to the PA victims on this board."

Probably more of us then you might believe Simon - empathy for the walking wounded tends to spill over from the real to the virtual world. Your concern for others certainly shows in what you post here.

BTW I agree wholeheartedly about writing for the joy of it, in fact I *itch* on days that I don't write. Fortunately, seeing my writing on display at Borders has never been the immediate goal, only an aspiration for sometime in the future when I can call myself an author and not merely a writer in training.

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 10:34 AM

The reason that you see the anger directed at PublishAmerica, while you don't see it directed at Xlibris, iUniverse, 1stBooks/AuthorHouse, and the rest of the vanity PODs is this:

Their bookstore placements are just as bad. Their editing is equally non-existent, their covers are as poorly done. Their sales are just as low. But they didn't lie to the writers on the way in the door, telling them "This is it, this is real traditional publishing."

With Xlibris and the others, everyone knows, without question, that they're vanities. Pay to play. PA is the one that lies. That's where the sense of betrayal comes from.

lastr

07-09-2004, 10:43 AM

James D wrote "I'm a volunteer EMT in my community"

*grin* Not only are you one of my favorite authors, a generous person to new writers, and very entertaining, but also you help people at a time they need it most. James please don't tell me anymore, I'm already suffering from serious hero worship of you.

LaVerneRoss

07-09-2004, 01:43 PM

Simon,
Everyone feels things differently. Just as some let nothing get to them, no matter what it is. They would probably not be concerned with 9/11 or anything else. They might feel but not as some might think right. Some feel everything strongly, their pain and others pain. That they would be calling for war, and payback. They would cry over a stranger who was hurt, or a olympic player who won.
It doesn't make either wrong, and not all are sitting, and doing nothing but complaining. Most have moved on with their writing, and looking to the future. At the same time going after PA and working to get their rights back.
Yes, there is a lot of tragedy out there, no matter how any feel none can stop it. Just help whenever possible. We are all touched by what we see, hear, experience, and feel every day. We can all try to make the world a little better. But if you let it all tear you up inside, you would have a nervous breakdown or worse.
But we all have our own personal battles to fight. Venting sometimes helps, knowing you aren't the only one. To each his own way of feeling things.

snarzler

07-09-2004, 02:40 PM

*stands up*
I am a PA "author". I now live in the real world. :o
*sits*

According to my contract, it will take seven years to get back the rights I signed over to PA.
Three years later, I have expanded the world I created in my PA book-I'll call it Red Dawn-and created a four book series. In essence, Red Dawn is now to me a prequel/side story to the new series. Something akin how The Hobbit is related to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I have sold the four books as a series to a Real publisher. I have discussed including Red Dawn as part of the complete series-I have plans for an additional same world trilogy-but I'm worried PA would reissue the original/old/bad version and corrupt the series' potential.
Even if I wait the other three and a half years for the contract to run out, could PA-I know they certainly would given the idealistic PR potential-still publish the first book to capitalize? I suppose I could hope the series did become hot and in trying to keep up with the orders, they cancelled my contract because of "poor sales"-but would the rights revert back to me early if they did do that? :money
The advice I'm getting from the editor is wait and see how the first one they publish does, which of course is sound and prudent and putting the horse before the cart of my paranoid worries. :clap
I guess I'm looking for an answer to the best?/worst case scenerio. I need to use references and characters from Red Dawn to make the mythos work properly. It seems I spent more time weaving the grand scheme-I even have maps-than researching publishers. :smack
Should I just abandon doing anything or having to do with Red Dawn ever again? :shrug

Andrea :peace

NancyMehl

07-09-2004, 08:09 PM

I agree that being published by PA isn't as bad as the tragedies mentioned in previous posts. The key is to get on to the next project. Sheesh, I mean if Stephen King had been mistreated when he wrote Carrie and decided to quit writing....

However, the people I have the most empathy for are those who wrote nonfiction books about a child or parent who died...or about a traumatic period in their lives. These writers only had one book in them - and PA got it. It is heartbreaking to them. I feel for them.

As far as what we do for others....I work with low-income elderly and disabled people. I also run a volunteer group for the homebound.

If you want some really sad stories, I could tell you things about people who have been absolutely deserted by their family and friends because of their age or health issues. What a way to spend the end of your life, huh? Recently, my group had to come up with enough money to bury a man whose family didn't want to spend a penny for his burial - even though they had money. Nice, huh?

Are these things worse than PA? Yep. But the PA experience can still be extremely painful for some people.

My advice? If you have more books in you - get on with life. Don't do anything to promote your book if you feel it isn't up to par. If this is your only book - wait for your rights back. Again, don't promote it. When you get your rights back, do what I'm doing. Release it with someone else - who isn't PA! This may put a little waiting time into your schedule, but all is not lost.

Nancy
www.nancymehlbooks.com

07-09-2004, 09:39 PM

Simon said, "sorry I just don't think PA's evil is quite to that standard."

Well, you are right there. No argument here, but, read this scenario.

You pay a plumber to come in and fix your toilet, you step out to run to the store and pick up a few things and when you return your everything in your house is gone. TV, phone, fridge, carpet, kitchen sink, etc. Now, even though this fake plumber isn't as bad as Osama don't you still feel really pissed off? Wouldn't you do anything to get your stuff back? Wouldn't you warn people about this fake plumber?

The fake plumber is PA, and we are the stupid people that let him in. We feel betrayed, pissed, and are doing what we can to rectify the situation. If we can't afford an attorney then we will just put our stories on the net for the world to see.

That's the way I see it.

Kevin Yarbrough

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 10:33 PM

I don't think that we should give a free pass to every mugger in the country on the grounds that they don't come up to the standard of Osama bin Laden.

DaveKuzminski

07-09-2004, 10:48 PM

Likewise, don't compare us to organizations that specialize in greater needs or dangers. You don't expect the local dogcatcher to organize the pursuit after an overseas terrorist. Same goes for some of us. We specialize in literary muggers.

LaVerneRoss

07-09-2004, 11:47 PM

Snarzler,
I have a sequel to the book PA has. I did ask for permission to use parts of the one they had in my new novel. NO reply from them of course. Advice that was given to me? Was to write it like it was not connected to the first. Don't use any excerpts from the first novel. I use vague references to the charactors past that was revealed in the first novel. But other than that it is all new. If I get my first back I will redo it and then get it published elsewhere, with a connection to the others.

James D Macdonald

07-09-2004, 11:51 PM

Another thing I've learned from doing ambulance work:

To me and the other EMTs, the problem that we're called for may be no big deal; seen it a hundred times before. But to the patient, it's a real big deal, they're having the worst day of their life, and the world is falling apart.

We treat them with compassion and professionalism. We don't laugh and point at them, and mock their distress, or tell them that it's all their fault.

I remember one call, where the complaint was "Baby won't eat her peas." Now I've raised four kids, and my first reaction might have been "Did you try her on carrots?" There was nothing physically wrong with the baby -- she just wasn't hungry. But for that first-time mother, alone in a strange town, it was a crisis. She called 9-1-1.

We took her concerns seriously, talked calmly, and helped get everything straightened out, without making her feel like a fool for calling for help.

Was this a big problem? No, not really. Not compared with a heart attack, or running a car into a bridge abutment. But for that young mother it was a big problem, and what she needed at that moment wasn't "tough love."

There's proportionality in all things.

priceless1

07-10-2004, 12:04 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Advice that was given to me? Was to write it like it was not connected to the first. Don't use any excerpts from the first novel.<hr></blockquote>
LaVerne, you own the copyright for your work. You don't need permission from a publisher to use your own work. It's much the same if you use a song or poem someone else wrote; you get permission from the author, not the publisher. They only own printing rights.

DaveKuzminski

07-10-2004, 12:41 AM

Well spoken, Lynn! You stated just what I was about to reply when I spotted your answer.

Teena Haywood

07-10-2004, 12:48 AM

James said: "But for that first-time mother, alone in a strange town, it was a crisis. She called 9-1-1."

James, what a wonderful act of kindness. The key to every situation is to NOT make a person feel like a second class citizen. I applaud you :clap .

If I may add to LeVerne's statement. We're all human and react differently to each problem that enters our daily lives. Many of us post on this and other forums to get positive feedback, to give advice, to vent or just to say a friendly "hello."

Keep in mind, it's healthy to disagree. That's a part of individuality.

Sometimes, PA just happens to be the soup of the day...and that's OK. Perhaps, it will save someone from getting caught in the same trap :head ...or perhaps not :shrug . However, it's certainly worth a try.

SimonSays

07-10-2004, 12:50 AM

There is nothing wrong with venting, there is nothing wrong with being angry or expressing that anger. It's great that there are people who will point out the lies of PA.

My goal here was to put things in some sort of perspective because the anger you feel toward the plumber that ripped you off is not anywhere near the anger you feel toward the drunk driver who killed your daughter.

Again, it's perspective. Degrees of being victimized, of being wronged. Degrees of harm suffered. If you truly write for the love of writing - then the harm you suffered needs to be looked at through the prism of what your real goal was and what you achieved. And even in Nancy's example - people who write about personal tragedy and loss, do it primarily as therapy for themselves, a way of dealing, a way of healing. So again, even for them, they have already achieved the true gifts of their actions, just by getting it down on paper.

The sense of loss and anger one feels should be proportional to the actual damage suffered. And people who perceive the damage done by PA as being life or death, would do themselves a world of good if they sat back, and asked themselves exactly what motivated them to write to begin with and what was really taken away from them by being published by PA. Creative fulfillment? Sense of achievement? Pride in accomplishment? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then maybe they need to look inside themselves at their own self esteem and values.

:b

LaVerneRoss

07-10-2004, 12:55 AM

How much can you use from a former work? Now on a message board I had asked about that, seeing as how it was important to the story to use parts from the previous novel. Yet I was told not to do so, because I needed permission. Just to write it as though it weren't a sequel. So they were wrong? That is good to know. Got some rewriting to do.

James D Macdonald

07-10-2004, 01:07 AM

If I understand correctly, you're writing a book that could be described as a derivative work of your own book.

Getting permission from the author/copyright holder to write that derivative work shouldn't be particularly difficult to get, since it's you.

If you're using chunks of actual text from the other novel, things might be stickier. What exactly does PA's contract say about excerpts?

CWGranny

07-10-2004, 01:13 AM

Most of the PA authors with whom I have communicated who wrote about personal tragedy and loss, did so with the idea in mind "If what I suffered can help others who are similarly suffering, then it was not for nothing." Or else they write thinking, "If I can help others NOT to go through what I went through, then it wasn't for nothing." It is in the completion of the process that they find therapy.

By selling to PA, they get the burst of feeling -- it wasn't for nothing, people will read this and be helped -- only to find out...no, sorry. We're just going to print a few of these to sell to YOU...if you want anyone to read them, you better go find someone. Now you not only suffered tragedy but now you realize someone wants to stick it to you AGAIN.

Now, if they had gone through normal publishing routes, they would probably have learned that their book wouldn't sell...it just wouldn't. Few books of that sort do...some, but not many. And the some that do are exceptional. Eventually, the writer might think -- okay, I really want to get the word out and I cannot do it through traditional publishing so I'll go with Author House (or whatever.) Then it becomes that person's CHOICE...again, the person does not feel doubly victimized. They CHOOSE to go vanity and they do so prepared (at least slightly) for what they get. They have different expectations and come out of the experience with a different feeling.

So, yeah, I think it's an exceptionally crappy thing to do to those who are already battered enough.

gran

LaVerneRoss

07-10-2004, 01:35 AM

James,
The sequel continues the story of the first book. The only thing I have used is the charactors, with hints to the past. Was wondering how much could be used to explain certain things in the second book to readers who didn't read the first. I can't be sure but I think the contact says you can't use excerpts without permission of publisher, like it does in the books front page. I had wanted to use a bit (several pages condensed) that explained the past at the beginning of the sequel. I could even simply use flashbacks.

priceless1

07-10-2004, 01:42 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>How much can you use from a former work?Just to write it as though it weren't a sequel.<hr></blockquote>

How much can you use? I would say that from a writing standpoint, one wouldn't want to use too much simply because it becomes re-inventing the wheel. Re-stating what has already been written gets tedious. But a certain amount of backtracking is necessary with sequels. No one can tell you what to write with regards to a sequel. It's your work.

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Now on a message board I had asked about that, seeing as how it was important to the story to use parts from the previous novel. Yet I was told not to do so, because I needed permission.<hr></blockquote>

That is wrong. You don't need permission. You own the copyright. I have no idea about your contract, but I've never seen any references to limiting use of one's own work.

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>but I think the contact says you can't use excerpts without permission of publisher, like it does in the books front page<hr></blockquote>
That pertains to others using the material, not the author. Again, you own the copyright. No one else may use excerpts of your book without permission.

James D Macdonald

07-10-2004, 01:46 AM

Try writing the flashback in your own words. That's a derivative right.

------

In other news.... my ambulance squad had three runs so far this morning:

7 month old baby, lethargic and vomiting blood.
25 year old female, 9 weeks pregnant, bleeding.
Car versus bicycle collision.

Would any of the people involved in any of those events have gladly signed a contract with PublishAmerica if the deal was that this morning didn't happen? You betcha. Does this mean that PublishAmerica gets a free pass to swindle people? No, PA doesn't get that free pass.

The events are not related.

The existence of one evil in this world doesn't mean that other evils don't exist.

Simon, I'm just guessing, but I'm betting that you personally have never published a novel.

It's difficult to explain to people who've never written a book what kind of emotional tie there is between the writer and the book.

SimonSays

07-10-2004, 02:11 AM

No, I've never published a novel, I'm still working on my first one, but I am well aware of the emotional ties a writer has with his work. I have supported myself as a screenwriter both off my spec scripts and as a writer for a hire for years. Like a novel, I created those babies from scratch. My characters, my worlds - no less real as the characters in my novel - no less of an emotional attachment.

And I have in fact had people steal my work and/or my ideas. It is sometimes the nature of the beast in Hollywood, which does not make it any less painful. The ideas that were taken from me are gone, they have already appeared in other people's films. I cannot get those scenes back and use them in another script 7 years from now.

So don't assume that I don't understand the emotional impact. My work went out to the world with someone else's name on it and was seen by millions. It has been well and truly stolen from me.

And I have dealt with it. I fought back when I could, and moved on when there was nothing that could be done. I am not bitter, I still love my craft and continue to create and to get better. I do not sit here whining and moaning about it and feeling sorry for myself.

PA does not steal work. They don't even steal dreams, they lie and mislead. But in the end the work is still yours to do what as you please down the line.

James D Macdonald

07-10-2004, 02:35 AM

Simon, good luck with your novel, and I feel your pain with the rip-offs you've endured in Hollywood.

Compassion is not diluted. (And the koala tea of Mersey is not strained.)

07-10-2004, 04:11 AM

Answer this for me Simon. When you first realized that someone had stolen your work and put it out as theirs, were you mad? Did you vent? Did you warn other about the person that stoled your work?

Did PA steal our work? Not in the sense you see stealing as. They did steal our rights to the book through false advertising and misleading tactics. Had I known that I wouldn't be able to get into bookstores, that my book would be $19.95 for 224 pages, that whenever I said something that PA didn't deem worthy that I would be banned, that I wouldn't be getting more than spellcheck when they claim they edit, etc, would I have still signed with them? NO!!! Is my book perfect? No way, it was my second book and I'm still learning. Is it publishable elsewhere? If I would have gotten some feedback that said it needs editing then I think yes it could be. Would it be a bestseller? No, probably not.

I have a little over five years left until my contract is up and those are five years that my book could be sitting on a shelf, available for people to read. Did I get into this for the money? No, but it would be nice to do this for a living. I love to write, and that is why I do it. At the end of my book I have an afterword, here is a paragraph from it.

"I have no idea how well this book will do. I write to fulfill my needs and desires. If in the process it fulfills yours as well, I'm glad. If you find the chaos that I call my mind entertaining then who am I to argue. I just hope we can do it again. I have more books to come. Hopefully the experiences that I've learned from this book will make the ones to follow better."

I'm mad at them, but it isn't consuming me. I will tell my story because I feel it is my obligation to do so. When I signed on with PA there wasn't that much bad publicity about them on the net, most of it was good with a few bad. I weighed the scenarios and thought that since the majority liked PA then they must be legit. The more people that tell their story the better, it shows that this is not a one time occurrence. To me, I feel like the police. They call up people and say "we have had reports of scammers in town, they seem to be going after people like you so be careful. If you see anyone that says they do this (place topic here) then call us."

New authors need to be warned.

Does PA steal? Yeah, they stoled Bly's bio to promote their own didn't they? You may think it was a mistake, but I don't. It got their authors talking, the word spread and they would have continued using it if someone wouldn't have said something. They are trying to look legit, but the mink coat they are wearing is a bit to small. They didn't buy it, they stole it from someone else.

Kevin Yarbrough

CaoPaux

07-10-2004, 04:30 AM

Just in case one needs more evidence that PA behaves oddly.

www.publishamerica.com/cg...e/4538.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4538.htm)

DaveKuzminski

07-10-2004, 05:05 AM

Mind you, there are other publishers that will ask if there are any followup books. Some have been known to offer a contract on a novel that's not complete. However, it's been my experience that they are usually seeking a sequel, though not always, to a book that is selling well.

The operative words here are TO A BOOK THAT IS SELLING WELL.

priceless1

07-10-2004, 05:22 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Just in case one needs more evidence that PA behaves oddly.
www.publishamerica.com/cg...e/4538.htm<hr></blockquote>
Wow, this is fascinating and downright scary. To accept a novel based on three chapters is suicide. Out of the 93 full manuscripts we've read, 60 were rejected because the manuscript simply fell apart after the first three chapters for one reason or another.

Reviewing a scant three chapters is simply not enough to warrant issuing a contract for publication. If this company is at all concerned with improving their reputation, they should start by employing some standards.

Geez, this is akin to buying a house without bothering to open the front door to peek inside. Unbelievable.

priceless1

07-10-2004, 05:26 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Mind you, there are other publishers that will ask if there are any followup books. Some have been known to offer a contract on a novel that's not complete. However, it's been my experience that they are usually seeking a sequel, though not always, to a book that is selling well.<hr></blockquote>
This is true, Dave. In fact, we're doing that very thing with one of our authors whose first book is doing extremely well. However, since we're small, I still insisted on seeing the entire manuscript before we signed the author for the sequel. I'm sure all of us have seen a first book be terrific only to see that the sequel bites. The way I look at is, this is my money going into this product and I dang well don't want any surprises. I'll save that for Christmas.

James D Macdonald

07-10-2004, 07:02 AM

Three chapters is plenty to reject a book.

If the first three hold up well, the usual thing is to request the full manuscript.

Now, mind you, there are all kinds of special cases and counter examples around. Established pros can sell on an outline. When you're making a living at this racket, oftentimes you're shopping around three-and-an-outline and not writing the book until it's bought. But that's for established pros.

DaveKuzminski

07-10-2004, 08:13 AM

James is right. Also, the pressures are different. Now there's a deadline to meet on what is supposed to be an original book. We're not talking about a deadline on editing proofs.

LaVerneRoss

07-10-2004, 09:19 AM

I talked to the IRS tonight, and they want to hear from any other writers who are sure or think they are owed money from PA. You can call them and file a complaint...1-800-829-0433.

Jarocal

07-10-2004, 01:06 PM

I wouldn't find it odd for a Publisher who makes their money off of selling their books to the Author, the Author's family/friends, and maybe a couple more copies on the side, to agree to publish a book on based three chapters. It was only recently that Poetry.Con started filtering submissions for diatribes against their site. Why would PA reject a manuscript from a person willing to make them money again. I noticed in the thread on the PA board someone noted it took longer to get approval for the second manuscript than it did the first. This would only support the notion of PA's Business model and is most likely an intentional delay on PA's part to allow every cent to be gleaned from the first one and Aunty Em's cookie jar to get a bit more money back in it after buying the first. If they allowed the release of the the second book too soon after the first, family and friends may tend to choose one or the other instead of both, it will also lesson the numbers of the first book purchased by the Author at a "discount". By sticking the manuscript in a file cabinet and putting a little reminder message on a desktop computer task scheduler to send an acceptance email a couple months later, they in effect guarantee better sales for the book than if they just said yes right away. The person who started the thread would have probably had to wait the normal time frame but their schedule got skewed because of the comment by the guy saying she should not have sent jut the three chapters in. Actually their schedule is probably still on target because she admitted the rest of the book is not complete yet and they can fairly well infer that it will take her a few months to get the manuscript done. If she manages to complete it early, they simply drag their feet with the publishing process and the book still ends up coming out about a year after the first, plenty of time for the "Friends and Family" wallet to refill itself becoming ready to dole out more money for her newest book.

One thing that does surprise me is that they don't pursue sequel rights to books and throw a little clause in about them controlling the release dates for marketing purposes. That would in effect give them twice the sales and if a disgruntled author wanted to walk away they could then hold the rights to the sequel hostage as well as the original. I am sure there are plenty of authors out there who after becoming disenchanted with the PA model would give a quick grand and sign a gag agreement to get their beloved property back early. As long as they kept the price under what obtaining legal counsel would cost, many people would just shell out the dough, even ones who did seek legal counsel may be swayed by their own counsel to purchase it back at "the reasonable offer" rather than pursue litigation, or wait the seven years for the rights to revert.

Teena Haywood

07-10-2004, 03:40 PM

LaVerne:

Thanks for posting the IRS phone numbers. I, for one, truly appreciate it.

James D Macdonald

07-10-2004, 07:38 PM

If bookstores truly didn't care about returnability there wouldn't be a returnable book published in America by this time next week.

DaveKuzminski

07-11-2004, 01:03 AM

One of the tricks that PublishAmerica has used is to claim that certain complaints are old news and no longer reliable. I've seen that kind of comment in their forum and in emails to writers who dared to ask beforehand about the complaints. Those writers then shared the responses with me for my input.

This is the primary reason for why each new complaint should be aired and posted for all to see. It's important to deny PA the ability to claim that any complaints against it are old news because they haven't changed their ways.

Over four years ago, P&E dared to review a copy of their contract that was furnished it by a writer needing advice. Upon seeing the rights grab made by PA along with the contract length, I couldn't do anything but recommend against them. That set PA off and they've been after P&E ever since. No one else knew then just how bad they would behave toward authors.

Since then, they've cut the length of their contract down to seven years and have put in a comment that the film negotiation rights have to be assigned to them in writing though I suspect that a good lawyer could make the case for them that the contract already gives those to PA. As well, the writers who generally sign with PA don't have lawyers of their own because they generally can't afford them. Consequently, for PA it's like shooting fish in a barrel with a sawed-off shotgun.

There's really no way for anyone to estimate accurately just how many writers we've saved from the PA route at Absolute Write, Writers Net, Writers Beware, and P&E. However, given the number that PA has grabbed and how violently PA opposes us, I suspect that we've put a significant dent into their operations, possibly warning away greater than fifty-percent because we've kept the PA name and the complaints in plain view so that more and more writers know the truth.

So, are we going to let this topic settle? Not on your life. It's one of the few cost-effective methods we have for dealing with a predatory publisher.

aka eraser

07-11-2004, 01:07 AM

Every single day some PA author (or three) finally strips the veil from his/her eyes and realizes the truth. The truth hurts. Often they are banished from the boards and friends they previously considered as "home." They seek the company and understanding of others who have experienced the same thing.

Some wend their way here. They vent. Eventually, each at their own pace, they deal with it and move on. Many stay here to pass on their own advice and share their own experience with the newly-disappointed.

The fact that they do so only seems to bother a couple of people. Perhaps the "problem" is with those couple of people.

lastr

07-11-2004, 08:16 PM

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4907.htm

http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4913.htm

PA online store has been down since Friday and the writers are starting to notice, two threads so far started on the subject.

SRHowen

07-11-2004, 08:21 PM

Interesting. Then again there are all sorts of people in the world who play weird games.

Too bad a big bad billy goat has to knock them off the bridge eventually. Ever notice how they spout their qualifications but never back them up?:jump

Shawn

James D Macdonald

07-11-2004, 08:45 PM

A troll's (http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame29.html) purpose is to turn the conversation away from the thread's topic and into a discussion of the troll (http://www.usenet.com/articles/usenet_trolls.htm). Trolls (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Usenet troll) go away if they aren't being talked about. The way to deal with trolls (http://www.angelfire.com/space/usenet/) is to ignore them; don't let them derail the conversation. When they get hungry they go on to other message boards where they can get their preferred food.

You can still find trolls (http://www.intersurf.com/~aevinc/aev2trol.htm) lurking after they apparently left, though, when they aren't locked out. A newbie arrives, and all of a sudden it's Troll (http://www.gingicat.org/jacob/troll.html) City again.

<hr>

Now, let's see: Hey, InfoCenter! I know you still monitor this board, so could you give Charley a hand? <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4913.htm" target="_new">www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4913.htm</a>.

Seems your on-line bookstore is down, so when Charley's nephew tried to order a copy, he couldn't.

Pierrette had the same problem, and you didn't even answer her email. Guys, get with it! At least pretend you're trying to sell books, okay?

"...in P.A fashion I am sure they're working on it," Pierrette says, and you know something? I'm sure that in PA fashion, they are.

Now, a blast from the past. Remember the silly (not to mention misleading) reply that InfoCenter gave to folks who were wondering why their books weren't in bookstores? I think I figured something out. Look here:

Remember this bit:

<BLOCKQUOTE>A Vice President at Barnes and Noble wrote us a letter recently, saying, "We very much believe in print-on-demand (POD) technology as a cost-effective tool available for publishers to extend the range of their title offerings to Barnes & Noble... We believe that POD represents an opportunity to increase the range of titles we offer... We will continue to stock every title that you publish, which enables us to rapidly replenish our stores..."</blockquote>

That doesn't make a lot of sense. Why should B&N think that POD publishing will enable them to rapidly replenish their stores? POD printing is slower than offset. POD printers don't use faster shipping methods than anyone else. And if B&N were having trouble restocking their stores in good time, they'd be talking to Ingram or Baker & Taylor or their favorite shipping firms, not to PublishAmerica. Moreover, if they were making an agreement that involved shipping and restocking, the whole thing would be a lot more serious and technical than this cheerily superficial little note.

But notice the ellipses.

I suspect those sentences or sentence fragments come from different paragraphs. Let's home in on this one here:

We will continue to stock every title that you publish, which enables us to rapidly replenish our stores...

Now it's obvious that B&N doesn't stock every title PublishAmerica publishes. Check your random B&N and you'll find you're hard-pressed to find any PA title in stock. The PA message boards are chock-a-block (until the threads are deleted and the author banned) with stories of authors unable to get their books stocked on the shelves of physical B&N stores despite going to the managers and begging.

So, what does this mean? Let's combine it with a sentence from a bit higher up in that silly, superficial, and misleading InfoCenter reply:

"Also worthy of note, most of your books are physically, actually, in stock at Ingram, with copies in their Oregon and Tennessee warehouses, and at a Barnes and Noble distribution center, ready to ship immediately."

"Most of your books are physically ... at a Barnes and Noble distribution center, ready to ship immediately."

Okay, got it. The Vice President of B&N is saying, sure, we'll take one copy of each book to put in one or another massive echoing distribution center, just in case someone, somewhere orders one. They keep books in those warehouses "...which enables us to rapidly replenish our stores...."

That won't put PublishAmerica books on B&N shelves out where the public can see (and perhaps buy) them, but it sure allows InfoCenter to post misleading information without technically lying.

DaveKuzminski

07-11-2004, 09:02 PM

Ah, but the sad thing is that honest publishers don't have to twist the words of others in the manner that PA uses.

Maybe we need to write one of those sources to find out exactly what they stated, if anything, in response to PA.

James D Macdonald

07-11-2004, 09:29 PM

Maybe we need to write one of those sources to find out exactly what they stated, if anything, in response to PA.

Not easy. We don't know the date of this letter (at least two, maybe three years ago), nor who it was from, nor who it was to. I'm sure B&N has a lot of vice presidents.

If you want to do it, Dave, in your role as editor of P&E, I'm sure you'll get more attention than I would. Not that they'd necessarily give you a copy even if it did exist and they could find it -- a letter between them and some third party? B&N would be quite within the limits of propriety to say "none of your business." What it might take would be a subpoena. Having a court ask PA to provide the original would be the simplest way to go.

Dee, we're rooting for ya.

HapiSofi

07-11-2004, 11:52 PM

Re: the analysis of PA's "quote" from B&N:

James, that is immensely clever of you. I'd noticed the broken logic in PA's chopped-up version of the quote, with its carefully contrived (yet nonsensical) impression that POD will make it possible for B&N to restock more quickly.

I knew B&N couldn't possibly be agreeing to stock all of PA's titles -- first, because B&N manifestly doesn't stock PA titles except in special-case dribs and drabs at one or two stores; and second, because B&N would never agree to stock all of any publisher's titles. What I hadn't seen was the connection between "we will continue to stock every title that you publish" and "distribution center". Your interpretation has to be the correct one: B&N is agreeing to keep a small number of each PA title in one of its distribution centers, purely for B&N's own shipping convenience.

Applause, applause. Good catch there.

We know that individual stores will order PA titles if the customer specifically requests one and pays for it in advance. Having a copy in the distribution center means that B&N store doesn't have to keep track of the order while it waits for PA to send the book, and the customer doesn't have to keep checking in to see whether it's arrived. The store can get the book from their own distribution center within a predictable amount of time, and then the distribution center can let PA know that they need to restock their one or two copies of that title.

No way does it have anything to do with PA titles being offered for sale on the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble. As we've known all along, neither Barnes & Noble nor any other chain is going to stock PA titles, and precious few independents are going to do it either.

mogie

07-12-2004, 02:33 AM

You're always a great resource for all kinds of things, Jim. Great job putting your interpretive gifts to use.

Uncle Jim- Word Detective.

Thanks for all your efforts.
-mogie

aka eraser

07-12-2004, 02:54 AM

I'll echo the huzzahs Jim.

For those who may be interested, I opened a "Free Speech" thread on the Take It Outside board.

DeePower

07-12-2004, 04:05 AM

There was a comment made that not enough specific warnings had been posted about PublishAmerica on this board.

So if you are a writer considering publishing with PublishAmerica - PA Consider these points.

PA books are very difficult to place in bookstores because PA does not offer the standard discount and does not accept returns. Many independent bookstores won't even accept PA books on consignment. Accepting returns is the industry norm, and by not accepting returns from bookstores and distributors such as Ingrams, Pa is almost guaranteeing that their books will NOT be in bricks and mortar bookstores.

Both the chains and independents won't do a booksigning for a PA published author because they consider PA to be a vanity press much like the POD presses.

Many reviewers, especially traditional print media will not review a POD or PublishAmerica book as a matter of policy. The trades, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews won't review a PA book. These publications don't want to waste precious review space on books which are not distributed nationally.

Publish America does not obtain a Library of Congress catalog description for their books, which means it is difficult to convince libraries to buy PA books, and libraries buy thousands and thousands of books. The lack of a Library of Congress catalog description (normally on the page of the book the copyright notice is on) marks the book as self published or vanity published. The Library of Congress will not issue a catalog description to a vanity title.

PA is rude, condescending and arrogant to their own authors.

Let me repeat that:

PA is rude, condescending and arrogant to their own authors.

PublishAmerica demands that their authors communicate with them only be email to support@publishamerica.com They say any other forms of communication including postal mail and faxes from their authors will be trashed unread.

The bulletin board at PA is monitored constantly by PublishAmerica, any post that could be considered negative is immediately pulled. Any question about why PA books aren'tin bookstores is pulled. Publish America also bans their own authors from posting on the PA boards if PA doesn't like what the author posts on other boards such as the one you're reading now.

PA accepts any book that they feel the author will sell at least 20 copies.

PA has 8000 authors and will have to "publish" 3000 titles in the next 12 months in order to meet their contract of publishing within one year of signing. Penguin Putnam publishes 3000 books a year. Does PA have the same staff level for editing, cover design and marketing that Penguin does? PA says they meticulously line edit. They would have to edit 10 books a day in order to meet their obligation. And design 10 book covers, as well as send out 10 press releases. Where is their staff hidden? You be the judge their offices are pictured here www.publishamerica.com/Ou.../index.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/OurOffice/index.htm) Yes that's just a townhouse in Maryland.

PA books are sometimes not even in the system for the bookstores to special order.

I know all this because I had a book published with PA. That was the wrong decision to make.

However we have hired a literary - entertainment law firm to pursue legal action if necessary to obtain the full rights to our book back to us.

Dee Power
www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com (http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com)

vstrauss

07-12-2004, 05:33 AM

I've just been kind of assuming that PA made up that quoted B&N "letter".

- Victoria

aka eraser

07-12-2004, 09:06 AM

I copied and pasted several posts from here and re-posted the lot at a new topic on the Take It Outside board called: Hashing and Re-hashing.

I then deleted those posts from here. Feel free to continue the discussion on the TIO Board.

Ed Williams 3

07-12-2004, 09:25 AM

....you wouldn't be Baghdad Bob in disguise, would you?

absolutewrite

07-12-2004, 02:43 PM

Simon, I'm playing clean-up committee here all by my lonesome. My mods are more tolerant than I am, I'm afraid.

Me, I feel the need to move on. I didn't see this thread before now because I already *had* moved on, but was directed back just to see that you're still playing the same note. I'll take the liberty of responding to you on behalf of everyone:

Simon, you're right. If people had realized PA was fishy, they should have done some research and found boards like this earlier. Could have saved them some grief. And no, it isn't on the same scale as rape or murder. But it is still painful. And the people who complain loudly are the ones who can help save future writers from the same grief.

This thread-- the ONLY thread where people can freely complain about PA on a message board filled with literally thousands of other threads-- is made for a purpose, which has become encompassing of (a) warning writers who have not yet been sucked in, (b) discussing ways those who've already been sucked in can deal with it, and (c) offering support, camaraderie, and resources. That's the purpose, and you are serving to make people feel small and stupid for (a) not realizing something was fishy to begin with, and (b) not being willing to just move on and forget the product of their hard work.

Anything further you have to say on this topic, you're free to share in the Take It Outside forum. You'll still have plenty of an audience there; this is just not the place for it. If anyone comes here looking for real info about PA, you and those who responded to you just spent about 3 pages keeping it obscured.

I'm asking the mods to delete anything further from you here. Please, whine to me about censorship. I can take it.

CaoPaux

07-12-2004, 10:21 PM

I have a hazy recollection that someone asked about the elusive hardcover a few pages back. Or maybe it was me.

www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4926.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4926.htm)

For those just joining us, if a PA author manages to sell 500 copies (including what they buy themselves), their book will be "considered" for reissue under the Independence label. This honor includes availability in hard cover and a returns policy, so a bookstore may actually stock their book on shelves.

James D Macdonald

07-12-2004, 10:34 PM

If I recall correctly there are a few other caveats besides the weasel-word of being "considered" for the Independence program after 500 sales:

1) They're inconsistent as to whether books you purchase yourself count.

2) The books have to be paid for in advance by the bookstore (vice net 60-90 days as is usual in publishing).

3) There are maximum and minimum orders required.

4) Any returns must be within sixty days.

5) There's no mention of distribution, a catalog, or a sales force.

6) There's no mention of what the bookstore discount might be.

07-12-2004, 11:09 PM

And it is only to B&N. I haven't heard of any other bookstores getting the deal.

Kevin

CaoPaux

07-12-2004, 11:16 PM

Here’s a discussion of the Independence label from a while back.

www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/9828.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/9828.htm)

FM St George

07-12-2004, 11:27 PM

it changes almost monthly on the standards - recently they included something like "a work that illustrated the best principles of fighting against all odds like PublishAmerica has" or some such drivel...

I've seen them include AND exclude books bought by the author - probably more than likely they exclude them if you go out and drop a bundle because then they'd have to follow through...

I've NEVER seen anyone speak about finding an ID book on the shelves...

DaveKuzminski

07-13-2004, 12:32 AM

Part of the reason for those, James, is that I suspect they're still learning how the book publishing business actually works. Their actions thus far make it appear that they came in with their own model after hearing only a small portion of how it worked and decided that couldn't be right or was unfair to them as a business. On top of trying to force their new model upon everyone, they still want to be considered to be a traditional publisher.

RejectME

07-13-2004, 03:48 AM

Do you mean one of PA's Independence books or do you mean you haven't heard of a book put out by an indie publisher being on shelves?

Thanks,
Jerry :hat

James D Macdonald

07-13-2004, 04:30 AM

I've seen and continue to see books by all kinds of small-press and independent publishers on bookstore shelves. I'm reasonably sure that Dave means Indepencence Books (PA's imprint).

Jarocal

07-13-2004, 07:06 AM

Dave,

I think your assessment on PA's actions give them more credence than they are due. I think they are just a nifty scam operation that learned a way to do it within the bounds of the law. I think the ID imprint is only an offshoot to bolster the image of PA in that the few books that do make it into the program will receive enough attention to become traditionally published books with mediocre sales which will encourage more people to ascribe a measure of legitimacy to a otherwise legal scam operation.

DaveKuzminski

07-13-2004, 07:30 AM

James, I was referring to your post on the previous page with that topic subject.

I wasn't referring to any indie publishers.

Jarocal, that is only speculation on my part regarding how they started. At this point, I believe they know what they're doing and that much of it is or borders so close on illegal that they have to have a section in their contract specifying an independent company for quarrel resolution so they can avoid most, if not all, instances of writers taking them to court. However, I believe that eventually that defense mechanism of theirs will fail. When it does, they'll find themselves paying out most or all of their ill-gotten gains.

As to your own apparent speculation on their imprint, I agree with your assessment.

Jarocal

07-13-2004, 08:00 AM

I honestly don't think they started with a good intention. I think that they delved into a concerted effort to create a scam that affords their company protection under the law. If they wanted to start a legit comapny they would not have gotten a townhouse in Frederick, they would have picked up a warehouse for the same price in a local commercial/Industrial park and did a inexpensive attempt of making it over into a business front. I would think that at the very least they would have done that and started filling a section of it with the one or two copies of each title they need to have on hand. That would have played to the "fighting on their side" image to the authors to see a modest warehouse converted for use. The larger building, at the same price, would have also struck away the claims of some that they can not do the job they claim to do in such a small office (although I believe I adequately explained the reason why they could function in the setting they are in). The idea of actually shelving and categorizing the books published by PA also would show that they were sincere in their efforts to help new authors whereas the office they have and the probable storage of the single copy of the books in a cheap U-Store-It garage somewhere show that they are only meeting the bare legal requirements. If I were to set up a scam I would do it exactly as PA has done because it looks like a scam, it sounds like a scam, but it appears to be technically legal, if somewhat unethical. I also stated before about their choice of venue for legal action (Maryland). I don't find that the location of Poetry.Con and Publish America to be a coincidence, I think if digging were done that one would find a case history or laws favoring the ability for such businesses to continue their practices unimpeded. I live a couple hours away and have been tempted to take the ride to Frederick just to see their setup in person. I do know of a couple Commerce parks in the area that would have suited their purpose better than the townhouse if growing a business were their intentions, which leaves me wondering if the townhouse may not also act as a residence for one of the principles in the company. Being able to write the lease to your home off as a business expense would be a handy thing for a scam artist to do. With as muh business as PA does it would be easy for them to take the maximum allowable deduction. Something even more interesting would be to get the guy in trouble for having someone reside in a commercial place of business without a residency permit.

The idea of the warehouse being the headquarters would also show that the ID label was something the company always envisioned PA to grow into, something beyond helping most people "get published", the space for expansion to support a honest concerted effort like the ID label for "the cream of the crop" which have a chance to hit the best seller list and actually warrant offset production runs.

HapiSofi

07-13-2004, 09:14 AM

Victoria said: I've just been kind of assuming that PA made up that quoted B&N "letter".Nah. Too risky. You can chop-slice-and-dice a real letter, but quoting a nonexistent letter is straightforwardly illegal. There are no circumstances in which it's allowable. If caught, defendants have no grounds for arguing that they were, however stupidly or mistakenly, acting in good faith.

priceless1

07-13-2004, 09:16 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>I believe they know what they're doing and that much of it is or borders so close on illegal that they have to have a section in their contract specifying an independent company for quarrel resolution so they can avoid most, if not all, instances of writers taking them to court.<hr></blockquote>

Dave, I've been told by two attorneys that this arbitration they talk about in their contract won't hold water in any court. It's fancy wording meant to scare and intimidate, but these guys I've consulted know their lit law.

DaveKuzminski

07-13-2004, 09:31 AM

Yes, Lynn, I agree with that assessment. Intimidation is a significant part of their style. Still, it's worked for them so far in most of their dealings.

James D Macdonald

07-13-2004, 11:21 AM

I was replying to Jerry's post, Dave.

I personally think that PA set up Independence Books when word of exactly how bad the "no returns" policy was got to spreading out in the naive-writer community. They had to do something, so they set up this pie-in-the-sky system to make it look like returnability was available -- only with so many restrictions on it that almost no one would ever be able to achieve it. It looks now like they have two books in the program, enough to make it look like it's real, without having to go so far as become a publisher or sell books.

All part of the window dressing.

lastr

07-13-2004, 06:45 PM

----------
Message:
Please check out PREDITORS AND EDITORS. This site is fantastic and is a must for writers:

www.anotherealm.com/prededitors (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors)

Just remember, if anything sounds too good to be true; well, you know.

Eyes Wide Open,
-----------
My guess is this post will get deleted soon.

www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/10298.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/10298.htm)

aka eraser

07-13-2004, 09:29 PM

A former PA author sent me some correspondence between him and B&N. This author used to post on AW but was banned. He has asked me to post the exchange of mails and because it seems relevant to some of the above discussion I've decided to do so.

I've edited text that is not germane and that would identify the author.

In his initial letter to B&N (addressed to publisherauthorinquiry(at)book.com) he quotes PA and asks B&N to comment. It's not clear whether he is quoting from personal correspondence with someone at PA or from a message posted on the PA site.

The "they" he is referring to in the introduction to his quote is Publish America.

From former PA author:

This is what they say about you:

"BN is a commercial institution, out to make money. They have not been doing too great lately, overall sales down 4 pct in February, 8 pct in March, 2 pct in April, and 0.5 pct in May. Their BN.com enterprise does even worse, they had to decide to cut their operation expenses by 50 pct, because the unit continues to lose money. Add to this their B. Dalton daughter's results: sales down more than 11 pct.

And that's not all. BN is also a 49 pct owner of vanity publisher iUniverse, an outfit that, while lavishly funded by venture capital (last year they received a $18 million injection), has yet to make a profit.

So there's your landscape. BN is willing to sell books, not only because that is the business they're in, but because they have to. Do they sell print-on-demand books? You bet. They run their own on-demand presses, and they are now doing the printing of an ever-growing number of PA titles themselves, because they sell so well! Other titles they order either directly from us, or from wholesaler Ingram who prints them at their own outfit Lightning Source. In fact, BN is one of PA's largest customers, placing orders virtually every day.

The message that some of you advocate to be issued to their local store managers has actually already been issued through BN's internal channels. Each store manager knows, or is supposed to know, where and how to order PA titles, and the majority of them does so regularly. If you delve into the history of this message board, you will find numerous examples of authors who arranged events in BN stores with great success.

Does this mean that all local managers are helpful and pro-active? No, not always. We don't know for sure, but we suspect that there is some truth to the grapevine rumor that some managers detest BN's commitment to iUniverse. They had so many authors come up with substandard quality books that they paid a small fortune for to be published, books that sell badly but that BN stores are expected to order from their own on-demand printers regardless, that they go postal whenever their computer screen says "print on demand".

It is BN that has some internal educating to do, and at a headquarters level they are aware of this. BN headquarters continues to instruct their store managers that on-demand printing is the wave of the future (hence BN's heavy investments in on-demand printing equipment). They also show on their computer databases that all (!) PA titles can safely be ordered, together with the on-demand printed titles of the majority of our fellow traditional publishers, including Random House, Simon&Schuster, HarperCollins, etc.

We continue to maintain excellent relations with BN headquarters, and they assure us that more letterhead-carrying paperwork is unnecessary to underscore a corporate policy that is already in place, and we believe they're right because the sales numbers show it.

Need a little consolation for those who still run into a brick wall? BN has recently forced their vanity daughter iUniverse to drastically cut back on the number of titles that automatically qualify for special BN treatment, from many thousands down to a few hundred. Over time, this will help to ease the nerves of store managers who are only human. They will eventually know how to distinguish between vanity published books and traditionally published books such as PA's. Just give those poor souls some time. They will come around."

On Aug. 28/03 publisherauthorinquiry(at)book.com replied:

Hello,

Can you please provide a link to the text you provided?

thanks

On Sept. 8/03 the author replied:

Dear AE,
What ever happened with this issue? I'm very interested in the verdict on what this publisher claims they do. My investigation leads me to believe "nothing" is the answer, but I want your take on it. Thanks.
Sincerely,
(name)

On Sept. 9/03 publisherauthorinquiry replied:

Hello,

BN.COM does not stock POD books unless the sales are such that warehouse stock is warranted. The number of titles that fit that bill is minute. Yes major publishers use digital printing but not in the sense that Publish America does. Random, Simon etc, actually hold stock of books in their warehouse opposed to sending a file over to Lightening source to print.

Publish America may not be a typical vanity press since they do more, however neither are they a traditional publisher. Barnes and Noble stores do not generally stock POD books, that is an antithesis to the very meaning of print on demand. Once in a while, there is a pod title that will sell very well and the stores may make an exception and carry the title. That, however, is up to the store.

As taken from the BN website:

Print-on-demand titles: with over one million titles already in print, and another 50,000 or more published every year, we obviously cannot carry every book that is published. Indeed, the key to print-on-demand technology is that it enables publishers to keep a vast number of titles in print and available without stocking inventory. Print-on-demand titles will continue to be featured on the Barnes & Noble.com website, and available for customer orders in our stores.
-------------------------

James D Macdonald

07-14-2004, 01:33 AM

The PublishAmerica InfoCenter material appears to come from <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/6654.htm" target="_new">this thread</a>.
<hR>

Time to do a line-by-line on the mendacious InfoCenter Twaddle in that thread too.

First, this message:

infocenter
Administrator
5/30/2003

<BLOCKQUOTE>
We've replied to this issue before, and we wish that we could correct the apparent communication challenges within Barnes and Noble. Here is some information about the issue posted again, followed by the text of a letter from the Director of Barnes & Noble's InPrint (print on demand) facility.</blockquote>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Contrary to what you may have been told by a local Barnes and Noble bookstore manager, they have no such policy at all, </blockquote>

Presumably as refusing to carry any PA books across the board.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
and no, they do not categorize PublishAmerica as anything other than what we are. </blockquote>

How much easier to say "they catagorize us as a traditional publisher" if that were the case. The way this reads, what it undoubtedly means is "they catagorize us as a vanity POD, and by golly we are a vanity POD."

<BLOCKQUOTE>
As a matter of fact, Barnes and Noble contacted us about joining their new print on demand InPrint operation, in which PublishAmerica is now a partner.</blockquote>

B&N at one point had a PoD operation called "InPrint," and owned their own digital printing machines. Perhaps B&N rented time on those machines to PA -- it's well within the realm of belief. Any time the presses weren't printing anything they were costing money. But B&N shut down their PoD operations in August of '03, selling all the hardware to Lightning Source International.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Not only does Barnes and Noble have no policy against stocking print on demand books, Barnes and Noble actually runs their own print on demand facility! And, in that facility, they actually print PublishAmerica books.</blockquote>

Yes, it's probably true that at some time they sold press time to PA. B&N has gotten out of that business since. Other than that, local managers can stock a small number of non-returnable books by local authors, at their option. I expect there are a number of hedges and caveats around that in internal B&N directives.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
We get along very well with Barnes and Noble, so well that they have quadrupled the number of books that they order from PublishAmerica during the past year. Your books are available from Barnes and Noble and all major bookstores and distributors.</blockquote>

Which year did they quadruple orders in? Was it this year, last year, some other year, or every year? Some real numbers would be very handy here.

"Available from" isn't the same as "stocked in." "Available from" means they will special order the books, when individually requested and paid in advance.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From: [Director of Barnes and Noble InPrint Operation]
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003
Subject: RE: Barnes and Noble
</blockquote>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
[My colleague] and I spoke today and clarified that your
titles will continue to be orderable through
Barnes & Noble.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
17:08:40</blockquote>

Note that "orderable" isn't the same thing as "stocked." It appears from this quoted portion of an email that there was a question of whether PublishAmerica books would continue to be orderable. I wonder what the problem was -- failure to ship in a reasonable time? Poor order fulfillment? Poor quality leading to customers requesting refunds?

<HR>

Second InfoCenter note:

Infocenter
Administrator
6/05/2003
21:44:24

<BLOCKQUOTE>
BN is a commercial institution, out to make money. They have not been doing too great lately, overall sales down 4 pct in February, 8 pct in March, 2 pct in April, and 0.5 pct in May. Their BN.com enterprise does even worse, they had to decide to cut their operation expenses by 50 pct, because the unit continues to lose money. Add to this their B. Dalton daughter's results: sales down more than 11 pct.</blockquote>

This is, simply stated, a flaming lie. As in "not true." As in "made up from whole cloth."

First of all, the question must be asked, when the charge is that B&N refuses to stock PA titles, why does InfoCenter feel obliged to attempt to trash B&N as their first move? What's the point of that?

Next, per B&N's financials filed with the SEC (in other words, if they fib they go to jail):

Gross sales (dollars in thousands)

13 weeks ending May 3, 2003
$1,185,605

Compare that to the same quarter, previous year:

13 weeks ending May 3, 2002
$1,133,126

Up 4.6% from the previous year.

While gross sales at B.Dalton were down, that was due to closing B.Dalton stores -- fewer stores produce lower total sales. Gross sales per store at B.Dalton were up.

Any business will attempt to cut its cost of doing business, in an attempt to make more profit.

Gross Profit, all stores (Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, and others)(Gross sales - cost of goods and occupancy, dollars in thousands)

1998 $862,891
1999 $1,002,314
2000 $1,206,080
2001 $1,310,352
2002 $1,413,493
2003 $1,627,248

That is, gross profits up by about 100 million dollars a year, every year, for the past five years. That doesn't look much like a business that has "not been doing too great lately."

BN.com, at the time PA posted this note, wasn't owned by Barnes&Noble. It was owned by Bertelsmann AG, a German conglomerate. Barnes&Noble bought bn.com from Bertelsmann on 15 September, 2003, for $165,406,000 in cash and notes.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
And that's not all. BN is also a 49 pct owner of vanity publisher iUniverse, an outfit that, while lavishly funded by venture capital (last year they received a $18 million injection), has yet to make a profit.</blockquote>

Again, completely untrue. At the time InfoCenter posted this message, B&N owned 22% of iUniverse.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
So there's your landscape. BN is willing to sell books, not only because that is the business they're in, but because they have to.</blockquote>

A nonsensical statement.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Do they sell print-on-demand books? You bet. They run their own on-demand presses, and they are now doing the printing of an ever-growing number of PA titles themselves, because they sell so well!</blockquote>

Because PA paid them to do so, is probably more like it. But, as noted above, Barnes&Noble is out of the PoD printing business now.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Other titles they order either directly from us, or from wholesaler Ingram who prints them at their own outfit Lightning Source. In fact, BN is one of PA's largest customers, placing orders virtually every day.</blockquote>

Orders virtually every day? Really? That means ... a minimum of 364 copies (since most orders are for single copies, right?)

<BLOCKQUOTE>
The message that some of you advocate to be issued to their local store managers has actually already been issued through BN's internal channels. Each store manager knows, or is supposed to know, where and how to order PA titles, and the majority of them does so regularly. If you delve into the history of this message board, you will find numerous examples of authors who arranged events in BN stores with great success.</blockquote>

They know how to order copies. Great. The question was about stocking copies, wasn't it? "If you delve into the history of this message board" you'll find even more examples of authors getting shut out of B&N -- until the messages are deleted and the authors banned, that is.

In any case, "arranging an event" isn't the same thing as stocking copies on the shelf, particularly not stocking copies on the shelf in stores outside of the author's driving range.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Does this mean that all local managers are helpful and pro-active? No, not always. We don't know for sure, but we suspect that there is some truth to the grapevine rumor that some managers detest BN's commitment to iUniverse.</blockquote>

As opposed to the grapevine rumor that managers detest PublishAmerica?

<BLOCKQUOTE> They had so many authors come up with substandard quality books that they paid a small fortune for to be published, books that sell badly but that BN stores are expected to order from their own on-demand printers regardless, that they go postal whenever their computer screen says "print on demand".</blockquote>

Substandard quality -- sell badly -- no wonder they go postal whenever the computer screen says "print on demand." By the way, InfoCenter, are you admitting here that PublishAmerica books are "print on demand" titles? I seem to recall you denying that basic fact.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
It is BN that has some internal educating to do, and at a headquarters level they are aware of this. BN headquarters continues to instruct their store managers that on-demand printing is the wave of the future (hence BN's heavy investments in on-demand printing equipment).</blockquote>

The guys at headquarters didn't get the news either:

B&N Abandons POD, Sells Shop to Lightning Source
by Jim Milliot, PW Daily for Booksellers -- 9/25/2003
BreakingNews

...

The acquisition was completed late last month, just before B&N.com announced its intention to stop selling e-books. The two decisions remove B&N from areas that many thought were the future of book publishing and bookselling.

<BLOCKQUOTE>They also show on their computer databases that all (!) PA titles can safely be ordered, together with the on-demand printed titles of the majority of our fellow traditional publishers, including Random House, Simon&Schuster, HarperCollins, etc.</blockquote>

InfoCenter is attempting to claim that digitally printed books from major traditional publishers are the equivalent of Print on Demand titles from PA. Merely because they use the same hardware you do doesn't mean they use the same business model, you know.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
We continue to maintain excellent relations with BN headquarters, and they assure us that more letterhead-carrying paperwork is unnecessary to underscore a corporate policy that is already in place, and we believe they're right because the sales numbers show it.</blockquote>

An incoherent paragraph. BN returns your phone calls, but they refuse to put out a directive to their store managers telling them to stock PA books, is what this looks like.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Need a little consolation for those who still run into a brick wall? BN has recently forced their vanity daughter iUniverse to drastically cut back on the number of titles that automatically qualify for special BN treatment, from many thousands down to a few hundred. Over time, this will help to ease the nerves of store managers who are only human. They will eventually know how to distinguish between vanity published books and traditionally published books such as PA's.</blockquote>

Don't worry, chums -- the bookstore managers have long-since figured out how to tell the difference between traditionally published books and vanity titles such as PA's. Why do you think that your authors had, and continue to have, such a hard time getting their books on the shelves?

<BLOCKQUOTE>
Just give those poor souls some time. They will come around.</blockquote>

In the thirteen months since this message from InfoCenter was posted things have gone from bad to worse for PA authors. When are those "poor souls" going to "come around"?

NancyMehl

07-14-2004, 02:35 AM

Wow, James.

Thanks for all the effort. You certainly addressed this PA misdirection with clarity and intelligence.

It is appreciated.

Nancy

nancymehlbooks.com

DaveKuzminski

07-14-2004, 05:12 AM

Hasn't been deleted yet. Now there's a plug for Writer Beware.

I'm surprised that HB didn't refer to me as a literary terrorist. He must be getting feeble.

James D Macdonald

07-14-2004, 05:32 AM

I got interested in that claim that B&N "quadrupled" their orders from PublishAmerica in the previous year. I went to the PA board to search on "quadrupled," and found:

Actually, Barnes and Noble has quadrupled the number of books they order from PublishAmerica during the past year, as can be seen by all the stories and reports here on the board from hundreds of authors whose books are stocked.

-- <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/response.htm" target="_new">Press Clippings (current)</a>

Actually, Barnes and Noble has quadrupled the number of books they order from PublishAmerica during the past year.

<a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4851.htm" target="_new">7/08/2004</a>

We get along very well with Barnes and Noble, so well that they have quadrupled the number of books that they order from PublishAmerica during the past year.

-- <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/6654.htm" target="_new">5/30/2003</a>

We get along very well with Barnes and Noble, so well that they have quadrupled the number of books that they order from PublishAmerica during the past year.

-- <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/signings/75.htm" target="_new">4/28/2003</a>

We get along very well with Barnes and Noble, so well that they have quadrupled the number of books that they order from PublishAmerica during the past year.

-- <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/general/123.htm" target="_new">4/09/2003</a>

<hr>

It might be interesting to get 'em to back those statements up in a court of law. It seems that they first started making that claim in '03, presumably speaking of '02 in comparison with '01. They're still making the claim in '04, presumably speaking of '03 in comparison with '02.

I think that what's going on is some vague hand-waving squishy claims that sound impressive if you don't think about them, but don't have any substance.

astonwest

07-14-2004, 05:43 AM

"Here's another good alert site.
www.sfwa.org/beware/contests.html (http://www.sfwa.org/beware/contests.html)
Ned Millis"

I wonder when they'll post up a link to this site here (or Mindsight)?
Before or after the entire thread goes bye-bye?
I'm surprised the links have stayed up this long...I thought posting links to sites which disparaged PA was grounds for instant removal...maybe that's just for me...

I did notice that the original poster of the link to P&E has decided "it's obvious that P&E is not fair and balanced" because they didn't like how PA was shown...heh...

I'm still trying to figure out how one can see that a site such as P&E "nailed" two scams they were "involved in" on another section of the site, but yet, can't put two and two together about the reason PA would be on there under the publisher section...

Oh well...

Big Daddy West
:hat

CaoPaux

07-14-2004, 05:47 AM

I found these to be an interesting juxtaposition:

Really Disappointed (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/view.pl?board=genera)

PublishAmerica does its job (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4922.htm)

emeraldcite

07-14-2004, 05:48 AM

I'm still trying to figure out how one can see that a site such as P&E "nailed" two scams they were "involved in" on another section of the site, but yet, can't put two and two together about the reason PA would be on there under the publisher section...

it's denial at its finest...

"They don't mean us, do they?"

ps. Why is the P&E site biased. One person said it and then they all start nodding their heads. "Yeah. Pretty biased. I see it now..."

What are they seeing that makes it biased. Also, the HB comment about turning a buck didn't make sense...anyone care to explain?

HB: Cheryl, that site is a little prejudice. Check the owner of every site. It's not a bible. With every site you have to ask yourself what the motivation is. Sites cost money

So what's the motivation? Dave, do you know? lol

lastr

07-14-2004, 06:42 AM

Message:
Allen and HB,

I only used the 'agents and editors' up this minute and found they nailed the two scams I was involved in accurately. And they do alert people to agents who charge, which would save a lot of time and hopes.

But! After going into the 'publishers' category, I'm not happy at trashing they gave PA.

So, never mind; it's obvious that P&E is not fair and balanced.

Thanks guys,

Message:
You're not happy? They've been trashing PA for four years without provokation or justification. Some idiot wrote the program, put the freaking Star Wars movie on 'pause', hit the left turn signal, and went right back to sleep. Trust me, I sse these dill-weeds on the freeway all the time.

So now we know why it's not fair, must be that SF connection again :rofl He must think you have BEMs in your garage and UFO's next to your house *grin*

emeraldcite

07-14-2004, 06:47 AM

lol

Yo-ho-ho, maties!
You've got to row your own boat, cuz the wind's just not gonna take you thar. Arrgh, it ain't.

ps. i shamelessly plug my old thread a treatise on being a pirate (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm32.showMessage?topicID=64.topic)

lastr

07-14-2004, 06:59 AM

I loved your treatise, but would imagine the chief pirate didn't. Umm, should anyone mention to him that several mainstream movies involving pirates and SF/Fantasy have come out in the last few years or will he accuse us of hijacking the term? YO HO HO (Where is that rum?)

Sher2

07-14-2004, 07:09 AM

I'm probably late jumping in here, but that's me -- a day late and a dollar short. Fact is, I just recently discovered this board while furiously researching PublishAmerica.

I signed with PA based on the information on their Web site. Only after I signed the contract did I discover such missing information as the no-returns policy, the fact that the only promotion my book will get is what I can figure out how to do myself, the ridiculous price (which won't even be stamped on the cover), and the fact that no actual bookstores will carry it. Never mind the fact that there will be no editing; luckily, I can do that myself. Do I feel misled? You bet!

Never in a million years would I have considered POD, much less vanity, publishing. That's exactly what I've gotten myself into, though. I have to shoulder the blame for not doing my homework BEFORE signing. It's embarrassing, but I'll get over it. One of these days. Meanwhile, I realize that my book is probably going to be pretty much a throwaway.

Any loyal PA "authors" in the vicinity will no doubt take umbrage. All I can tell you is, get a clue! And maybe get in line for Kool-Aid. LOL.

I have another book that's been finished for a while which I'm just now starting to approach REAL publishers with. I'm hoping against hope that I can get it placed before this first book comes out and, with it, the embarrassing association with PA. Meanwhile, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to change my pen name, kill her off humanely, and give her a decent burial.

Thanks for letting me vent. You have no idea how much I needed it!

Sherrie

DaveKuzminski

07-14-2004, 07:25 AM

I was supposed to get paid for operating P&E?

Must have been taken by those pirates. Yeah, that's what I'll say. Then I can put in a claim for any money found in the possession of any suspicious looking pirates.

lastr

07-14-2004, 08:38 AM

Sherrie, welcome to the group, sorry for the reason that brought you, but glad to have you here.

lastr

07-14-2004, 08:40 AM

Dave, you can have all the pirate gold you can find, maybe they didn't eat the chocolate out of the center of those gold coins yet :D

Sher2

07-14-2004, 08:49 AM

<welcome to the group, sorry for the reason that brought you, but glad to have you here. >

Thanks, Lastr. I'm glad to be here. This is by far THE best source of information.

Jarocal

07-14-2004, 09:24 AM

I may have found what is in part wrong with our educational system.

When I taught English both in Secondary and Postsecondary schools, grammar was not my main concern but the ability to put thoughts in writing was...My objective was to stimulate students to write...The 2 points off for mispelled words was out the window along with correct grammar...-Skyrocket

Link to the quote till PA pulls the Thread (Publish America Does it's Job) (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/general/1381.htm)

Maybe if the teacher had decided to teach his students that it is better to do something correctly, his students may have done better later on. At the very least they would not have had to learn the proper way to do something after they were supposed to be taught the right way before.

DaveKuzminski

07-14-2004, 09:24 AM

Well, in truth, it's like this. Every once in awhile, some individuals toss out some accusations as if they were politicians tossing out mud. They're just hoping some of it will stick so they can discredit their target.

It's a timeless trick meant to fool those who let others do their research for them. Once you prove one point, the crowd is willing to accept the other accusations as true even if those were already disproven.

Since some of the writers within the PA ranks feel indebted to PA for accepting their manuscripts for publication, they're inclined to believe that anyone who says anything contrary about their publisher is biased. In this case, the individuals aren't reading any farther than the negative recommendation. They're not following up on the links to evidence about the libels, thefts, and other misdeeds perpetrated by PA. If they did, I doubt that they'd feel there was bias any longer. At that point, I think some of them would be seeking a way out even if they didn't vocalize it within that forum.

James D Macdonald

07-14-2004, 09:36 AM

Hi, Sher --

Here's <a href="http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=190.topic" target="_new">another thread</a> for you.

You might want to drop down to the Take It Outside board and read some of the older threads there, too.

Sher2

07-14-2004, 05:47 PM

<Link to the quote till PA pulls the Thread (Publish America Does it's Job)

Maybe if the teacher had decided to teach his students that it is better to do something correctly, his students may have done better later on. At the very least they would not have had to learn the proper way to do something after they were supposed to be taught the right way before. >

I live in constant amazement at what the Stepford Authors will come up with next.

I knew I was in trouble the first time I read the PA boards. I remember sitting there in a stupor, thinking to myself, "These people are WRITERS?" Not all of them; some of them have undoubtedly written very good books and unwittingly placed them with PA. I'm convinced it's the rule rather than the exception, though.

Sher2

07-14-2004, 05:56 PM

<Since some of the writers within the PA ranks feel indebted to PA for accepting their manuscripts for publication, they're inclined to believe that anyone who says anything contrary about their publisher is biased. In this case, the individuals aren't reading any farther than the negative recommendation. They're not following up on the links to evidence about the libels, thefts, and other misdeeds perpetrated by PA. If they did, I doubt that they'd feel there was bias any longer. At that point, I think some of them would be seeking a way out even if they didn't vocalize it within that forum. >

They often remind me of pit bulls with a particularly juicy bone. They've got it and, by damn, nobody's going to take it away from them. They have ONE CHANCE to call themselves published authors, thanks to PA's "publish anything" philosophy, and refuse to come in out of the fog and hear a word from the real world. Say an unflattering word about their idol, PA, and they go on the offensive with a vengeance. It's like a stampede of maddened sheep, herded and pep-talked by the "Jonestown Cheerleaders." It would be funny in a sick kind of way if I weren't contracted to PA myself.

Sher2

07-14-2004, 06:02 PM

Here's another thread for you.
You might want to drop down to the Take It Outside board and read some of the older threads there, too.

Thanks, James. I'd already read the "49 copies" posts as part of my continuing education. Does PA think people are too dumb to wonder, "Hey, wait a minute, it's POD -- how can there be any 'excess stock'?"

Oh, wait a minute -- most of their "authors" DO believe it. LOL.

thewritelady

07-14-2004, 09:36 PM

Okay, I have a friend who had a book published through PA believing they were a traditional publisher, like so many others.
SO now I have a couple of questions. I saw that on another post 1st Books has a possible lawsuit pending, and I am wondering if there is any relation between them and PA, because I went to Amazon to look up my friend's PA book, and a stocked seller was listed as 1st books.
Is this the same company as the publisher or agency 1st Books that has been referred to on boards, and if it is, what part do they play with PA?
Also, I saw in a post from a long time ago that Writers Digest accepts PA books for their self-published awards. Does anyone know if this is the same for this year, since their rules state you must have paid for it yourself or it doesn't count? I don't want to email them and ask if I can find out the answer beforehand.
Also, in several people said on here that the Midwest Book Review was a joke, while talking about PA getting a review with them, but in the Writers Digest competition, their review of the winners is part of the prize. Why would WD use a place known to be the lowliest of reviewers, as some people have said they are?
As for my friend, she got lucky, since her book is of a very specific mental health market, and she will be able to sell just as many books with or without their assistance in marketing it or promotion. If it had been a romance novel, or any other type of book that needs to be on bookstore shelves to be bought, it would have been a lot worse. Needless to say, she won't use them again, now that she knows what they are.
If anyone can answer my questions I would appreciate it. Thanks.
:hail

James D Macdonald

07-14-2004, 10:07 PM

Both PublishAmerica and AuthorHouse/1stBooks Library use the same business model (vanity PoD). The author pays for his/her own publication.

PublishAmerica is located in Frederick, Maryland; AuthorHouse is located in Bloomington, Indiana. They have no connection that I'm aware of.

WD is quite correct to count PublishAmerica as "self-published" (for some values of "self-publication"). PA certainly isn't a traditional publisher.

MidWest Book Reviews is a legitimate reviewer that has been in business for years, but their mandate is to review small-press and self-published books. They use non-professional reviewers, and appear to only print favorable reviews. That's less than useful if you're looking for more information than only that a particular book was published.

It sounds like your friend wrote a specialized non-fiction book for a defined niche market. That's the place to be if you're self-publishing. She'd almost certainly have done better by taking her book down to a local short-run printer than by going through PublishAmerica. She might get a copy of Dan Poynter (http://www.parapublishing.com/)'s book for tips on that, if she's planning to self-publish another book.

DaveKuzminski

07-14-2004, 10:43 PM

I can't help but wonder who B.L.Robinson is after finding this when I looked to see if PA had deleted a particular topic that was brought up a page ago. Here's his post from that topic:

EZ

7/13/2004
22:48:35
RE: Author Alerts!

Message:
Actually, HB, the guy who runs P&E is alive and well and trashing PA on another "notable" authors site online. I have often gone head to head with him and made him look somewhat foolish. (all in all, not a very difficult feat.)
All the trashing that I have found seems to lead back to the so-called authors' not paying attention to the contract or not asking the questions that they should have, such as pricing and promotion. Reading a contract should be a high priority for anyone with even a small bit of business sense.
It all seemed a bit too much for me to believe, and after much research and thought I went ahead and signed with PA to publish my book. I just received my authors copies and am very pleased with the appearance and quality. Now if they can supply them to me when needed, we will get along great! Nuff said, I think. Later.

Bruce
B.L.Robinson
The Battle Between

I guess Bruce forgot to mention that I've been taking the side of writers against unfair treatment or that he's obviously been taking the opposing view. That should really make his writer friends proud of him.

CaoPaux

07-14-2004, 10:50 PM

Here's a new bit on the hardcover thread:

ariion

7/13/2004
21:29:56

Today I called PA to order some of my books and I learned the current policy on hardcover books. As soon as they receive an order for at least 100 of the hardcover version of your book, they will begin offering the book in both softcover and hardcover.

------

Sher2

07-14-2004, 11:06 PM

<As soon as they receive an order for at least 100 of the hardcover version of your book, they will begin offering the book in both softcover and hardcover.>

No doubt a lot of PA'ers will rush to order 100 copies of their own books so they can get in on this hot deal.

As for me, I have no intention of buying so much as one copy. In fact, I'm thinking seriously of not even bothering to send the galley proofs back (if and when I ever get them). Does anyone know what the consequences of that would be, other than PA's demanding their stupid dollar back?

07-15-2004, 12:15 AM

Sher, have you recieved the cover art yet or sent back the first set of galleys? If not you might be able to get out of the contract. It has happened before at this stage.

You might want to send them an email and tell them.

Kevin

Sher2

07-15-2004, 12:29 AM

<Sher, have you recieved the cover art yet or sent back the first set of galleys? If not you might be able to get out of the contract. It has happened before at this stage.
You might want to send them an email and tell them.>

Nada, Kevin -- no galleys, no cover art, no communications. (Is it too much to hope that they've forgotten about me?) Have you gone this route? If so, what would the procedure be?

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 12:35 AM

You could always place subliminal messages in your manuscript such as PA is evil. ;)

goomee

07-15-2004, 01:11 AM

Sherrie, they don't really need the galley proofs, as they do absolutely nothing that normal publishers do with galley proofs. I'm 99% sure, they will simply go right ahead and publish it without your okay. Believe me, they don't care if there are mistakes all over the finished product. If I were you, I would go ahead and come right out and tell them I wanted out now, before they are at a point where they've invested much (ha-ha) into it. I do know people who got out at about your stage and it appeared to be fairly easy. However, one thing is certain: You can never tell what PA will do.

James D Macdonald

07-15-2004, 01:17 AM

A PA author asks, over on their messageboard:

<blockquote>Quote:<hr> I don't understand your statement about what is or isn't
POD. POD means print on demand, right? PA does
that as many other publishing companies do, but the
implication from that is they are vanity publishers, which
they are not. We do not pay them, they pay us. This is
the thing that distinguishes them. So is this understood
by the bookstores? <hr></blockquote>

Yes, POD is Print On Demand. (Even though Infocenter (http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/response.htm) says it isn't: "PublishAmerica is not a 'print on demand' company...)" Yes, other companies do that.

But, here's why PublishAmerica is a vanity press. First, yes, they pay you a token $1 advance; compare this with the $30 that you're required to pay for your own copyright. You start out $29 in the hole; those two "free" copies cost you $14.50 each.

Then, authors have little choice but to buy and market their own books. Authors buying their own books to sell from the trunks of their cars = vanity press.

Certainly everyone's noticed the very high cover prices on PublishAmerica books. They're far higher than similar-length books printed with identical technology from other, legitimate presses. The vanity-press fee has been added to the cover price of every book.

If PA required that its authors buy some certain number of their own books, everyone would instantly identify them as a vanity publisher. PA, cleverly, noticed that they don't need to make that a requirement. This is because authors love their own books -- if the only way to get books to reviewers is for the author to buy them himself, he will. If the only way to put books into bookstores is to buy them himself and place them on consignment, he will. Authors are predictable.

Yes, authors are given a "discount" when buying their own books. Even with the discount, the price is what the full retail price of a similar book would be from a different publisher. Authors buying their own books by the carton, at full retail price ... that's vanity.

How does PA get away with extremely high cover prices? PA figures that the only people likely to buy the books are the author, and the author's family and friends -- and those folks will buy the book regardless of price.

Do the bookstores understand this?

Yes, they do.

<HR>

Dave:

Actually, HB, the guy who runs P&E is alive and well and trashing PA on another "notable" authors site online. I have often gone head to head with him and made him look somewhat foolish. (all in all, not a very difficult feat.)

Which "authors site online" do you think that is?

Sher2

07-15-2004, 01:32 AM

<You could always place subliminal messages in your manuscript such as PA is evil.>: clap

I love that idea, Dave. And God knows nobody at PA would edit it out.

Sher2

07-15-2004, 01:39 AM

<they don't really need the galley proofs, as they do absolutely nothing that normal publishers do with galley proofs. I'm 99% sure, they will simply go right ahead and publish it without your okay. Believe me, they don't care if there are mistakes all over the finished product. If I were you, I would go ahead and come right out and tell them I wanted out now, before they are at a point where they've invested much (ha-ha) into it. I do know people who got out at about your stage and it appeared to be fairly easy. However, one thing is certain: You can never tell what PA will do. >

You know, that's about what I figured; i.e., if I don't send in anything else, they'll go with what they have. I'll still mulling over whether to try to get out of the contract but will make a decision by the time those dreaded proofs arrive. The whole mess is so embarrassing. I haven't breathed a word of it to friends or family.

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 01:46 AM

Sher2:

Yes, they might have to do some actual editing over there to make sure such phrases aren't in the proofs. ;)

James:

That's difficult to pin down. I do post on a number of sites and I'm not ashamed to admit that I give out straight answers when asked about PA or any other publisher or agent. I guess they're just going to need a whole lot more trolls to keep up with us.

Speaking of which, I noticed that Bruce had to take a potshot at me. I guess he needed to impress his boss that he's loyal. If not, then trying to impress those writers that he humiliated me only proves that I'm hurting his publisher's recruiting efforts to reach 9,000 victims, er, authors.

Hey, Bruce! Explain this to the other PA authors. If PA is such a traditional publisher, then why doesn't it have a bestseller yet? Surely, there ought to be just one out of 8,000 writers by now. Other traditional publishers have managed to produce more than one from far fewer writers than that in the same amount of time in business. Since we know the PA writers are all trying their best, it must be the fault of the editors or the publisher. Right?

Jarocal

07-15-2004, 02:26 AM

Dave,

The sad part is that one of the 8000 titles from PA would have made it somewhere on the best seller list with proper editing and marketing from the PUBLISHER. That one title (I do not have a specific one in mind) could also have seen a higher measure of success if properly edited and subsequently self-published, due to the ability to have a reasonably price and return policy on the book. I am not recommending everyone thinking of PA should go out and self-publish, but for the price of going with PA,Authorhouse, or another one of the POD presses they could have put out enough books to sell/give to their friends/family. They would also be left with a more reasonably priced book which has a better chance of gracing a bookstore shelf.

James D Macdonald

07-15-2004, 02:49 AM

Reply to a question in another thread (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=417.topic) :

<HR>

WD doesn't seem to have any problems figuring out PA's business model.

Tell you what, drop over to the PA authors' board, if you have posting privileges there, and ask for a show of hands of how many authors never bought a copy of their own book.

Ask the authors there to pledge never to buy copies of their own books. See how fast you get locked out by management. If PA doesn't want to be viewed as a vanity press, the authors will have to stop treating it like a vanity press.

(Incidentally -- that one dollar advance coming in meets the thirty dollar copyright fee going out, leaving the author twenty-nine dollars in the hole on day one. Each one of those two "free" books costs the author $14.50 out of pocket.)

Tell me -- why does PA spend so much time promoting large purchases of their own books to the authors? I think I saw something just today about some plan for authors who are willing to buy 100 copies of their own book.

Sher2

07-15-2004, 03:20 AM

<Ask the authors there to pledge never to buy copies of their own books. See how fast you get locked out by management. If PA doesn't want to be viewed as a vanity press, the authors will have to stop treating it like a vanity press.>

Not only that, but you'd get lynched by an angry mob before management showed up to lock you out. I swear, it's like a cult. Village of the Damned.

thewritelady

07-15-2004, 04:10 AM

I wondered why their prices were so high on the books, and that explains it. I know what they do is unethical, at best, but is it illegal? If they don't live up to their side of the contract, could you get out of it without a big hassle? Just wondering...
Oh, James, sorry about posting in the wrong thread, it was an accident, I don't even know how I ended up there!
(Still a newbie here:smack )

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 04:50 AM

Personally, I don't think you have the nerve to show your true colors over here in an honest debate under your real name.

lastr

07-15-2004, 06:40 AM

Actually, HB, the guy who runs P&E is alive and well and trashing PA on another "notable" authors site online. I have often gone head to head with him and made him look somewhat foolish. (all in all, not a very difficult feat.)

Which "authors site online" do you think that is?

Dave, this is Robinson from the writers.net board that had such a field day on why PA a few months back. He was posting at the same time that troll was going on and on until he was banned - again.

www.writers.net/forum/read.php?f=13&i=5398&t=5258 (http://www.writers.net/forum/read.php?f=13&i=5398&t=5258)

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 06:53 AM

Well, lastr, I'm just offering him a chance to debate under his own name. Claiming something under his name on one board that he did on another board without 1) naming the board and time, and 2) without stating what name he used at that time is nothing more than hot air. I'm offering him an opportunity to put up or shut up.

Of course, I intend to stand as I always do on the side of authors. He's more than welcome to stand up for any scammer he wants to represent.

lastr

07-15-2004, 07:01 AM

He should post a link on the PA BB to some of the things he said on the other board, they might think his bragging is full of hot air - which it is.

I just bopped on over to the April threads that were going on and shook my head over all the hot air still waving around them. He didn't dare post what was going on then on the PA board, he waits 4 months then brags?

Author: B.L.Robinson
Date: 02-18-04 20:57

Actually I understood it completely, since I am a California Certified paralega, Publius, with more than a few years experience in the legal field. If you have facts and not just simple conjecture, put them out here and let us verify them. Otherwise, I do have to defend your right to an opinion, but unless you have personal experience, this translates to nothing more than a slanderous statement towards PA. And Lord knows we have already dealt with them over and over.
The contract is nearly identical to one on the SFFWA site, other than the advance clause. And just like any other contract if you are not capable of understanding it, perhaps you should seek the advice of a qualified attorney to review it before signing.

www.writers.net/forum/rea...amp;t=4020 (http://www.writers.net/forum/read.php?f=13&i=4254&t=4020)

Language style seem familar to you Dave?

vstrauss

07-15-2004, 07:22 AM

B. L. Robinson = Wil. Lem. Meiners

My guess, anyhow.

- Victoria

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 07:24 AM

lastr, I just finished checking out the archives over at Writer's Net. I didn't even find a single instance where I addressed any comments to Bruce. I found one instance where we posted in the same topic, but he was talking primarily to Publius who was believed to be Mark York. Is that supposed to be the foundation for his boast of making me look foolish?

I will state this much. At least Bruce had the guts to post under his name on the Writer's Net board. But he obviously has a problem with remembering who he responded to.

lastr

07-15-2004, 07:30 AM

I couldn't find anytime you two posted *at* each other, that was during the York trolling time, maybe he thinks you were Publicus (sigh can't remember the spelling of that one). He was pretty smug about PA but kept hopping from thread to thread telling all how smart he was, and all the research he had done. I'd be insulted if he thought I was Mr. York though.:bang

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 07:35 AM

Well, if he thought I was Publius, then think about what that says for the research he claims he did.

Hey Bruce! Coming over? I have questions for you. All you have to do is give an honest answer.

lastr

07-15-2004, 07:41 AM

I'm still reeling over how his research showed him that the PA contract was just like all other traditional publisher's contracts. I'd hate to be the lawyer he does his paralegal law research for :lol

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 08:27 AM

Maybe he's why that state has such a high conviction rate?

lastr

07-15-2004, 08:38 AM

Only if he works for a defense lawyer:p

James D Macdonald

07-15-2004, 08:46 AM

Lessee.... The contract is nearly identical to one on the SFFWA site, other than the advance clause?

Any of our friends here who have PA contracts who'd like to compare theirs with the one on the SFWA site, here's the link:

<a href="http://www.sfwa.org/contracts/hc_cont.htm" target="_new">www.sfwa.org/contracts/hc_cont.htm</a>

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 08:51 AM

Heck, I can do better than that. I can email you a copy of the contract furnished to me by one of the writers that PA offered it to.

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 09:05 AM

Here's a recent PA contract:

1
PublishAmerica
PublishAmerica, LLLP
POST OFFICE BOX 151
FREDERICK, MARYLAND 21705-0151
AGREEMENT made this DATE day of MONTH 2002, between party of the first
part, AUTHOR , hereinafter called the Author, and PublishAmerica, LLLP, a book publishing
company with its principal office located in the State of Maryland, party of the second part,
hereinafter called the Publisher.
Witnesseth:
Whereas, the Author is Proprietor of a literary work at present known as: TITLE
which work the Publisher agrees to produce in book form on the terms and conditions specified
hereinafter;
1. The Author grants and assigns to the Publishers during a period of seven years from the date of
the signing of this agreement by both parties thereto the exclusive right to publish, sell or export, or
cause to be published, sold or exported, the above work in book form in any language or languages,
in the United States of America, its Dependencies, and in the Dominion of Canada; and the exclusive
right to arrange for the publication of the above work in book form in all foreign countries, and/or
to export copies to these territories and countries. The Author and the Publishers agree that this
agreement is renewable upon the date of its expiration during an additional and successive period of
seven years, on the same terms and conditions as specified herinafter, provided that both parties to
this agreement shall mutually ratify such renewal in writing at least three months prior to the date of
expiration as hereabove set forth.
2. The Publisher agrees to produce the said literary work in book form, in such format, type and style
of paper, jacket and binding as will make the volume attractive and substantial-looking. It is
specifically understood and agreed, furthermore, that the said volume will contain all manuscript
2
pages as submitted by the Author (unless otherwise designated hereinafter), and will be printed on
good quality paper with the bound size to be, approximately, 5½ x 8½ or 6 x 9 inches, or any other
size as the market demands.
3. The Publisher agrees to cause all copies of the said literary work to be printed as the market
demands, and agrees, furthermore, to cause the copies so printed to be bound, from time to time, in
sufficient quantities to supply purchasers of the said literary work therewith.
The Publisher shall pay to the Author the following royalties:
A royalty upon the regular edition sold in the United States of:
8 percent of the sales price thereof on the first 2,000 copies sold;
10 percent on the next 8,000 copies sold;
12.5 percent on all copies sold in excess of 10,000 .
4. Copyright shall be taken out in the name of Author in the United States of America, and in
foreign countries as the Publisher may deem advisable.
5. The Author agrees that all the copies of the said literary work that may be used for review and/or
publicity purposes, and all that the Publisher may deliver to the Author without receiving payment
in money, and all that the Publisher may deliver to the Author at a discount from the regular retail
price, shall not be subject to any payment to the Author.
6. If the work is authored or owned by more than one person, the word Author, as used herein, shall
be deemed to include all collaborators, authors, or owners who are parties hereto, jointly and
severally, and all sums payable to the Author shall be divided equally between or among them and the
Publisher shall render separate accounts and make separate payments to each of them unless herein
otherwise provided.
7. No payment shall be made to the Author on any copies of the said literary work that the Publisher
may distribute for advertising and/or sales promotion purposes, that may be destroyed by fire and/or
water or otherwise damaged or destroyed, or that may be lost in transit or in any other manner - such
damage, loss and/or destruction not being due to any negligence on the part of the Publisher.
3
8. No payment shall be made to the Author for permission gratuitously given to others to publish
extracts from the said literary work to benefit the sale thereof, but all compensation received by the
Publisher for the publication of extraction therefrom, or for serial use after publication in book form,
or for translations, or for abridgments, or as a book club selection, shall be divided in the proportion
of 50% to the Author and 50% to the Publisher. All compensation received by the Publisher
for the dramatic or motion picture rights, or for the first serial rights prior to book publication, or for
foreign, radio, dramatic, cheap edition, television and/or all other rights in the said literary work shall
be similarly divided between the Author and the Publisher, as hereabove set forth.
9. The Publisher agrees to distribute, at his discretion, for purposes of publicity and/or review,
promotional information pertaining to the said literary work, to publications throughout the United
States and/or the Dominion of Canada, or elsewhere. Distribution of this promotional material shall
be at the Publisher’s own cost and expense and to media outlets of the Publisher’s own choice. The
Author agrees that excerpts of the said literary work may be included in this promotional information,
and agrees, furthermore, that the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to
promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format, and that the Publisher may
sell or cause to sell copies of the said literary work in any electronic format. The Publisher agrees to
pay to the Author a return as specified in Provision # 3 of this agreement of the sales price of every
copy in any electronic format that may be sold and for which the Publisher shall receive payment in
money.
10. The Publisher agrees to deliver to the Author 2 copies of the said literary work, on
publication, without charge. Should the Author wish to purchase additional copies of the said literary
work directly from the Publisher, the Publisher agrees to supply the Author with such copies at a
discount of 20% from the regular retail price per copy, if the Author orders up to 20 copies at
a time, and at a discount of 30% from the regular retail price per copy, if the Author orders 21
copies or more at a time. The Author may dispose of these copies in any manner, and, if re-sold, may
retain all monies derived therefrom.
11. The Publisher agrees to keep and maintain true and accurate records relating to the distribution
of copies of the said literary work, including reports of all sales and collections therefrom.
4
12. The Publisher agrees to render and forward to the Author, in the months of February and August
next succeeding the date of publication of the said literary work, and thereafter semi-annual
statements of account for so long as copies of the work subject to royalty are sold. With respect to
copies sold, the statement shall indicate the price of each copy sold. The statement shall indicate both
the total royalties payable to Author on sales during the accounting period and the breakdown
indicating the royalties attributable to specific kinds of sales. Author may, upon giving sufficient
notice of no less than seven days, examine Publisher’s records and accounts to the extent that such
records and accounts are relevant to the publication of the said literary work, which shall be done at
Author’s expense.
13. The Publisher shall furnish the Author with an electronic page proof of the work which conforms
to the completed manuscript as submitted by the Author. The Author agrees to return such proof to
the Publisher with his (grammar and/or spelling and/or “typo” and/or non-substantial editing)
corrections within fifteen (15) days of the receipt thereof by him. The cost of alterations in the page
proof required by the Author, other than corrections of Publisher’s errors, in excess of fifteen (15%)
percent of the original cost of composition, shall be charged against the earning of the Author under
this agreement; provided also, however, that the Publisher shall promptly furnish to the Author an
itemized statement of such additional expenses, and shall make available at the Publisher’s office the
corrected proof for inspection by the Author or his representatives.
14. (A) If, in the Publisher’s opinion, the manuscript of the said literary work requires substantial
editing, the Publisher agrees to provide such editorial service without cost or expense to the Author.
It is specifically understood and agreed, however, that the Publisher shall make no major revisions,
changes and/or alterations therein without first consulting the Author and receiving written
permission to do so. (B) The Publisher reserves the right to delete, modify and/or make such editorial
changes and/or revision as they deem advisable in the event that the context, or implication, of any
part of the said literary work would, in Publisher’s opinion, incite prejudice, or defame any group,
or any member thereof, because of race, religion or nationality; or in the event that any part or parts
of the said literary work may be considered, by the Publisher, to be against the public welfare.
15. If the Author shall make any changes and/or alterations in the proofs of the said literary work as
submitted by the Publisher after it has been set up in type (other than corrections of Publisher’s
errors), or if the Author shall add additional material thereto at any time after the signing of this
5
agreement, the Publisher agrees to make such changes and/or alterations, and to add additional
material, only on condition that the said changes and/or alterations and the inclusion of any new
material shall be approved of by the Publisher as benefiting the said literary work, and on condition,
furthermore, that the Author shall pay to the Publisher all the cost involved in so doing.
16. The Author agrees to revise the work on request of the Publisher, if the Publisher considers it
necessary in the best interests of the First and/or future Editions of the work. The provision of this
agreement shall apply to each revision of the work by the Author as though that revision were the
work being published for the first time under this agreement, except that the manuscript of the revised
work shall be delivered in final form by the Author to the Publisher within a reasonable time after
request for revision; further, no initial payment shall be made in connection with such revision.
17. Sales promotion, advertising and publicity shall be at the Publisher’s election and discretion as
to the extent, scope and character thereof and in all matters pertaining thereto. The Author agrees
to actively participate in promoting the sales of the said literary work in his home town area and
elsewhere, by making himself available to media interviews, book readings and/or signings, and other
public sales promotion appearances.
18. The Author agrees that all matters dealing with the design and production of the said literary
work shall be at the discretion of the Publisher.
19. Whereas this agreement refers to a First Edition of the said literary work, as designated, the
Publisher may produce as many editions thereof, consisting of as many copies as Publisher shall deem
advisable, at any time after it ceases to produce copies of the First Edition. On all such subsequent
editions that the Publisher may produce, the Author shall receive a return as specified in Provision
# 3 of this agreement of the sales price of every copy that may be sold and for which the Publisher
shall receive payment in money.
20. Author hereby agrees that the Publisher shall have the exclusive right for the duration of this
Agreement to negotiate for the sale, lease, license or other disposition of the said literary work in all
hard and/or soft cover or reprint editions in book form, and in the motion picture, dramatic, radio,
television, and/or all other fields if so instructed by the Author in writing. It is also agreed that the
Publisher may engage an agent, or agents, to negotiate, or assist in negotiating, for such sale, lease,
license or other disposition. Approval of all terms, provisions and conditions of any and all contracts
6
in connection with any such sale, lease, license or other disposition shall be given by the Author upon
the recommendation of the Publisher; and, for that purpose, the Author agrees to duly execute any
and all contracts, assignments, instruments and approved papers submitted by the Publisher. All gross
monies and compensation received in payment for such sale, lease, license or other disposition shall
be collected and disbursed by the Publisher, and all contracts for such sale, lease, license or other
disposition shall provide that such monies and compensations are to be paid to the Publisher; and the
Publisher is authorized to receive, collect and disburse same and to endorse and deposit all checks
and/or drafts for such payment. All payments due from the Publisher to the Author hereunder shall
be made within ninety (90) days from the receipt thereof by the Publisher, accompanied by statements
of the amounts received and disbursed.
21. In the event of the infringement, by others, of the copyright, or other rights, in the said literary
work, the Publisher may, in its discretion, sue, or employ other remedies as it may deem expedient,
and shall pay to the Author 50% of the net proceeds of any recovery.
22. This agreement is entered into by both parties in good faith, with the mutual understanding that
neither party has guaranteed, or is to guarantee, the sale of any specific number of copies of the said
literary work, it being impossible to predict, before publication, what success any book may attain.
23. The Author acknowledges that the Publisher has not made any prior pledges, promises,
guarantees, inducements, of whatever nature, either in writing, by word of mouth, or in any form, that
are not contained in the terms of this agreement.
24. When in the judgment of the Publisher, the public demand for the work is no longer sufficient to
warrant its continued manufacture, the Publisher may discontinue further manufacture and destroy
any or all plates, books, sheets and electronic files without any liability in connection therewith to the
Author. However, the Publisher agrees to notify the Author of such decision in writing, and will offer
to transfer to the Author the work and its rights in the copyrights thereon, the plates (if any), the
bound copies and sheet stock (if any) on the following terms F.O.B. point of shipment: the plates at
their value for old metal, the engravings (to be used only in the work) at one-half (½) their original
cost, the bound stock at one-half (½) the list price, and the sheet stock at cost of gathering, folding,
sewing and preparing for shipment, all without royalties. In the latter event, unless the Author shall,
within 30 days, accept said offer and pay the amount set forth in said writing, the Publisher may
7
dispose of the work, copyrights, plates, books, sheets and other property without further liability for
royalties or otherwise.
25. The Publisher agrees to produce the said literary work within 365 days from the date of the
signing of this agreement by both parties thereto, provided Publisher is not hindered by causes beyond
its own control, or by the Author.
26. This agreement shall be binding on, and inure to the benefit of, the executors, administrators, heirs
and assigns of Author, and the successors and assigns of Publisher. No assignment by Author shall
be binding on Publisher without the written consent of the Publisher; provided, however, that Author
may assign or transfer any monies due, or to become due to him, hereunder.
27. The Author covenants and represents that the said literary work has not hitherto been published
in book form; that it contains no matter that, when published, will be libelous or otherwise unlawful,
or which will infringe upon any proprietary interest at common law or statutory copyright; that the
Author is the sole proprietor of the said literary work and has full power to make this grant and
agreement, and that the said work is free of any lien, claim, charge or debt of any kind, and that the
Author and his legal successors and/or representatives will hold harmless and keep indemnified the
Publisher from all manner of claims, proceeding and expenses which may be taken or incurred on the
ground that said work is subject to any such lien, claim, charge or debt, or that it is such violation,
or that it contains anything libelous or illegal.
28. The provisions of this agreement shall apply to and bind the heirs, executors, administrators and
assigns of the Author, and the successors and assigns of the Publisher.
29. All unresolved disputes and controversies of any kind and nature within the scope of this
agreement (whether arising from fraud, mistake, questions of the existence, validity, construction,
performance, nonperformance, operation, or breach) shall be submitted to an Arbitrator selected in
accordance with the Voluntary Labor Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association. The
arbitration shall be conducted in the City of Frederick, Maryland in accordance with the Arbitration
Rules, and the decision of the arbitrator shall be final and binding on the parties to the proceeding,
subject only to the right of judicial relief as prescribed by law. This agreement shall be governed and
construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Maryland. Author and Publisher irrevocably
submit to the jurisdiction of any Maryland State or Federal court sitting in the City of Frederick over
8
any suit related to this agreement.
30. Any written notice required under any of the provisions of this agreement shall be deemed to have
been properly served by delivery in person or by mailing same to the parties hereto at their addresses
as of the date set forth above, except as the addresses may be changed by notice in writing, provided,
however, that notices of termination shall be sent by registered mail.
31. A waiver of any breach of this agreement or of any of the terms or conditions by either party
hereto, shall not be deemed a waiver of any repetition of such breach or in any way affect any other
terms or conditions hereof; no waiver shall be valid or binding unless it shall be in writing, and signed
by the parties.
32. The Author will upon furnishing the Publisher with said literary work in its final version, as an
electronic file, receive an advance dollar amount of $ 1 (one) , which will be charged against
royalties due to the Author.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties hereto set their hands and seal the day first above written.
_________________________ __________________________
for PublishAmerica, Inc., AUTHOR
General Partner
_________________________ __________________________
Witness Witness
__________________________
Author’s Social Security Number

lastr

07-15-2004, 09:28 AM

Plates?? Sewing?? Where or should I ask when, did this contract originate.

James D Macdonald

07-15-2004, 10:38 AM

Plates?? Sewing?? Where or should I ask when, did this contract originate.

Drop over to the "49 copies" (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=190.topic) thread, lastr, for a full discussion of that paragraph.

Jarocal

07-15-2004, 11:22 AM

Am I just blind (I have been known to miss obvious things before) or according to the contract are electronic rights still the possession of the author to dispose of as they see fit? I saw where movie rights and such are only under PA's clutches if the author signs them over to them but I didn't see electronic rights mentioned.

astonwest

07-15-2004, 07:09 PM

See, they hide it away in clause 9 (which starts out discussing promotional info (and using electronic formats to 'promote'), go figure)...which I've been told they may remove that section of the clause, if the author asks prior to signing the contract:

"9. The Publisher agrees to distribute, at his discretion, for purposes of publicity and/or review,
promotional information pertaining to the said literary work, to publications throughout the United
States and/or the Dominion of Canada, or elsewhere. Distribution of this promotional material shall
be at the Publisher’s own cost and expense and to media outlets of the Publisher’s own choice. The
Author agrees that excerpts of the said literary work may be included in this promotional information,
and agrees, furthermore, that the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to
promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format, and that the Publisher may
sell or cause to sell copies of the said literary work in any electronic format. The Publisher agrees to
pay to the Author a return as specified in Provision # 3 of this agreement of the sales price of every
copy in any electronic format that may be sold and for which the Publisher shall receive payment in
money."

07-15-2004, 08:20 PM

I was going to send you the contract, but it is already here. Thanks Dave. Now, read through it and see if you can find the clause that allows PA to change it at the discretion. I can't find it.

And PA does have the rights to the ebooks but they have stated they don't do ebooks no more since they can't sell them. They thought it might be a quick way for some money, thinking ebooks was the wave of the future, but they were wrong.

Kevin

HapiSofi

07-15-2004, 09:10 PM

Sher, re your earlier question, keep your name, and don't worry about that "embarrassing association with PA". If you don't promote your PA title, no one will ever hear about it who doesn't actively go looking for it; and if you can contrive to change a letter or two in your name on the PA edition, you'll be effectively unfindable. At that point, the worst that can happen is that if you become a successful author, PA will crow about having published you.

The real publishing industry -- at least the part of it with which I'm familiar -- knows these parasites and scavengers are out there, preying on wanna-be writers. We hold it against them, but not you.

If you go poking around on these boards, you can find some irresponsible but not altogether ineffective advice for getting your book back. Alternately, if you prefer to do things on the up-and-up, you can ask PA to give it back, and threaten to sue them for making fraudulent misrepresentations. In the latter case, don't accept their argument that they need to hold on to it for a year to make back the money they've spent on it (which is trivial, and wouldn't matter even if it weren't), or their claim that they've already printed up those supposed 49 copies.

If you do take action to get your book back, you'll hear from some of the abusive bullies PA keeps on call. Listen analytically, don't take it to heart, and don't believe a thing PA says unless you have reliable outside confirmation on it. They'll bluster and threaten, but the last thing they want to have to do is give sworn testimony about their business methods.

priceless1

07-15-2004, 09:29 PM

In reading some of these posts, some talked about how a few authors had hardcovers and e-books. The reason most of those have been removed from the publisher's site is because they were publishing all these formats under one ISBN #. Any time you change a format, be it hardcover, e-book, or trade paperback, a new ISBN # must accompany it as well. They haven't done that and were slapped for it. But, as you can see, a couple must have slipped through the cracks. A huge no-no.

DaveKuzminski

07-15-2004, 09:35 PM

Can Bruce come out and play? I promise he won't be returned any dirtier than he already is.

Betty W01

07-15-2004, 09:42 PM

A thumbtack would be wasted on this thread, wouldn't it?

http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/5/5_6_32.gifThis is the thread that doesn't end, http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/5/5_6_31.gif
it just goes on and on, my friend...

http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/5/5_6_34.gif

James D Macdonald

07-15-2004, 09:44 PM

When it hits 100 sub-pages can we start a new thread, "Son of More PA woes, straight from a PA author's mouth... "?

CaoPaux

07-16-2004, 02:19 AM

IIRC, several months ago an author raised a stink because she’d ordered a case of books for a book signing, but when they finally arrived the illustrations were black & white, rather than color. Shortly thereafter, PA announced they were no longer accepting children’s books and/or books with color illustrations. There has been much hand wringing about this, and folks are starting to look elsewhere.

www.publishamerica.com/cg...s/1738.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/newauthors/1738.htm)

Danielle

7/15/2004
15:14:00

Message:
Okay guys,

After I slept on it I figured out what to do about my second book being refused. I am going to self publish my own books. I called Pa. and they are not taking children's books ever. Or at least for several years. So it wasn't my book. I am going to close off my familyroom and name it a company name. I will receive tax credits on my utilities and mortgage. and I called a printer and I can't believe the difference I can receive on money per book. And I decided to also start studying up on becoming an editor for self-publishers. But I will need experience so Danielle ( the other one) I would like to edit your children's book they refused also for free.
I have had such a great time getting to know all of you but this is what I have to do for my son.

Danielle
Www.freewebs.com/joeysmommy
------

NancyMehl

07-16-2004, 02:52 AM

Betty,

Unfortunately, every time a new sucker, I mean author, is added to the PA ranks, another verse will be added to this ongoing song.

The reason the subject won't die has to do with the large numbers of people PA signs. There are hundreds every month. Are there any publishers out there who publish this many books during the period of a year? I can't think of any. And, there isn't hardly any staff - so no editing - no support - heck, they can't even answer all their e-mails!

I can't think of any scam out there that has taken in this many people. The larger PA grows, the more writers will find their way to forums like this, wondering what the heck happened.

I don't think this discussion will slow down until PA is out of business.

Nancy

Sher2

07-16-2004, 05:14 AM

< Sher, re your earlier question, keep your name, and don't worry about that "embarrassing association with PA". If you don't promote your PA title, no one will ever hear about it who doesn't actively go looking for it; and if you can contrive to change a letter or two in your name on the PA edition, you'll be effectively unfindable. At that point, the worst that can happen is that if you become a successful author, PA will crow about having published you.

Alternately, if you prefer to do things on the up-and-up, you can ask PA to give it back, and threaten to sue them for making fraudulent misrepresentations. In the latter case, don't accept their argument that they need to hold on to it for a year to make back the money they've spent on it (which is trivial, and wouldn't matter even if it weren't), or their claim that they've already printed up those supposed 49 copies.

If you do take action to get your book back, you'll hear from some of the abusive bullies PA keeps on call. Listen analytically, don't take it to heart, and don't believe a thing PA says.>

Thanks for the very good advice, HapiSofi. Actually, I'm not so worried about it today -- I may have found a home for my second novel; at least, somebody's interested in reading more of it. Now I'm thinking I just may let my pen name live on and write well. Also, I head from someone who did it that all you have to do to get out of the contract is inform PA that you have no intention of buying your own books or peddling them to your kinfolk. When told this by our anonymous author, PA took the bull by the horns and unceremoniously dumped said author.

At least I know for sure they haven't printed my 49 copies; I haven't even gotten galley proofs yet.

As for PA's bully tactics, shoot, I ain't skeered of nuthin'. And I wouldn't believe it if PA told me the sky was blue. I'd have to go look first.

Sher2

07-16-2004, 05:18 AM

<Unfortunately, every time a new sucker, I mean author, is added to the PA ranks, another verse will be added to this ongoing song.>

I think you said it right the first time, Nancy. LOL.

I agree 100% that this topic, and others like it, should continue until such time as there's no further need for it.

DaveKuzminski

07-16-2004, 09:11 AM

We should do a section by section analysis of the contract and leave pointers (links) to it everywhere possible to better educate new writers as to what is bad and shouldn't be signed away.

In fact, P&E's original negative recommendation for PublishAmerica was based upon a reading of their original contract. They could have easily fixed their contract and the negative recommendation would have been removed. Instead, they attempted to threaten me with extortion attempts and libel in the form of character smears.

Anyway, it's long past the time for putting everything out in the open that can be because they're hurting too many writers.

Jarocal

07-16-2004, 09:57 AM

9. The Publisher agrees to distribute, at his discretion, for purposes of publicity and/or review,
promotional information pertaining to the said literary work, to publications throughout the United
States and/or the Dominion of Canada, or elsewhere. Distribution of this promotional material shall
be at the Publisher’s own cost and expense and to media outlets of the Publisher’s own choice. The
Author agrees that excerpts of the said literary work may be included in this promotional information,
and agrees, furthermore, that the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to
promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format, and that the Publisher may
sell or cause to sell copies of the said literary work in any electronic format. The Publisher agrees to
pay to the Author a return as specified in Provision # 3 of this agreement of the sales price of every
copy in any electronic format that may be sold and for which the Publisher shall receive payment in
money.

The provision is article nine states they have rights to print the material in electronic format, not exclusive electronic rights. If I had been burnt by PA I would probably self-publish it again in electronic format (using a different cover text and adding a forward to the book) for free as a PDF document under Public Domain just to spite PA. After doing that I would try to list it with Planet PDF, Project Gutenberg, and every other website that I could find who deals in e-texts. I would even approach sites that usually sell e-texts and offer them non-exclusive electronic rights to give it away as a promotion. If they cried about it I would tell them that I am only marketing the book the best way I know how since their pricing and policies make it difficult to place on bookstore shelves and that someone who starts reading it as an e-text will be more likely to order from a bookstore with having read a couple chapters in electronic format than as a cold read off of a bookstore shelf (not that there would be many of them there). Inform them the goal is to promote the book, if they don't like the way it is being marketed they can either release the contract or use their "election and discretion as
to the extent, scope and character thereof and in all matters pertaining thereto" in a more productive manner that yields sales. The bottom line is they shaded their electronic rights to where the author could not go after them for gross incompetence by not publishing in Electronic format. By covering themselves they also opened themselves up for the author to put a legal burr under their saddle, they are able to do nothing but browbeat a bit and then give up or release the author from the contract. Even a slanted arbitration board would have to look at the contract see your within your legal rights, weigh it against the amount of marketing PA actually does (mail 40 letters to people you know who are most likely already aware that you are publishing a book), and decide that they don't want a decision against the author to come to light in a court battle that will surely follow with PA losing.

HapiSofi

07-16-2004, 10:09 PM

Paragraph #9 of the PA contract bothers me. Like the rest of their contract, it's self-serving and seriously nonstandard. I believe it's also deliberately constructed to be misleading. It's not the only paragraph in the PA contract that's constructed that way, but #9 annoys me right now, and I might as well start there as anywhere. Here's the whole thing:9. The Publisher agrees to distribute, at his discretion, for purposes of publicity and/or review, promotional information pertaining to the said literary work, to publications throughout the United States and/or the Dominion of Canada, or elsewhere. Distribution of this promotional material shall be at the Publisher’s own cost and expense and to media outlets of the Publisher’s own choice. The Author agrees that excerpts of the said literary work may be included in this promotional information, and agrees, furthermore, that the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format, and that the Publisher may sell or cause to sell copies of the said literary work in any electronic format. The Publisher agrees to pay to the Author a return as specified in Provision # 3 of this agreement of the sales price of every copy in any electronic format that may be sold and for which the Publisher shall receive payment in money.One of the basic conventions of English prose is that paragraphs group similar material. If two subjects appear in the same paragraph, they're assumed to be related. But paragraph #9 slides from one subject, the publisher promoting the book, to a completely different subject, a grant of rights; and it does so in a deliberately obscure way, using similar-sounding phrasing to express an unrelated issue.

You want to talk about standard vs. nonstandard contracts? In a standard contract, grants of rights are up front, under a heading that says something like "GRANT" or "GRANT OF RIGHTS". Other subrights, licenses, etc., are in paragraphs with similarly appropriate headings. They are not tucked into the latter portion of a paragraph about book promotion.

Let's get specific. I'm going to be mixing criticisms of the contractual language with criticisms of its structure, but I trust you'll be able to follow.9. The Publisher agrees to distribute, at his discretion, for purposes of publicity and/or review, promotional information pertaining to the said literary work, to publications throughout the United States and/or the Dominion of Canada, or elsewhere. Distribution of this promotional material shall be at the Publisher’s own cost and expense and to media outlets of the Publisher’s own choice.It requires the optimism of a first-time author to see this as a promise to effectually promote the book. It doesn't say they'll promote the book. It says they can promote the book if they want to. Now, if this section said "the publisher will promote the book," the authors might have something. They don't. This is nothing. Consider: If you've written a nonfiction book about a specialized subject, and there's one inarguably obvious venue in which your book should be promoted -- say, the one magazine that's universally read by absolutely everyone who's interested in your subject -- then under this contract, you have no grounds for complaint if PA fails to so much as send that magazine a press release.

Distributing promotional material is never a sure bet. It may work, it may not work, and you may or may not be able to tell whether it worked. That's not PA's style. They don't take chances on anything or anybody, and they've consistently been averse to making any outlay for which they aren't directly compensated. They won't even lower a cover price by a couple of bucks to hit an obvious price point. As far as anyone knows, they don't even have sales & marketing, ad/promo, or publicity staff.

Many publishing contracts -- the real kind -- don't even mention promotion. The contracts just assume that the publisher has a strong incentive to market your book.

Onward. The Author agrees that excerpts of the said literary work may be included in this promotional information,That doesn't sound terribly unreasonable on the face of it, right? You're thinking Hey, cool, they're gonna promote my book, in which context They want to be able to quote from my book when they promote it seems like a logical albeit minor housekeeping detail.and agrees, furthermore, that the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format,There's some broken language here. The Publisher may cause who or what to promote the book? Possibly they meant "cause to be promoted", and later on in the same sentence meant "cause to be sold", in which case they're just jarring and embarrassing grammatical errors. Meanwhile, what's with that "as designated"? This is a single-book contract. "The literary work" or "said literary work" would suffice, though it'd still be clunky nonstandard language. Usually you just say "(hereinafter called the Work)" in the initial grant of rights, and thereafter refer to it as "the Work".

The more important question is why permission to promote the book in electronic format is specified at all. PA's already been granted permission to promote the book (if they feel like it). If no formats are specified, all formats may be assumed. So why this phrase? I'll argue that its sole purpose in the contract is to act as the first half of a deliberately misleading parallel construction:The Author agrees that ... the Publisher may, at the Publisher’s election and discretion, cause to promote the said literary work, as designated, in any electronic format, and that the Publisher may sell or cause to sell copies of the said literary work in any electronic format.That's a non-exclusive grant of all electronic rights.

Do you see what happened? PublishAmerica's contract slides from "permission to promote" to "permission to quote excerpts for purposes of promotion" to "permission to promote in any electronic format" to "permission to sell the work in any electronic format". It's artful, it's dishonest as hell, and there's no way it can be an accident of clumsy language.

Might as well finish up with the rest of the paragraph, where there's clumsy language in plenty:The Publisher agrees to pay to the Author a returnPerhaps they meant "royalty". Returns are shipped copies the bookstores send back, either as whole copies or as stripped covers.as specified in Provision # 3 of this agreementTen words in a row that contain no errors or problems!of the sales priceShould be "on the cover price", or "on the selling price", or "on the full retail price". A "return of the sales price" is what Crazy Eddie announces on his TV commercials.of every copy in any electronic format that may be soldThus confirming that what happened up there was a grant of all electronic publication rights.and for which the Publisher shall receive payment in money.That's weaselly. If PublishAmerica receives payment in any form whatsoever, the author should be entitled to his or her share.

A full critique of the PA contract would take a long time. I've been thinking about dissecting the part about buying back your production materials when your book is reverted. It's inexcusable.

FM St George

07-16-2004, 10:55 PM

www.publishamerica.com/cg...l/1399.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/general/1399.htm)

7/16/2004
12:05:39
Subject: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
You've never seen a post from me because I've never felt I had anthing to contribute. Today I have. I've been reading the message board for several months now, and have found it both fun, and useful. My book "Return to Alaska" is scheduled for offical release 8/30/04. I'll be factual in telling you about my big book sale that came close, but ultimately rejected.

I live in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon), and my wife works for a major retailer -- Fred Meyer Stores. She told the corporate book buyer about my book. The buyer said they would probably carry it IF it was handled through their wholesaler. I promptly contacted that organizaton, and eventually sent them information about the book. The very next day the buyer sent me email "What are the terms of sale to wholesalers?" I'm thinking oh boy! He's not asking that question out of idle curiosity. Let's see Fred Meyer (FM) has about 130 stores and eachstore gets about 10-20 copies. Man! If it does well at _
FM it's likely the wholesaler will place it in the other 10 stores he distributes to.
I email PA who responds to the term of sale question the following.

"We offer the following retailer discounts:

1-50 copies: 40%
51-100 copies: 45%
101+ copies: 50%

Our books are not returnable, and we require pre-payment by credit card (Visa, Mastercard, or Amercian Express) or check or money order. retailers may place an order by calling us --phone-----------. Approved retailers, such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Walmart, and Waldenbooks, may fax a purchase order to ---phone---".

I passed that information to the wholesaler. This is his response; "Thanks Bruce although the terms are standard for the book trade they are not the terms we normally work with. Thanks for your submission we will have to pass on it".

The spin stops here -- you decide.

Don't suggest that I contact the retailer it's not going to work. Msot retail stores sign a contract with wholesalers whose sole purpose is to ensure books departments are in order. They hire merchandisers who go into the stores once a week and fill holes, make sure inventory levels are sufficient, and basically maintain the department. They are not going to make an exception for one book. FM would have to redo the entire distribution process -- what a nightmare that'd be!

PA I've read some beautiful responses you've posted before regarding this type of thing, and I'll look forward to seeing your response to this posting! We lost the potential of possibly selling thousands of copies -- Why?

Thnks for letting me rant.

Bruce

LBS

7/16/2004
12:20:01

RE: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
Hi Bruce...
I'm a fellow Oregon author and I feel your pain! Fred Meyer would be an awesome outlet for your book. I contacted them a while back, garnered their interest, and got the same response.
I think they probably do their book business like Walmart...PA authors never end up there either!

Good news?...You're in good company.

Shannon

CaoPaux

07-16-2004, 11:44 PM

More discussion of children’s books:

www.publishamerica.com/cg...l/1397.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/general/1397.htm)

Including a response by PA:

-----
Infocenter
Administrator
7/16/2004
01:14:32

Shhhh...

Listen....

The reason why we have put a moratorium on full-color children's books is simple, and has been stated on this board before.

Bubbles, bye-bye's, distribution issues? Nope, none of the above. Gremlins, ghosts, body snatchers? Nah. The reality is quite innocent: for months now, we have been swamped with full-color children's book submissions. It's just incredible how many children's book writers are out there. We had to put an indefinite stop on reviewing this deluge, and that's what we have been saying to everyone involved from the day we made this decision. It's simple economics: when you spend too much time on the selection process of a certain genre (and an expensive genre at that: producing full-color pages is ten times more costly than black/white pages), you declare a time-out. That's all we have done.

We continue to review and accept non-illustrated and lightly illustrated children's books in black and white. And all full-color children's books that are already under contract will be published as planned.
-----

HapiSofi

07-17-2004, 01:14 AM

FM St. George quoted yon hapless PA author as saying:Don't suggest that I contact the retailer it's not going to work. Most retail stores sign a contract with wholesalers whose sole purpose is to ensure books departments are in order. They hire merchandisers who go into the stores once a week and fill holes, make sure inventory levels are sufficient, and basically maintain the department. They are not going to make an exception for one book. FM would have to redo the entire distribution process -- what a nightmare that'd be! Poor guy. He's had exactly one piece of luck, which is that someone's given him a very clear explanation of how ID bookselling works. Book distribution is divided into ID and Trade. Trade means bookstores. ID means non-bookstore channels like Target, Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart, and all those wire racks of paperbacks in drug stores and grocery stores.

It's hard enough for PA authors to talk one or two bookstores into carrying their titles, and the chains don't want to hear from them, but the odds of an individual author cracking the ID market are effectively zero. Bruce got it right: Fred Meyer would have to reconfigure their entire distribution system to accommodate his book. ID bookselling is tough and technical.

Chalk it up as one more thing PA chronically forgets to mention when they're selling their program to prospective authors.

FM St George

07-17-2004, 02:10 AM

and the ugly truth rears it's head...

PA is going to kill this thread.

***********
RE: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
Bruce,

My book is still in the editing phase but I like reading posts such as this because it gives me an opportunity to see what challenges we all face. Sorry to hear they were not interested but that does not mean giving up. You just do the best you can and everything will work out fine. I am also a fellow Oregonian living in Beaverton.

Anne
"101 Practical Tips & Pieces Of Advice For The New Mother"

Becky

7/16/2004
14:06:07
RE: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
Dear Bruce
First, I really regret that this deal fell through for you. It somehow must seem frustrating however, it does bring to light some obstacles that surely there are solutions to for all of us. Fred Meyer said that PA's terms were standard for the book trade. In reviewing PA's response regarding their terms, I did not really think that they were off base or out of line at all. Do you know the terms that wholesalers like those working with Fred Meyer and Walmart etc work with and what would be acceptable terms for them? There must be some way to avoid losing important sales like this but at the same time PA does have a buisness to run and seems to have standard guidelines. I am really glad that you posted because issues like this can affect us all. Hang in there Bruce!

Sincerely
Becky

Dorothy Williams

7/16/2004
14:15:46
RE: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
Hi, Bruce. I agree, it is a good thing that you posted this situation because somebody else might run into the same thing or something similar. What if the FM in your area bought 50 or so books for a book signing for you? Would they do that? That would get you a lot of exposure. Good luck and God Bless.

Dorothy "Oooh, My Aching Head" Williams

Bruce

7/16/2004
15:05:30
RE: Golden Opportunity -- Botched

Message:
Hi All.

Hello fellow authors.
The thing which bothers me the most is that it really was a 'slam dunk'. Probably because of connections with FM. From my point of view it would have happened -- until the wholsaler wanted to know the terms of sale. PA said in part "OUR BOOKS ARE NOT RETURNABLE".
The wholesaler replied, in part "NOT THE TERMS WE NORMALLY WORK WITH"

I know it's a business policy with both parties. If I were a store owner/manager I wouldn't carry a product that I might get stuck with either. Can you imagine ordering 2,000 copies and only 1 sells after 6 months. I want to return the other 1,999. On the flip side if PA is concerned that my book is so lousy they don't want to take a chance on having that situation arise -- why did they publish it in the first place?

I've vented enough. Thanks for your encouragement,
and responding.

Bruce

*********

yet again another one who "missed" the small print where it said that PA books were non-returnable...

*sigh*

Sher2

07-17-2004, 03:56 AM

<and the ugly truth rears it's head...
PA is going to kill this thread.>

I've been following that with interest today. I'm just surprised it wasn't nipped in the bud with the poor guy's first post. Oh, wait, I know -- everybody at PA is busy today with editing, sales, and answering inquiries.

NancyMehl

07-17-2004, 10:03 AM

Sher2,

Good one.

:rofl

Nancy

07-17-2004, 09:00 PM

PA posted this. Neve seen this person on the board before, and with no book listed it makes me wonder if PA is posing as an author again.

"rlfulgham

7/16/2004
23:48:24
Subject: Shock and trauma at Barnes & Noble

Message:
Have any of you considered yourself fortunate not to be displayed in brick & mortar bookstores? I spent yesterday at a local Barnes & Noble and was appalled by what I saw pretending to be great literature. Virtually all of the heavily promoted, Big New-York-Publisher books were politcally correct to an absurdity that made me laugh. Great literature, in my modest opinion, has always been an underground art, carefully protected from commericalism by its very eclectic nature. Only the wise buy wise books. Only the literate buy literary books. So, my PA brothers and sisters, lift your heads up and thank God you are not among the posturing fakes and phoneys published by the Five Big New York publishing corportations that control 80% of all books published in the USA. We at least have a democratic publisher, and the cream will rise to the top. This in my opinon - but I am 56 years old and I've seen this nation fall from the world literay giant to the pitiful producer of trash it is today. So lift those chins! Carry yourself with pride! We are the best because we are not bad enough to sell to the tastless Big New York Five. Deo Vindici! God bless M. N. Prather for her truly democratic ethics."

That last sentence really got me:rofl Wonder id this is not from Prather herself?

Kevin

aka eraser

07-17-2004, 09:50 PM

I wonder if there's any chance, however remote, that this person's tongue was planted firmly in cheek and is actually a dig at PA? I mean it's so preposterous. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

I have little doubt it will be met with a chorus of huzzah's from the faithful choir though.

lastr

07-17-2004, 10:03 PM

Fulgham's Thread at PA (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/general/1395.htm) His book is named "Man's Laughter: Anatomy of a Manhunt" He also has books at Lulu.com under the Lion (http://www.lulu.com/LION)Press name.

DaveKuzminski

07-18-2004, 12:16 AM

I suspect that a very few PA supporters are paid to do so. At most, there are two or three of them along with some office staff members deliberately posing as authors.

As to the other supporters, especially among the frequent posters at the PA bulletin board, some of them are deluded, some are afraid to speak differently, and some don't know any better.

To be honest, there are some individuals among the frequent posters at PA's bulletin board who do make comments that are not in agreement, full or otherwise, with PA. However, they tend to be short-lived in that environment.

AnneMarble

07-18-2004, 01:02 AM

PA posted this. Neve seen this person on the board before, and with no book listed it makes me wonder if PA is posing as an author again

That's a distinct possibility. Isn't one of the Top Ten Signs that a poster is really PA posing as an author the fact that the poster never appeared until that moment? ;)

Virtually all of the heavily promoted, Big New-York-Publisher books were politcally correct to an absurdity that made me laugh.

They are?! :ha This person must be going to the wrong bookstores. For all the "politically correct" books (and PC means different things to different people), there are lots of books from a variety of sides, and on a variety of issues.

Anyway, the PA boards are one of the silliest places to be complaining about "political correctness." The PA boards are not exactly open to opposing viewpoints. :p

HapiSofi

07-18-2004, 02:44 AM

I'm inclined to believe that post is real. "Why them? Why not me?" is one of the traditional laments of the seriously clueless writer.

HeathenPrince

07-18-2004, 10:25 AM

Hapi got it right

the rest of you, don't waste another five seconds trying to analyze that ridiculous PA post. you all know what it means and what it represents. another pitiful attempt to legitimize a serious mistake...going with PA in the first place. That HB fool has rubbed off on another lost soul.

even sadder, some of those peeps will cling to that battlecry for dear life because it beats crying in yopur beer. (but only by a little)

HapiSofi

07-18-2004, 07:41 PM

More of my out-of-order commentaries on PA's contract:

22. This agreement is entered into by both parties in good faith, with the mutual understanding that neither party has guaranteed, or is to guarantee, the sale of any specific number of copies of the said literary work, it being impossible to predict, before publication, what success any book may attain.Looked at one way, this is an amateurish provision. If the parties to the agreement can't be presumed to be acting in good faith, they don't have a contract. And since at no point has the contract said anything about guaranteed sales figures, there's no need to point out that they aren't guaranteed.

I suspect #22 is in the contract only because PublishAmerica knows how likely it is that their authors will become dissatisfied and suspicious upon exactly those points. In the technical parlance of PA's staffers' real profession, #22 is the blow-off.23. The Author acknowledges that the Publisher has not made any prior pledges, promises, guarantees, inducements, of whatever nature, either in writing, by word of mouth, or in any form, that are not contained in the terms of this agreement.What this paragraph says is that no matter how much PublishAmerica's various statements and representations -- on their web page, in e-mail, over the phone, on their message board, on other people's message boards -- as I say, no matter how much those look like pledges, promises, guarantees, or (most especially) inducements, none of them count unless they're spelled out in this contract.

The most important of these unsupported inducements is of course PublishAmerica's fraudulent representation of itself as a conventional publishing house whose books are distributed and sold through brick-and-mortar bookstores. They aren’t. PA is a vanity publisher, they’ve got no sales force, and they don’t get distributed to bookstores or wire racks.

What really happens is that individual PA authors, acting on their own, often at the cost of considerable personal labor and expense, will sometimes manage to persuade single bookstores here and there to take a few copies. This is the sole basis for PA's claim that you can find their books in regular bookstores. Among the many implications of paragraph #23 is that no matter how much PA talks about getting stocked in bookstores, they take no responsibility for making that happen.

Sher2

07-18-2004, 08:30 PM

<What really happens is that individual PA authors, acting on their own, often at the cost of considerable personal labor and expense, will sometimes manage to persuade single bookstores here and there to take a few copies. This is the sole basis for PA's claim that you can find their books in regular bookstores. Among the many implications of paragraph #23 is that no matter how much PA talks about getting stocked in bookstores, they take no responsibility for making that happen.>

And yet, HapiSofi, you cannot get The Zombies to understand this to save your soul. You can beat them over the head with their PA contract and they will continue to defend the party line 'til Kingdom Come.

Okay, yeah, I'm ticked this morning. I belong to a Yahoo forum in which a number of issues unflattering to PA are being discussed. I wake up this morning to find a couple of Happy PAers calling it a "smear campaign." I just don't get it. I guess I'm just a poor candidate for brainwashing. Thank God! Anyhow, the Zombies have been cordially invited to find themselves a more compatible forum, and good riddance. I have no patience for suffering fools.

FM St George

07-18-2004, 08:43 PM

well... let's face it; no one likes to be called a fool. And even less of us want to acknowledge it and deal with it, to be honest.

heck, I was in denial for a long time; figuring that *I* was too smart to be taken in - and when I did realise it, I was embarassed, ashamed... fill in your fav word here. It's a hard lump of coal to swallow, realizing that you've been taken.

so I smile, I let those supporters ramble on and I know that they'll come to the same truth eventually, when they get that first royalty check or fail to get any sales out of the nearest bookstore, despite PA's bragging that they can get them on the shelves... and they'll be back after they accept that they were fooled like the rest of us.

it's hard, and I can appreciate that it takes time for that to happen.

DaveKuzminski

07-18-2004, 08:50 PM

But the PA supporter comments have to be countered with the truth in those other forums. Otherwise, they'll lure in other unsuspecting writers who will then feed the fraud.

Sher2

07-18-2004, 09:05 PM

<I was in denial for a long time; figuring that *I* was too smart to be taken in - and when I did realise it, I was embarassed, ashamed... fill in your fav word here. It's a hard lump of coal to swallow, realizing that you've been taken.>

Oh, Lord, FM StGeorge, me, too. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that I've worked for lawyers all of my adult life and still got sucked in. I showed the contract to my attorney boss but, as he was quick to point out, he doesn't know beans about publishing law. You live and learn.

vstrauss

07-18-2004, 09:16 PM

>> I suspect #22 is in the contract only because PublishAmerica knows how likely it is that their authors will become dissatisfied and suspicious upon exactly those points. In the technical parlance of PA's staffers' real profession, #22 is the blow-off.<<

Exactly. It's advance justification for failure.

This kind of clause (which you'll never find in the contract of a successful agent or publisher) is fairly common in the contracts of questionables and amateurs. IMO, it's an infallible tipoff that here's an outfit you don't want to deal with.

>>What this paragraph says is that no matter how much PublishAmerica's various statements and representations -- on their web page, in e-mail, over the phone, on their message board, on other people's message boards -- as I say, no matter how much those look like pledges, promises, guarantees, or (most especially) inducements, none of them count unless they're spelled out in this contract.<<

One of the complaints I received about Erica House, the vanity press from which PA was born, was that authors were given lavish verbal promises (such as pledging that if the author didn't recoup his cash outlay within a certain amount of time the publisher would make up the difference) that weren't reflected in the contract. Guess what happened to writers who tried to get those promises written in.

- Victoria

DaveKuzminski

07-18-2004, 09:54 PM

www.writersdigest.com/101...r_101=2004 (http://www.writersdigest.com/101sites/categorysearch.asp?year_101=2004) lists a few interesting sites for writers. It should also be noted that one certain publisher claiming over 8,000 authors is not among those.

HapiSofi

07-18-2004, 11:24 PM

Sher, for PA authors who haven't gotten round to being miserable yet, this information is hard to accept. If what we say about PA is wrong, if it's just a smear campaign, then they're on their way to being successful published authors, and they have every reason to feel optimistic. But if we're right, their self-esteem is going to take a dreadful hit. Not only are they not legitimately published authors; they've fallen for a scam, and they can't get out. They may even have to consider the possibility that people don't really love their book as much as they'd imagined. Taken all together, it's a bitter dose of medicine.

I felt for FM St. George when I read: "I was in denial for a long time, figuring that *I* was too smart to be taken in - and when I did realise it, I was embarrassed, ashamed ... fill in your fav word here. It's a hard lump of coal to swallow, realizing that you've been taken."

That's the commonest response to finding out you've been rooked. Scammers count on it, because it slows down their victims and makes them less willing to speak out. Any well-constructed scam includes one or more "blow-offs", bits of the script that are designed to make the victim go away quietly without calling the police, consulting a lawyer, or punching out the scammer.

Sidenote: That embarrassment reaction is the bane of those who work with older people who've been the victims of fraud. The elderly tend to be more isolated than the rest of us, and they don't want to be seen as incompetent, so they don't yell for help when they're being bilked of the life's savings. Their isolation and their slowness to get outside help, plus the fact that they're in possession of their life's savings/retirement nest egg/fully paid-for house/et cetera, is the reason scammers so often target them.

Being scammed doesn't mean you're stupid. We all have our off days. Sooner or later, just about everyone falls, at least temporarily, for one fraud or another. What scammers target are people who don't have the means or the inclination to fight back when they realize they've been rooked. Authors are good for that. The bad ones don't know they're bad, and the good ones are never sure they're good. They're all constantly looking for reasons to have hope, and when it's time for the blow-off, it's all too easy to get them to believe that they were stupid for ever having imagined that they could be a successful pro writer.

That's why I have a soft spot for Shiva the Destroyer, that guy who's in tryouts for the role of Nemesis of the S.T. Agency. Sure, Shiva's over the top; but he's angry rather than depressed, and he puts the blame on the S.T. Agency, where it belongs. Victoria's right to cavil at some of Shiva's techniques, but I have to applaud his attitude.

astonwest

07-19-2004, 01:55 AM

"What this paragraph says is that no matter how much PublishAmerica's various statements and representations -- on their web page, in e-mail, over the phone, on their message board, on other people's message boards -- as I say, no matter how much those look like pledges, promises, guarantees, or (most especially) inducements, none of them count unless they're spelled out in this contract."

This is why most of the PA extra-faithful will ramble on to people who complain such things as:

--Didn't you read the contract?
--You should have read the contract.
--You had the chance to sign the contract or not.
--You didn't have to sign the contract.

...so on and so forth, even though most of the problems people face aren't even listed in the contract (examples being pricing, bookstore stocking, etc.).

"They may even have to consider the possibility that people don't really love their book as much as they'd imagined."

Been there, done that...

Big Daddy West
:hat

CaoPaux

07-19-2004, 11:10 PM

The logo speaks: “It’s not us, it’s you.”
www.publishamerica.com/cg...e/4995.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/4995.htm)

<sarcasm>I’m guessing they won’t remove this one under their “promoting a commercial website” rule.</sarcasm>
www.publishamerica.com/cg...e/5019.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/5019.htm)

HapiSofi

07-20-2004, 02:51 AM

Paragraph #24 of the PublishAmerica contract, its “reversion clause” (I hate having to call it that), is an especially nasty piece of work. Like paragraph #9 (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessageRange?topicID=209.t opic&start=1161&stop=1177), its text has deliberately been made obscure in order to camouflage an unjustifiable rights grab that’s not related to the paragraph’s ostensible subject matter. But unlike paragraph #9, it does this by burying its rights grab in a heap of obsolete production terminology that’s guaranteed to be unfamiliar to anyone who hasn’t worked in book production for decades. Here’s the text from PA’s contract:24. When in the judgement of the Publisher, the public demand for the work is no longer sufficient to warrant its continued manufacture, the Publisher may discontinue further manufacture and destroy any or all plates, books, sheets and electronic files without any liability in connection therewith to the Author. However, the Publisher agrees to notify the Author of such decision in writing, and will offer to transfer to the Author the work and its rights in the copyrights thereon, the plates (if any), the bound copies and sheet stock (if any) on the following terms F.O.B. point of shipment: the plates, at their value for old metal, the engravings (to be used only in the work) at one-half (1/2) their original cost, the bound stock at one-half (1/2) the list price, and the sheet stock at the cost of gathering, folding, sewing and preparing for shipment, all without royalties. In the latter event, unless the Author shall, within 30 days, accept said offer and pay the amount set forth in said writing, the Publisher may dispose of the work, copyrights, plates, books, sheets and other property without further liability for royalties or otherwise.Pretty murky, right? Hang in there.

I can tell where this came from. PublishAmerica has based their construction of #24 on a paragraph they adapted from an old (quite an old) publishing contract. It’s the only paragraph in their contract that’s based on this very old model. The rest are of recent origin.

The original paragraph which they adapted to their use concerned the arrangements for disposing of the remaining production materials and the leftover copies of a book at the point that its publisher has let it go out of print. This is completely inappropriate for PublishAmerica, which uses POD (print on demand) technology, and thus need never let a book go out of print unless the author demands it.

What’s even more bizarre is that this contractual language which PA appropriated assumes the use of bookmaking methods from the vanished era of linotypes, stereotypes, rotogravure, and all the other grimy hands-on technology of printing with hot lead type – which, depending on how you count it, is at minimum three full generations of printing technology removed from anything PA’s ever used. It’s as though CNN were broadcasting this evening’s news in Chaucer’s English.

However, they didn’t use the passage unaltered. There are bits of language in paragraph #24 which do not date from the days of hot type. These, we must assume, are PublishAmerica’s own interpolations – and they concern a transfer of copyright from the author to PublishAmerica.

As I said in my critique (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessageRange?topicID=209.t opic&start=1161&stop=1180) of paragraph #9, ”You want to talk about standard vs. nonstandard contracts? In a standard contract, grants of rights are up front, under a heading that says something like ‘GRANT’ or ‘GRANT OF RIGHTS’. Other subrights, licenses, etc., are in paragraphs with similarly appropriate headings. They are not tucked into the latter portion of a paragraph about book promotion.” Neither, I will add, should they show up in a paragraph about the disposition of production materials at the point of reversion.

Moreover, a provision that effects a transfer of copyright should have the legal equivalent of flashing red lights and flag trucks fore and aft. Outright transfer of copyright isn't common in trade publishing. Most contracts involve a grant of certain rights for either a specified period of time, or until the book goes out of print. Copyright – that is, permanent ownership of the work – remains with the author. A full-scale transfer of the copyright of an original work is very rare, and is something a normal publishing contract would never bury in a minor paragraph.

It turns out that when you remove everything from paragraph #24 that a standard publishing contract would never locate there -- that is, mentions of copyrights and royalties -- what you have is a nice coherent little paragraph about the disposition of production materials at the point of reversion. I can show you what it all means, but first I'm going to have to explain some history.

Way back when, we used to have to cast every letter of every word in molten metal before we could print it. Text was typed into a huge complicated moloch of a machine called a Linotype that lined up and justified a row of letter forms, then squirted molten lead into them to form a single line of type, called a slug. (That’s if you were lucky. Sometimes it squirted the operator.) When you’d typeset enough slugs to make a page, you assembled them tightly in a wooden form and pressed a layer of special heat-resistant papier-mache onto them to take an impression of the whole page. This papier-mache mould was used to cast a curved metal plate, which was then fastened to a rotary press and used to print copies on paper.

(Taking a mould of the set type and using it to make a curved plate that would fit onto a rotary press was called stereotyping. And since you could take more than one mould from a page of set type, press syndicates got started that distributed content to smaller newspapers in the form of ready-made plates. Newsmen who wrote and typeset their own copy derogatorily referred to this syndicated material as boilerplate. Now you know where both those terms come from. If you want to go three for three, you can probably figure out typecasting on your own.)

Having to physically manufacture every page in metal before it could be printed made getting a book to press a major undertaking. After you’d done it you could keep the plates and print more pages from them later on, but it still took a lot of work to get them onto the presses. Because getting everything ready to print took so much work, once the presses were rolling it was common for publishers to print a great many more pages than they had immediate use for. They'd set these aside for later. Instead of sending a title back to press when they ran low on copies, they’d collate, fold, sew, and bind some of these pre-printed loose sheets.

But no matter how cleverly the house managed its production and warehousing, it still cost something to keep a book available and in print. Eventually the day would come when the publisher decided that the income from that book’s sales no longer justified the cost of keeping it in the backlist. The book would be allowed to go out of print, at which point the rights would automatically revert to the author.

Meanwhile, there was the question of what would happen to the stored metal printing plates, the pre-printed loose pages, and the leftover finished copies of the book. (There are always leftovers.) This is where our paragraph comes into the story.

What follows is my speculative reconstruction of the original paragraph, with commentary:When in the judgement of the Publisher, the public demand for the work is no longer sufficient to warrant its continued manufacture, the Publisher may discontinue further manufacture and destroy any or all plates, books, or sheets,Plates are the metal plates you print from. Books are finished bound copies. Sheets are printed unbound pages.without any liability in connection therewith to the Author. However, the Publisher agrees to notify the Author of such decision in writing, and will offer to transfer to the Author the plates (if any), the bound copies and sheet stock (if any) on the following terms F.O.B. point of shipment:F.O.B. means “freight on board” -- this is going to be sent via an industrial-strength freight carrier. “Point of shipment” means you have to come down to the depot to get it.the plates, at their value for old metal, the engravings (to be used only in the work) at one-half (1/2) their original cost,I believe that what this means is that the author gets the engraved metal plates from which the illustrations are printed, and can use them to print more books; but second-use rights are still held by the artist, so the engravings may not be used for some other purpose.the bound stock at one-half (1/2) the list price,”Bound stock” means finished copies of the books. This is something we still do. When a book is going to be remaindered, we first offer to sell those copies to the author at a reduced rateand the sheet stock at the cost of gathering, folding, sewing and preparing for shipment.Here my expertise is a trifle shaky. I believe it means that you can have the extra printed pages, but only if you’ll pay the cost of having them turned into F&Gs – folded & gathered sixteen-page signatures, suitable for binding.In the latter event, unless the Author shall, within 30 days, accept said offer and pay the amount set forth in said writing, the Publisher may dispose of the plates, books, sheets and other property without further liability to the author.If within thirty days the author doesn’t say “Yes, I want all that stuff,” and send a check or money order to cover the costs, the publisher can sell it all as wastepaper and scrap metal.

Thus the reconstructed original: an interesting historical sidelight, though it wasn’t the commonest (http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/contract/publish.htm) way to handle these things, and I can’t imagine many authors exercised the option to buy their plates. Anyway, anyway. I won’t say that to modern readers, it reads like Greek; these days, more people can read Greek than could decipher that paragraph.

Now here’s PublishAmerica’s version again, this time with their presumed changes set in boldface:24. When in the judgement of the Publisher, the public demand for the work is no longer sufficient to warrant its continued manufacture, the Publisher may discontinue further manufacture and destroy any or all plates, books, [and] sheets and electronic files without any liability in connection therewith to the Author. However, the Publisher agrees to notify the Author of such decision in writing, and will offer to transfer to the Author the work and its rights in the copyrights thereon, the plates (if any), the bound copies and sheet stock (if any) on the following terms F.O.B. point of shipment: the plates, at their value for old metal, the engravings (to be used only in the work) at one-half (1/2) their original cost, the bound stock at one-half (1/2) the list price, and the sheet stock at the cost of gathering, folding, sewing and preparing for shipment, all without royalties. In the latter event, unless the Author shall, within 30 days, accept said offer and pay the amount set forth in said writing, the Publisher may dispose of the work, copyrights, plates, books, sheets and other property without further liability for royalties or otherwise.Cute, eh? Transfers of copyright, red in tooth and claw, lurking amidst the thickets of sheet stock.

So, what’s the real point of #24? At first you might assume it’s to grab off ownership of a bunch of copyrights that should properly belong to the books’ authors. The trouble with that theory is, the only real commercial value most PA titles have is that you can use them to squeeze money out of their authors. I don’t doubt for a minute that PublishAmerica would alienate their authors’ copyrights, assuming they thought they could make money out of it; but the only thing they could do with outright ownership of a bunch of their titles would be to sell copies of them, and we already know they’re not interested in that line of work.

I believe the point of paragraph #24 is to cause the author who’s seeking a reversion to go into a state of panic. You know that cartoon about what you say vs. what your dog hears? The one where the guy is saying all that stuff to his dog Ginger, only what the dog’s hearing is ”blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah GINGER blah blah blah…”? Same effect here: ”Obscure production-speak obscure obscure production obscure YOU WILL LOSE YOUR COPYRIGHT obscure production production production obscure.” Gets your attention, that does. You can't tell what-all is going on; you only know that it somehow threatens to deprive you of ownership of your book.

And what’s the point of sending you into a panic? It’s to soften you up for the “49 copies” scam. It goes like this: PublishAmerica doesn't have a proper reversion clause, but that doesn't mean they won't revert books. As has often been observed, PA is good at making nasty-sounding legal threats, but they never follow through on their offers to fight, because they don’t want to wind up in court giving sworn testimony about their business methods. If you demand your book back, they’ll give it to you -- unless they’re personally pissed at you (usually for criticizing them in public), in which case they’ll drag out the process as long as possible, and then give it back to you anyway. (If they’re really pissed at you, they’ll simply stop selling your book. Since their contract has a seven-year term, and no clause reverting the book if it goes out of print, at that point the only thing you can do is try to get it back so you can take it elsewhere.)

However! Before they’ll revert your book, they say, under the provisions of paragraph #24, you’ll have to buy up their overstocks. Remarkably, this overstock quantity almost always turns out to be 49 copies (http://www.mindsightseries.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=6&post=35913#POST35913), except when it’s more; which means you’ll be paying at least a thousand dollars to ransom your book. A lot of people would undoubtedly balk at that -- if there weren’t a paragraph in their contract that threatens them with loss of their copyright if they don't pay up.

It’s a scam. PublishAmerica shouldn’t have overstocks. They’re a POD publisher. Furthermore, they’re often tardy or a no-show about providing books ordered in any quantity. There’ve been repeated sightings of mournful PA authors who’ve gotten some local bookstore to agree to a signing, and who then spend weeks trying to get PA to ship 25 prepaid copies, none of which arrive in time for the signing, Nevertheless, when authors try to get a reversion, there will turn out to be 49 overstock copies lying around at PA.

Why 49? Because that's a major price breakpoint for short-run printing and binding operations. Those copies cost PA even less than their usual Lightning Press per-unit rate. When you ask for a reversion, PublishAmerica sends in the order to have your overstocks printed.

As Victoria Strauss once posted on this subject (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessageRange?topicID=190.t opic&start=1&stop=20):It's pretty clear what's being got at here: it's a way to make money on the back end.

The PA contract is nonstandard in a number of respects. The out of print/reversion clause is just one example. Like some other parts of the contract, it seems to be based at least in part on out-of-date contract language (hence the stuff about plates and engravings), but the most important thing to note about the clause is that it ties rights reversion to author payments:

"...unless the author shall, within 30 days, accept said offer and pay the amount set forth in said writing, the Publisher may dispose of the work, COPYRIGHTS [my emphasis], plates, books, sheets and other property without further liability for royalties or otherwise."

PA appears to interpret this clause as meaning the author must pay for "overstock". I've received a number of reports from authors who, on being released from their contracts, were asked to pay for books in stock (in some cases, a lot more than just 49 books). In one case where the author refused to pay, PA interpreted the sentence quoted above to mean that it retained the publishing rights granted in the contract. Now, you could certainly argue that the sentence doesn't mean this at all, since "rights" and "copyright" are not the same thing, and PA never takes possession of your copyright. However, you might have to hire a lawyer in order to do so.

I don't know of any commercial publisher that ties rights reversion to author payments. The author may be offered the chance to purchase overstock and other materials at a reduced rate, but if they don't, it has no bearing on whether or not they get their publishing rights back.You can find more about PublishAmerica’s profit margins here (http://www.mindsightseries.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=1&post=36774#POST36774), and at a great many other sites on the web. These are not the good guys.

DeePower

07-20-2004, 04:29 AM

Why doesn't PublishAmerica want book orders from stores like a traditional publisher? Why has PA set up their discount and no return policies so that it discourages sales? Why doesn't PA offer a discount to amazon.com so those books are discounted by the expected 30%? Why does PublishAmerica focus its efforts on recruiting new authors and having those new authors sell 50 to 300 copies, rather than taking a few authors and selling 1,000 to 5,000 copies to retail outlets?

I believe I have the answer. And it is money, but probably not what you think.

Just as a little background I have a Master's in Business Administration and have worked in the finance department of a major corporation, as well as a consultant in business planning for my own consulting company. I am very familiar with budgets, forecasting, cash flow and income statements.

If PA sells say 100 copies of a $19.95 title, (and let's just round that up to $20.00 so I can do the math in my head) to the author, or from the PA website and they discount the title 20%, they have sales of $1800.00 and they probably pay Lightning Source (LS) their printer $3.00 per book, but let's be conservative and say they pay $5.00 per book. They earn $1800.00 and pay LS $500.00 so the PA net profit is $1300.00

If a bookstore would order 1000 copies and want a 50% discount (55% is standard but again we'll say 50% so I can figure out the math without a calculator) PA would receive $10,000 and have to pay LS $5,000 so they would have a net profit of $5,000.00

Would you rather have $1300.00 or $5,000? PublishAmerica would rather have the $1300.00 and here's why.

The $1300.00 is immediate cash (actually they get $1800.00 immediately) because PA doesn't tell LS to print the books until PA has been paid in full by credit card by the author (or a customer from the PA website). Credit cards settle within 48 hours.

If PA fills a bookstore order they have to pay LS $5,000.00 to print the 1000 copies now, when the copies are ordered. BUT they don't get the payment from the bookstore for 60 to 90 days. If the books are ordered by the bookstore through Ingram, and that's how most bookstores order, PublishAmerica has to wait 90 days to get paid by Ingram. That's Ingram's standard term. It's a double hit, they have to pay out-of-pocket expenses of $5,000.00 immediately and they don't receive the $10,000 for 90 days.

PA does not want to tie up $5,000 for 90 days and have to wait 90 days to receive their profit.

If PA was a traditional publisher as they claim, and had orders for 1000 copies of just say 50 titles out of the 3000+ titles they have already released, well they have to have some significant cash on hand to fund the orders.

And now they have 8000 authors, if 3,000 have already been published that means that 5000 will be published within the next 12 months per the PA contract. PublishAmerica not only doesn't want to sell to bookstores like a traditional publisher, it's my opinion they can't.

Dee
www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com

James D Macdonald

07-20-2004, 05:08 AM

To simplify that:

Selling books to their own authors is cheap and easy. Selling books to the general public is expensive and difficult.

PA takes the easy route.

To expand:

To sell books to the authors and their families and friends requires a telelphone and the ability to take credit card orders.

To sell books to the public via bookstores requires a sales force, the ability to distribute the books, a returns policy, and capital up front. Plus, there's a chance of failure.

Jarocal

07-20-2004, 09:48 AM

I don't think the problem is not wanting A brick and Mortar to purchase 1000 copies at one shot (which would never happens with their pricing and no return policy). If they got a invoice from LS stating that Ingrams just moved 1000 at a shot PA would simply ring up their local bank and take a short term note for the 5 grand pay it in 90 days when Igrams cuts them the check and pocket around $4800 without spending a dime of their own money. They may even have a seperate stipulation with Ingram and LS that bulk orders over 1000 go to an offset press run where the price per unit drops even more raising their profit margin.

Where the problem lies is in repeated and spread out hits for 50 to 100 books ordered by bookstores that are willing to do a local author signing. They would rather sell the Books to the author with the money up front and let the author supply they books than to have a large number of authors with 50 book orders through bokstores for signings where PA has to fork out the cash first and wait for Ingrams because the individual amounts are too small to use a short bank note and still make a good profit.

Pa would welcome a bulk order of non returnable books at one shot, especially if it were without having to raise it's discount or lift a finger to attract the sale. But PA knows that while some authors may get some interest from Bookstores or ID distributers, the best chance the author has of actually placing them is to buy the books themselves in large quantity with their credit card and then dealing directly with the ID or Bookstore directly and taking a large enough hit that the author is giving the book away while PA makes their money upfront.

Pa's ideal customer is a business professional who does seminars where they manage to sell 15 to 25 of their books to a class of thirty directly during the seminar. The author is going to keep his stock at around 50 books. If it is a frequently sought after seminar like one on cellular manufacturing techniques, Statistical process control, or conforming to QS9001/QS14001 standards there is a good chance that the company bringing the person in for the seminar will spring for the thirty books for their employees. The author could even print it up as a textbook and include the retail price of the books less a 10% discount in the price of his course, in order to get the company to buy his books. This would also draw a trickle of internet sales from the PA website from people google searching the book title. Many times these authors will have additional titles to come along and while the sales of the first title drop a bit, they are still higher than the rest of PA's sales averages and the second book moves into the slot where the previous title was while the first title out continues at a rate of around 5 books per seminar. This cycle will continue with each new title until there are a couple that only sell one per session one that sels 5-10 per session and the current title which sells the 15-25 per session. PA loves this situation so much because the author will order 50 to 100 copies of one or two older titles everytime PA offers it's "special" and will order a suffiecient amount to supply his direct sales of the newest title to last between "special offers" by PA. The person may even run short in between offers and PA gets a higher profit margin because of the author's need to have his/her inventory in stock for direct sales because that is the only effective way they can reliably move their books.

After the ideal customer comes the next best thing, the HB' of the world who publish one book have the 100 copies or so sell and then after the friends/family cash cow has had time to fill back up they milk them again in the form of a sequel. These people don't make PA as much money but they tend to be quite happy with the fact that PA gave them a "foot in the door" (not realizing they probably won't like what is in the room behind the particular door PA opened for them) and contimually extoll the virtues of PA on it's website and to all their friends calling anyone who doubts the ability of PA to help their writing career naysayers or part of the "institution" trying to keep new life from PA from taking root.

After that category of customer comes PA's Bread and Butter. They are the ones who have labored years over one manuscript, do not want a career as a writer, just want to be able to say they are a "published author" (which technically they are even if only about 50 people will read their book). These people just want to see their name on the cover of a book and are happy with the 50-100 friends/family that will buy their books and the three copies they can manage to get the local Brick&Mortar guy to put on the shelf (usually after they bought it and resold it to the Brick&Mortar person). Getting a local booksigning to them is like living in a dream world and they could care less if they are having to supply the books because it is a new experience for them. Once in a while they even enjoyed the experience so much (I know it sounds crazy but it does happen :eek ) that they rush off to write a second book and that takes around a year or two and PA welcomes them back with open arms (see above about milking the F&F cash cow).

What all those above have in common is that they have been serviced by a vanity press model (which happens to meet the needs of their wants/expectations) without having to dish out the costs up front even though they are in the cover price of the book (I believe James M. has adequately portrayed how they factor in the publishing costs during a previous post in this thread). It is also a vanity press model that is different enough from vanity presses that aren't ashamed to call themselves a vanity press that it can almost seem like a traditional publisher to someone not in the industry.

After the PA happy customers, come the ones that the contract is designed to keep as quiet as possible. They are the customers who think that PA is going to offer them a shortcut to the bestseller list (even though there hasn't been a PA book on the best seller list, or even on bookstore shelves in quantity). They throw in an Article 9 to give the appearance that they have the electronic rights when all they have been granted is non-exclusive use of those rights. They hide a permanent grab for the book rights in article 24 which shouldn't even scare authors to badly since the copyright is in the authors name and the only rights PA can dispose of are the seven years worth of printed book rights(or the balance thereof) and a non-exclusive electronic medium rights. even if the Author told PA to sod off on buying the remaining "49 copies" the worst that PA could do to them would be allocate their Non-exclusive e-text rights to someone who would put it out as a free-download until the seven year period is up.

The contract is shady and it is designed to prey upon two things. The author's fear, and most people's desire for immediate results, even if it costs them a bit more money. In all honesty it is probably better not to fight to get the rights back and let the title stay in obscurity for seven years. After the term is up take the rights back, rework the book to what it should look like and publish it as a fresh work. PA only has been granted rights for seven years, they are not legally able to sell the rights to someone else for a longer term than they have use of those rights, not trying to sound rude but I doubt there are many people who would buy such short term rights, let alone on a work that is not properly edited. The only way it could possibly be damaging is if the person granted PA control over the movie rights and they decided to dispose of them.The grant of other rights outside of the immediate ones stated in the contract would be for whatever term the author gives PA control of them for in the seperate listing. At that point PA could invoke Paragraph 24, dump the other rights off if the author did not meet the conditions and they would not be governed by the seven year term on the contract unless the author stated they had them for seven years or to coincide with PA's allocation of rights from the publishing contract in which case they would revert back in seven years.

I think the seven years was a length of time carefully thought out by PA. It is short enough that a court or argbitration board ,ay view it as a reasonable amount of time for PA to recoup their "investment" into the work and make a decent profit, but more importantly to the average person who wants to get their work redone and out through another publisher seven yeasr seems an eternity that may cause the other publisher to say nevermind. If the book is saleable, the pulisher will accept/reject it the same way seven years from now as they would tomorrow. There would be a few exceptions that would get rejected due to time/market sensitivities, but there are exceptions to every rule.

If the contract fails to keep them quiet, PA can resort to it's bully tactics and smear campaign. "Please do not address us in that tone.." seems to be the start of every reply they send to author's who are insistant in getting an early contract break.
If the author starts off their attempts to break the contract early by informing PA they will not sign a gag order, PA knows it has the better part of seven years to dangle the rights to the author's books and twist the knife in the author's back a bit more. even the threats of litigation, while annoying to PA, will not deter them as they know that many courts will take a look at the contract and decide that the case must go to the arbitration board to try and be resolved before it will deal with the case. So you are talking three to six months to get in front of a judge who is going to say schedule an arbitration hearing that may take another six months to get scheduled. That knocks an entire year off the amount of time PA has the rights, and they have already made their money by selling the 50-100 copies on the F&F plan. At this point they are just leading the author around and making them jump through flaming hoops like a circus animal. So about a year after you start your fight to get the book back and PA decided it didn't like your attitude, you go in front of an arbitration board who is going to look at the contract you signed, and then tell you PA's request for a gag order is not unreasonable. They will also tell you that you have to buy the 49 copies in stock (unless you can prove that PA ordered them after sending you the denial for getting out of your contract early).

So with the 6 months to a year to get your book in print, the 3-6 months before you asked PA to get out of the contract, the 3-6 months to get in front of a judge who tells you try arbitration first, and finally the 3-6 months to get in front of the arbitration board, you are already 1 1/2 to 3 years into a seven year contract without having what you consider satifactory results and you have spent a lot of time, frustration, and money on something that is nearly half over. By now you have a major burr under your saddle and decide to go back to court spending more money, so about a month after the arbitration board, the judge who you went in front of before takes a quick look at the arbitration board agreement, then looks at their busy schedule, he either decides to make the arb. board decision binding right there (a win for PA), or that another 3 - 6 months is not too long for you to wait to get your day in court. So now over half of the time on the PA contract has expired, the still have rights to your book, and you have an ulcer. If it is a judge that PA''s lawyer feels comfortable asking for a short continuance from they do that, or they in open court put on record they will return the rights forthwith due to the legal costs becoming prohibitive. The lawyer will ask the judge to issue a gag order on the author in exchange for waiving the rest of the costs which has about a 70/30 chance of being immediately approved. Even if the the court won't order the gag PA will still revert the rights and effectively close the case.

You now have your book back three years early, after spending enough on legal fees to require a fairly good amount of royalties on the book if it gets published by someone else to even break even on the title and PA has made money on it.

Their lawyer has had to do a minimal amount of work to earn his retainer, and chances are that their lawyer may be a principle investor in the company.

Aside from the monetary end, you have spent the last 3 1/2 years fretting over something that would have been yours again soon anyhow. You elevated your stress level, may even have had stress related medical problems, and most of all, you have diverted resources away from where they should have been focused, on your writing.

If that one book was all you had in you, then maybe the effort may be deemed worth it. If you plan on continuing to write and release titles you have taken at least one more title of yours off a bookstore shelf over your squabbling with PA because you were spending time with that when you should have been focused on the present and the future. even if you release other titles in the amount of time you spend battling PA, you still have taken another title off the bookstore shelf because you were busy arguing with them instead of practicing your craft.

People need to be warned about shady companies like PA. Pressure from watchdog groups needs continued to keep them even as honest as their shady contract, but I don't see a drawn out legal battle that will cost the author more in legal fees than the title will most likely ever get them in royalties down the road. At least I can't see it with a seven year contract. If the contract had stated lifetime rights, or all rights, or even a longer term, say 25 years, then the legal battle may be worth it.

If your book sold 50 copies, Pa says they have still 49 in stock you have to buy, and then want you to pay scrap price for metal that was never used in the production process, then you have a legal case against them for fraud. But if your already a couple years into your contract, let that title remain in the watery grave all the Pirate ship publishing company titles are buried in and they will send you a renewal contract or a letter to dump your title, at the latest, seven years from the contract date.

If your book is still in production, not yet in print, write that list of 40 people that you supplied PA the names and addresses of, make sure they understand NOT TO BUY a copy of your book when it comes out. Pass the two copies they send you around to those 40 people to borrow and laugh that you got two books in print for $29 and PA spent more than that setting up a book that they will lose money on because neither you, your friends, or your family will buy a single copy of it. Don't say anything bad to PA about wanting your rights back and sing their song on the message boards while lamenting the evils of Bookstore managers who refuse to carry your book. When they realize your book is not selling a single copy, they will offer you the rights back for the "49 copies" at which point you tell them no and they can only lose more money while holding your book ransom for a total of seven years.

If they actually bought the 49 copies before sending you the letter it would be even funnier. They now have spent even more money with $0.00 return on their investment and 49 copies of your book laying around they will have to dump off somewhere to just brak even on the book they bought.:rofl

I have often thought of sending a junk manuscript to them just to be eligible to play on their boards and never did it because I thought $29 was too much to waste on two lousy books and a short life on a message board. Now I think I will do it, and give them 40 names to people I know will not buy a copy, just to cost them a couple hundred bucks as well as getting a chance to play on their message board.

Just think, I could be a Pirate like HB!:rofl

lindylou45

07-20-2004, 01:25 PM

I've been keeping up with this board and I have been amazed at what PA thinks they can get away with.

I am not going to wait seven years to get the rights to my books back (yes I said books. I was one of the stupid ones who sent in my second ms before my first book was actually released). I know that as a PA author my belief in my books is, in all probability, laughable to some, but I DO believe in my books. I've gotten some fantastic reviews on both my books and I want to be able to shop the mss to a reputable publisher, of whom I have thoroughly researched!

I had emailed Miranda Prather last week and asked her a series of questions of which I already knew the answers, I simply wanted to know what HER answers would be. I received her response today and it was so filled with half-truths, complete lies and ridiculous stammering that I could not believe it. I had to give myself some time before I responded to her because I was so angry. But respond I did. I responded to each and every one of her lies and called her out on them. Then I informed her that PA had 60 days in which to send me a reversal of rights or I would take them to court. I will gladly take them, too. My attorney feels that the contract I signed has been misrepresented by PA, not only because of her email, but because of the information on their website. The simple fact that they refuse to admit that they are a POD/vanity/subsidy publisher is misrepresentation in and of itself.

I look forward to Miranda Prather's reply. If she thinks I'm afraid of their threats, she would be wrong! :teeth I'm ready for whatever they try to throw at me!

James D Macdonald

07-20-2004, 05:35 PM

I know that as a PA author my belief in my books is, in all probability, laughable to some, but I DO believe in my books.

I'm certain, and I've said openly, that PA has published hundreds of books that could have been traditionally published. The fact that PA claims to be a traditional publisher lures in folks who would never consider going the vanity route.

(I'm sure that Victoria and/or Dave would love a copy of that letter from Miranda, too....)

<hr>

Addendum: PA is back pushing their authorsmarket.com site again: <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/5019.htm" target="_new">www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/5019.htm</a>

You know the "inducements" Hapi was talking about a bit upstream? You'll find them in plenty there (along with much else that's plain misleading, not to mention harmful to young and naive writers).

Sher2

07-20-2004, 05:53 PM

(I'm sure that Victoria and/or Dave would love a copy of that letter from Miranda, too....)

You go, LindyLou! At least, I 'think' I know who LindyLou is. If not, then Ms. Prather struck twice yesterday. If it's the letter I think it is, it was a masterful piece of rhetoric, propaganda, outright deceit, and some cute cutting and pasting of PA advertising hype. Hell, on second thought, it was probably a form letter.

DaveKuzminski

07-20-2004, 06:32 PM

Yes, I would like a copy of that letter. Feel free to email it to me at prededitors@att.net .

vstrauss

07-20-2004, 08:40 PM

Me too, please. beware@sfwa.org

- Victoria

DaveKuzminski

07-20-2004, 10:01 PM

Ah, they sent you the letter that a monkey could be trained to email. I wouldn't be surprised if your next response from them turned out to be the "don't use that tone toward us" version where they attempt to regain mind-control over you again.

priceless1

07-20-2004, 11:09 PM

One thing to keep in mind as authors seek to have their contracts rescinded is that it's only half the battle. Ostensibly, the reason for gaining one’s rights back is so that they may find another publisher. The problems that arise when querying publishers is that they invariably won’t touch it. Why? This is the second half of the battle; the book is still selling in all the internet stores.

Yes, the publisher being discussed in this thread is a print on demand company and there should be very few printed copies out there. But with all print on demand companies, there are invariably copies still floating around, and by rights they are able to continue to advertise those until those copies sell. However, once they are sold, the publisher should then remove the title from the stores.

Sadly, this is not a perfect world and this does not happen. What really happens is the publisher fails to remove the title even though it’s listed as being out of stock. When the author, armed with his printing rights, queries another publisher they find that they’ve fallen into a No Man’s Land. Why? The first thing I do when I have an author query me under these circumstances is to check to see whether the title has been removed. Invariably it hasn’t. It then becomes a tug of war for the new publisher to get the title removed. Even though it is listed as being out of stock, it is still technically advertised under the old publisher’s name and old ISBN. That makes it extremely confusing for a customer. Which publisher do they try to order from? Prices are often different.

Yes, it becomes a case of false advertising, but there is no governing body out there policing these infractions. The only thing the publisher taking on the project has in a case such as this is appealing to the sensibilities of the original publisher to get their advertising down. I speak from experience and believe me, I’ll never do it again. I was ultimately successful in getting the publisher to remove their advertising, but it wasn’t until I inferred that what they were doing was fraudulent. The author had already bought all the remaining copies of his book and, therefore, there was no reason for their company to continue advertising his book.

Why publishers don’t remove their rescinded titles is two-fold. Apathy certainly plays an important part, but the more sinister practice of continuing to sell the book sadly comes into play. Yes, of course it’s illegal. But as I stated before, unless someone hauls the publisher off to court, there in no governing body to police these practices. It comes down to ‘who really got hurt here?’ The authors who have been ripped off in this manner are a very widespread group and there aren’t any cohesive factors to unite them.

We can never really know how widespread this practice is because the verification is difficult. Half the time the author isn’t even aware it’s going on. They’ve moved on and fail to keep tabs on their old publisher. It isn’t my intent to frighten anyone, but to educate about the possibilities. With the advent of print on demand, there is room for abuse on the part of those with few scruples. Yes, I have seen instances of this practice firsthand.

Please, authors, please take care when negotiating for your contracts. Regardless of the publisher, insist in your negotiations that you get a precise number of how many books are still on the market. It’s ridiculously easy to find out. Insist that either the author buy the remaining copies or put some sort of watchdog in place to monitor the sales. And also know that it may be a while before another publisher is willing to review your work.

Hope this helps.

FM St George

07-21-2004, 01:17 AM

I tell ya, the PA censors must have their hands full keeping the boards clear of the truth.

www.publishamerica.com/cg...e/5044.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/lounge/5044.htm)

7/20/2004
13:52:51
Subject: And now...a depressing story

Message:
After posting earlier this morning about my sucess at setting up my first signing and how wonderful that was, I now have the exact opposite type of story.

In my efforts to contact the various media outlets in my area (Rhode Island, southern Mass areas), I have made tons of calls to local newspapers, etc. The main one I wanted is called the Providence Journal. It is the largest paper in the area and I really wanted them to do a pieces on the book, knowing that it would raise the awareness level.

Well anyway, I finally reached the book editor there today and told him why I was calling. His first question was "who published the book". When I told him PublishAmerica he refused to do anything for the book. He said he doesn't do "self published" books. I politely explained that PA is not self publishing. He replied with "it might as well be, they'll publish anything that is submitted to them". I again explained that that was untrue and said that while they accept more books than many other publishers, they are in no way a vanity press that prints everything.

They guy didn't want to hear it...he wasn't so much rude as he was set in his opinion and refused to hear anything to the contrary.

What a bummer...like I said, this is the biggest paper in the area and I really had hoped to get them on board for an article.

Just thought I'd share this...as wonderful as the highs are and as great as they are to share, the lows also are a reality of the business, right?

Are there any other RI based authors with PA who have had similar problems with the Journal?

Jeremy Marc Girard
"A Dreamer's Story"
www.jmgbooks.com

JuneBug

7/20/2004
14:02:54

RE: And now...a depressing story

Message:
Dear Jeremy,
I've worked in sales, so I know about the feeling of rejection, particularly when it is not based on facts.

I live in San Diego, CA, so I don't know about the Providence Journal, but what I would do is print out the "About Us" section from PA and send it to the book editor. If he bothers to read it, he will see that PA is not a vanity press, and he will also see that they do select the books they choose to publish based on merit.

Good luck and much success to you!

June Weiner
HOME SWEET HOME (in editing stages!)
www.juneweiner.com (under construction)

MN Freeda

7/20/2004
14:39:12
RE: And now...a depressing story

Message:
Though PA's bad reputation originates in rumor and a few disgruntled customers, it has affected my book in similar fashion.

I have been rejected by book editors left and right who see "Publish America" and refuse to accept a review copy or even respond to a follow-up e-mail.

We PA authors must do our part to promote this company with as much fervency as we display in marketing our books. It is also incumbent upon PA itself to counter these beliefs with the facts.

-MN Freeda

JMGBooks

7/20/2004
14:45:37
RE: And now...a depressing story

Message:
I have no problem with rejection...I mean, it is not pleasant, but I am not so naive that I expect to never be rejected. What really bothered me was the fact that this guy, who is the book editor for the largest paper in my state, is misinformed and set in his opinion of PA.

The idea of printing the page from the website to send to him is a good one, but I don't think it will do anything to change his mind. He really seemed set in his ways and unwilling to budge from that opinion.

Rejection based on facts in one thing...rejection based on misinformation is another altogether. I have read the negatives on PA, and as a PA author I will say that 99.9% of it is simply false information, which is distressing.

I am going to move past this though and make the interviews I do get that much better because of it!
********

why, yes - print out the PA propaganda from their own website and send it to them - that'll change their minds!

*shakes head*

sfsassenach

07-21-2004, 01:49 AM

Dee said:Just as a little background I have a Master's in Business Administration and have worked in the finance department of a major corporation, as well as a consultant in business planning for my own consulting company. I am very familiar with budgets, forecasting, cash flow and income statements.

....and you got sucked into the PA hype. So it it any wonder that less savvy "authors" believe them?

HapiSofi

07-21-2004, 02:58 AM

Priceless Lynne said:When the author, armed with his printing rights, queries another publisher they find that they’ve fallen into a No Man’s Land.Printing rights? What you need is a reversion letter from the previous publisher. And if they've reverted the book, there should be no question of their continuing to advertise it: they shouldn't.

The author may be in No Man's Land, but you aren't. That's what indemnity clauses are for.

lindylou45

07-21-2004, 03:47 AM

It's on it's way.

Gwen4

07-21-2004, 03:52 AM

On the topic of contracts--I can understand why a publisher would shy away from a book that has been give an ISBN, and perhaps already been in production, but I am having trouble with queries I am making on a book that I never even finished the AQ stage with. PA does not have any version of my book--just the signed contract and nothing else. I feel like if the contract is rescinded at this early stage, it may be given more of a chance. I wish I never ever mentioned PA, but I am an honest person...I think I blew a chance at a decent publisher!

lindylou45

07-21-2004, 03:57 AM

These people will eventually learn the truth, but like the rest of us, it will take time to realize that they were duped as well.

I love the part about all of the "misinformation" about PA floating around. Most of it is on their website!

But then those rose colored glasses sure do make the world a pretty place, don't they?

priceless1

07-21-2004, 04:09 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Printing rights? What you need is a reversion letter from the previous publisher. And if they've reverted the book, there should be no question of their continuing to advertise it: they shouldn't.<hr></blockquote>
Yes, sorry, HapiSofi, I was half asleep when I wrote this. Yes you are correct. The author is armed with their reversion letter. I've seen no less than twelve such letters within the past three months and in each case the books were still being advertised.

That it isn't right was exactly my point. But, nonetheless, it continues because no one is there to tell them to knock it off. I took that battle on and won't do it again. Some publishers continue to advertise because they claim they have unsold copies. In those cases they are more than within their rights to recoup their investment. How a publisher can make that claim when they're a POD is a whole other enchilada. Conjecture away. <img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/image/posticons/pi_freak.gif" />

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>The author may be in No Man's Land, but you aren't. That's what indemnity clauses are for.<hr></blockquote>
Yes, again, I agree with you one hundred percent. That and a dime will get you a stick of gum. The law is definitely on my side, the author's reversion letter is on my side, but unless I take it to a court of law and spend money to get some action, nothing changes.

That project suddenly becomes a lot more expensive for us (a small press) to publish due to legal fees. Fees which we would rather sink into our marketing dept. So, I maintain and continue to warn that, yes, the author may fall into a No Man's Land because the realities are such that publishers will not take on the project.

I bring this up so that any author negotiating to rescind their contract may want to include a demand that their books be removed from all the online stores as well.

priceless1

07-21-2004, 04:16 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>but I am having trouble with queries I am making on a book that I never even finished the AQ stage with.<hr></blockquote>
Gwen, you will continue to have probelms with queries because you do have that signed contract. No one will touch you until you are completely free from your prior publisher and you have something verifying that fact.

Hang in there!

Sher2

07-21-2004, 04:22 AM

Well, it's not like they have much else to do, what with the writers producing the product, editing it, advertising it, and selling it.

Seriously, I find the delusion and brainwashing on those boards so disturbing. I don't know how they'll handle it should the truth ever hit them upside the head.

Sher2

07-21-2004, 04:27 AM

<On the topic of contracts--I can understand why a publisher would shy away from a book that has been give an ISBN, and perhaps already been in production, but I am having trouble with queries I am making on a book that I never even finished the AQ stage with. PA does not have any version of my book--just the signed contract and nothing else. I feel like if the contract is rescinded at this early stage, it may be given more of a chance. I wish I never ever mentioned PA, but I am an honest person...I think I blew a chance at a decent publisher!>

My best advice at this point would be to concentrate on your second novel, finish it, and get it into the hands of a legitimate publisher. Later on, after that damnable contract is a thing of the past, there are ways to revamp the first one and let it, too, have a chance at life.

Sher2

07-21-2004, 04:29 AM

For my money -- ONE WHOLE DOLLAR, I'll have you know! -- that's where it ALL is.

FM St George

07-21-2004, 05:49 AM

www.publishamerica.com/cg...s/1764.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/newauthors/1764.htm)

7/20/2004
17:23:13
Subject: Beware of Contract!!

Message:
Dear Marlene Thornton

Can you believe this after months of promotion?
How dare them. If you can't believe it, look out.
This will be my last, and final message on this board. My work is else where, now.

As per Paragraph 25 of the contract, it has become impossible for us to commence production of your book.
There fore we will not publish your work. All rights are herewith returned to you.

Sincerely

Janice Riley
publishamerica

Here is paragraph 25

The publisher agrees to commence production of the said literary work within 365 days from the date of the signing of this aggrement by both parties thereto. Provided Publisher is not hindered by causes beyond its own control, or by the author.

I have lost 6 months from promoting this book. And, have made a complete ass of my self to the public, friends, and family. Sue or not sue is the question of the day?

LHP

7/20/2004
18:14:09
RE: Beware of Contract!!

Message:
Sorry,
and its not the end of the univers.

Keep on writin'

Marlene

7/20/2004
18:21:15
RE: Beware of Contract!!

Message:
Want to bet, how much?

Carl Baxter

7/20/2004
18:24:09
RE: Beware of Contract!!

Message:
Marlene:

What do you suppose it was that made it impossible to commence production of your book?

**********

???

CaoPaux

07-21-2004, 05:59 AM

Infocenter
Administrator
7/20/2004
17:51:32

Message:
Well, let's see...

What does The Providence Journal have in common with, let's say, the
Tallassee Tribune,
Windsor-Hights Herald,
The Glendale Star,
The Hartford Courant,
Wellsville Daily Reporter,
Nevada Appeal,
The Guardian,
The Miami Herald,
Houston Chronicle,
The Gainesville Sun,
Florida Times-Union,
South Bend Tribune,
Butler Eagle,
Austin Daily Herald,
Appalachian News-Express,
Oakland Press,
The Washington Post,
The Detroit News,
The Sierra Times,
Vancouver Sun,
Knoxville News,
The Columbus Dispatch,
The Oregonian,
The Dallas Morning News,
Fort Worth Star Telegram,
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
Pittsburgh Tribune Review,
or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
(are you still there...?)
just to name a random few out of hundreds and hundreds of well established newspapers?

Exactly, they recognize PA authors as what and who they are: serious writers whose work deserves serious attention. That's why they all have written about PA authors such as yourselves, and they continue to do so every day.

Yes, also The Providence Journal. Seems you talked to the wrong guy, Jeremy. Only a few months ago, his much less elitist colleague Richard Dujardin wrote a very supportive interview with a local PA author, in the very same newspaper, the very same The Providence Journal. He included this portion:
"Emigh's contract with Publish America, the Maryland-based publishing firm that's paying her for the book, says publication will take place within the year. She says the firm has a reputation among writers as being open to the works of previously unpublished authors."

Same newspaper, different standards. You talked to the arrogant book editor, Ms. Emigh talked to the hard-working local reporter.

Details? See
www.publishamerica.com/Press/index.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/index.htm)
www.publishamerica.com/Press/emigh.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/Press/emigh.htm)

Moral: avoid the arrogant book editor, ask for the hard-working local reporter. They almost always say yes to PublishAmerica authors, as you can see at a glance when you hit the Press Clippings tab at the top of this page. And that's just a sample!
------

I forget, do we respect media or not?

emeraldcite

07-21-2004, 06:00 AM

if you read this post:

www.publishamerica.com/cg...s/1669.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/newauthors/1669.htm)

you may get an idea of why they didn't publish her. It would be too much work for their editors....or whatever they are.

if that link is taken down, i have a copy of the message saved. i'll be happy to send it.

maybe this is a turnaround point for PA. maybe they are monitoring quality...

emeraldcite

07-21-2004, 06:04 AM

ring.

"Hello?"
"Hello."
"Hello?"
"Hello. I'm an author. I have a book. I want it reviewed. Am I speaking with an arrogant book editor?"
"I'm sorry. What?"
"Am I speaking with an arrogant book editor?"
"I don't understand."
"I'm supposed to ask for a hard-working reporter. Are you hard-working?"
"I just handle the phone calls."
"Could you put me through to a hard-working reporter? I don't want to speak to an arrogant book editor."
"We don't have book editors."
"Well, can I still speak with the hard-working reporter?"

click.

FM St George

07-21-2004, 06:37 AM

ah,yes - I went to her website.

'nuff said.

sad thing is that they offered her the contract in the first place - it's just not nice to raise hopes like that and then dash them.

Sher2

07-21-2004, 06:56 AM

<if you read this post:
www.publishamerica.com/cg...s/1669.htm
you may get an idea of why they didn't publish her. It would be too much work for their editors....or whatever they are.

if that link is taken down, i have a copy of the message saved. i'll be happy to send it.

maybe this is a turnaround point for PA. maybe they are monitoring quality...>

I think it'll be a cold day when PA gives a hoot about quality. I wonder, however, whether this could possibly have anything to do with it?

"Who Owns Print-on-Demand?
Amazon.com, Others Sued for Patent on Common Net Practice

By Cade Metz
PC Magazine

March 11— This time, Amazon.com has landed on the other side of the patent debate.

In 1999, the pioneering Internet bookseller famously sued chief competitor Barnes & Noble.com, claiming that the rival's Express Checkout service infringed on patents for the 1-Click system that lets customers quickly order from the Amazon Web site. The suit caused an uproar among Internet users, many of whom held that such an obvious business process idea wasn't innovative enough to warrant a patent.

Last week, the tables turned when Amazon proved the victim of a business process patent. On March 4, a jury in a St. Louis federal district court found that the print-on-demand services run by Amazon and two other companies, Lightning Source Inc. and Ingram Industries Inc., infringed on a patent held by the On Demand Machine Corporation (ODMC), a company based in St. Louis. ODMC (www.bookmachine.com) was awarded damages of $15 million for past infringement up to December 2003.

Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries headquartered in LaVergne, Tenn., started its print-on-demand service in 1997, providing a library of digital texts that are printed only when customers purchase them. In 2000, Amazon entered a partnership with Lightning Source, selling the company's print-on-demand titles through the Amazon.com Web site.

A Problematic Patent?

According to the district court jury, these print-on-demand businesses infringe on a patent issued to the late Harvey Ross, founder of ODMC. Ross first filed for a patent involving "a system and method of manufacturing a single book copy," but the initial request was abandoned. He filed again in July of 1993, and two years later, the patent was granted. In 2001, after a reexamination, the Patent Office discarded six of the patent's eight claims but upheld the last two, and these were the basis for the jury's decision.

The patent describes a computer-based hardware system that "may be utilized in many environments, but it is especially well suited for direct retail consumer sales." Many object to the grant, saying that the patent covers a broad idea rather than a specific invention. "The Patent Office essentially read a 3,000-word essay on print-on-demand and issued a patent for it," explains Bob Young, the former CEO of Linux packager Red Hat, who now runs the print-on-demand company Lulu.com. "This was not an invention that was awarded this patent. It was simply a description of an idea."

Douglas Goldhush, a patent lawyer with the international law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, disagrees. "This claim is fairly specific," he says. "It talks about storing the text of a book, it talks about storing sales information related to a book in the computer, which is a critical part of print-on-demand, and it talks about how the customer can view the book and command the computer to print the text."

The question may be whether the patent is too specific to be applied to the services run by Amazon and Lightning. Unlike these services, which include a vast collection of servers, printing technology, Web sites, resellers, distributors, and stores, the system detailed in the patent seems to be a single piece of hardware.

Harold Ross and ODMC did eventually build systems much like those described in the patent, but they were never commercialized. "We got a couple of prototypes out but never got to the point of actually selling the product," says Bruce Baebler, current president of ODMC. "We were primarily a development-stage company." These prototypes were intended for use as kiosk-like devices within brick-and-mortar retail stores. "The model that ODMC developed was a self-contained system for retail point-of-sale," continues Baebler, "but our patent has a broader scope than that. Lightning and Ingram are doing a warehouse, centralized type of operation, but it does infringe on our patent claim."

Murky Future

Amazon, Ingram, and Lightning are likely to appeal the jury's decision. "This is only a district court decision out of St. Louis," says Goldhush. "With $15 million at stake, I would be very surprised if they didn't appeal."

If the courts continue to uphold the patent, other print-on-demand companies, including Lulu.com, my have to pay damages, licensing fees, or both to ODMC.

"If the patent stands as valid and is infringed," continues Goldhush. "On Demand could have the opportunity to assert it over anyone else who is using a print-on-demand system or method covered by their claims."

Perhaps I'm thinking of the wrong company, but isn't Lightning PA's sole printer?

Gwen4

07-21-2004, 06:59 AM

QUOTE: Gwen, you will continue to have probelms with queries because you do have that signed contract. No one will touch you until you are completely free from your prior publisher and you have something verifying that fact.

-----------------------------------------------------

Oh, I know Lynn--I'm waiting! I have a feeling that the "scarlett letter" P will be on IVY for a long time. I still don't know for sure what they're doing but as I said, I haven't sent them anything--it's that darned signed contract. Some days I feel like just giving up and letting them publish it and move on to the next. I do appreciate all your support, Lynn. You have been great!!

FM St George

07-21-2004, 07:58 AM

"I think it'll be a cold day when PA gives a hoot about quality. I wonder, however, whether this could possibly have anything to do with it?"

actually, I think not - the hard fact is that this writer has no grasp of spelling and/or grammar, and they couldn't just slap it into a PDF file and send it out to be published - it would be a HUGE illustration of everything that PublishAmerica is criticized for.

not to mention the author's family and friends wondering what sort of company she signed with that would allow this to go out in the state it was in - I would bet that the "editors" took a close look at it, decided that they couldn't spend the time with the book (it's much faster to deal with PA authors who pay book doctors and deliver their own corrected copy, doncha know) and decided to write it off on those lines.

as for the entire POD article - that came up months ago here and elsewhere and is probably not affecting any decision PA makes in the least. They're still signing authors left and right, so it's not hurting them.

I do feel for this author who got cut, however - they should have never signed the contract with her if they had really looked over her manuscript and deemed it to be illegible in the first place.

maybe she can sue THEM for breach of contract...

:P

James D Macdonald

07-21-2004, 08:00 AM

First, I'd like to congratulate Hapi on that masterful dissection of Paragraph 24 (http://p197.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessageRange?topicID=209.t opic&start=1181&stop=1200) of the PA contract.

(According to John Savage (http://www.authorslawyer.com/), this is one of eight variations of the PA contract that he's seen. Anyone thinking of suing PublishAmerica ought to have their attorney contact Mr. Savage -- he's got lots of background information.)

<hR>

Next, let's not confuse PA continuing to advertise a book that they no longer publish with Amazon continuing to list it. As long as used copies of a book exist (and sometimes beyond), Amazon will maintain a listing for that book, under that ISBN. This includes books that have been out of print for a decade or more.

That includes books from publishers who'd gone out of business before Amazon was founded.

If I were a publisher, I'd be careful not to let Amazon's business practices jerk me around.

<HR>

For those PA book reviews in various newspapers: First, most of them aren't on the book review page with the rest of the reviews -- they're human interest stories of the "Local Man Writes Book" variety that appear elsewhere in the newspaper. Also, I bet that you find fewer and fewer of them as time goes on and editors wise up to PA, rather than more and more as PA publishes more books (as you'd expect with a traditional publisher).

DaveKuzminski

07-21-2004, 08:36 AM

Also, according to John Savage, all eight of the PA contracts are bad and some are worse than the one I posted for others to see.

What really gripes me is that PA could have told the truth and hundreds, if not thousands, of writers would have still flocked to them. They could have also cut down on the rights grabs and the criticism would have similarly died away. However, they had to try to take as much as possible because their lack of experience in publishing led them to believe that there was serious money to be made in those. There is, but you have to know how to mine it before you can get the gold out of any hill.

So, if any of PA's trolls or staff are reading this, why not consider changing some things in your contract and policies? It's the only way that any of us are going to ever let up on you with our criticism. Otherwise, we're going all the way and sooner or later, you'll find yourself in court. When that happens, this will all be part of what crushes you. That is the only, inevitable conclusion and we all know it.

priceless1

07-21-2004, 08:51 AM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Next, let's not confuse PA continuing to advertise a book that they no longer publish with Amazon continuing to list it. As long as used copies of a book exist (and sometimes beyond), Amazon will maintain a listing for that book, under that ISBN. This includes books that have been out of print for a decade or more.<hr></blockquote>
This is true, James, and a point I attempted to make. However, with the experiences we had (not PA, by the way), all of the books had been bought up by our author. I complained to the original publisher that they still had their name up. I fully realize Amazon's penchant for doing things on their own timetable, but I had to cover all my bases and see where the breakdown was occurring. My first email initiated action on the part of the publisher to get their advertising removed.

When I went back a month later and still saw their advertising up, I complained more stridently the second time. They indicated that they had already contacted Amazon about getting everything removed. That’s all well and fine, but the advertising was on B&N, BAM, and Alibris. This made me think nothing had been really initiated by the publisher at all and I was being paid lip service. My second contact with the publisher stated that there was no valid reason for any advertising to remain since no copies existed anywhere. All signs disappeared within a week. In this case, Amazon was innocent.

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>If I were a publisher, I'd be careful not to let Amazon's business practices jerk me around.<hr></blockquote>
Couldn't agree with you more. After all, it's our reputation and necks that are on the chopping block, not theirs. <img border=0 src="http://www.absolutewrite.com/images/EmoteHeadbang.gif" />

James D Macdonald

07-21-2004, 07:00 PM

A further thought on the infamous Paragraph 24: Is perhaps another reason for using all that obsolete production-speak, aside from the smokescreen for the rights-grab, to give the impression that they're a traditional publisher using offset printing without coming out and saying that they're a tradtional publisher using offset printing?

HapiSofi

07-21-2004, 07:20 PM

Lynne, Lindy, Gwen --

Why not change the title of the book when you publish (or republish) it, and never again mention the first publisher in connection with it? Seriously -- just get the rights back, and regard it as a different book.

FM St George, I first saw Marlene Thornton's writing a week or two ago. She's so hopeful and vulnerable, and such a terrible writer, that I could only wonder how the people at PA could bear to look at themselves in the mirror every morning. Now, on top of defrauding the poor woman, they're publicly humiliating her.

I suppose it makes sense. It's an indictment of PublishAmerica that they did a contract with Ms. Thornton in the first place, but if they go through with it and publish her, they'll either have to discredit their editing, or they'll have to pay for a lot of editorial work hours. That book can't be fixed short of rewriting every sentence.

James, thanks for the egoboo on dissecting #24. That paragraph still disturbs me. You couldn't ask for clearer proof that the PublishAmerica people are deliberate scammers, not clueless wanna-be publishers.

priceless1

07-21-2004, 10:08 PM

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Lynne, Lindy, Gwen --

Why not change the title of the book when you publish (or republish) it, and never again mention the first publisher in connection with it? Seriously -- just get the rights back, and regard it as a different book.<hr></blockquote>
That is exactly what we were faced with and I had discussed that option with our author. Problem was, he was really stuck on the name, and he should have been. It was perfect. Besides, it galled us to no end to have to play that game.

FM St George

07-21-2004, 10:09 PM

I do hope she sues the heck out of them - if they can't give a real reason for cancelling their contract, I'd drag them over shattered glass.

after all, they give authors such a hard time getting out of their contract...

*evil chuckle*

aka eraser

07-21-2004, 10:54 PM

Gwen4

07-21-2004, 10:59 PM

I like the title of my book, but I had already thought of changing it as it is. So, that would be the first thing I would do. Also, I have hired a book editor who (for a sum) did a complete line edit and the book is so different now than the original. I have done so many edits to it, improving it and making sure it is so perfect by way of spelling, grammar and consistency, that I know whoever publishes it will find it needs little or no editing.

I like the idea of changing the name and in my case, that would work because PA doesn't have any copy of my book--just the query proposal.

lindylou45

07-21-2004, 11:00 PM

This is the response I received from PA after demanding reversal of rights.

>
>Your misconceptions are so easy to contradict that your case has been
>given to Author Support. Please do not address us in such a tone. Your
>facts are wrong, your insinuations are wrong, and you are wasting your
and
>our time.
>
>>...However, the very fact that authors must buy their books
(regardless
>>of your denial) in order to stock bookstores simply means that you
(PA)
>>are getting your money after the fact instead of before.
>
>No, this is laughably not true. No author "must" buy anything at all.
>
>>So you deny the fact that your company was Erica Books prior to
changing
>>it's name to Publish America when complaints began rolling in.
>
>You lose credibility by using words like "deny." Listen carefully:
>
>PublishAmerica has never changed it's name.
>PublishAmerica has always been PublishAmerica from day one.
>PublishAmerica has never had any credible "complaints rolling in."
>
>>PA's authors will have to spend a huge amount of money on promotion
and
>>marketing their PA books, money that they will never be able to
recoup.
>
>No, they do not.
>
>>...PA should be more than willing to at least distribute the books to
>>"brick and mortar bookstores" something that PA loves to advertise
that
>>they do.
>
>No, we do not advertise that we do that. No publisher can do that.
Like
>all major publishers, our books are distributed to bookstores through
the
>world's largest distributor.
>
>>...the only books that are placed in "brick and mortar bookstores"
are
>>those that the author has gone out and placed there themselves.
>
>Sometimes this is true, and there's nothing wrong with that. But often
>this is not true. We won't bother to go into detail, here, but here's
just
>one example of the contrary being the case:
>www.publishamerica.com/cg...n/8622.htm (http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/8622.htm)
>
>>Your marketing practices are limited to asking the author for a list
of
>>friends and family that you can send order forms to in the hopes that
>>they will buy an abhorrently overpriced book.
>
>Not true. You were already sent a description of other marketing that
we do.
>
>>Regardless of your belief that the price of your books are not an
issue,
>>I can assure you, it is a major issue in attempting to promote these
books.
>
>Perhaps for you it is, but for thousands and thousands of our authors,
it
>is not.
>
>>As to your business model, I think we both know that your business
model
>>differs greatly from the "largest major publishing houses."
>
>No, actually it is basically identical, including our marketing
efforts.
>Again, every publisher differs from book to book as far as the
marketing
>and promotion that they will provide. No book publishing company has
the
>funds available to market each title for every author in the manner
that
>you describe.
>
>>We do not require that you ever purchase one copy of your book
>>
>>No, you say you don't require that the author purchase copies of
their
>>books. What you don't explain, and continue to deny vehemently, is
that
>>bookstores will not place PA's books in their stores because of PA's
>>non-returnable policy. In order to get books placed, an author must
buy
>>the books and guarantee that he/she will buy the books back if they
do
>>not sell. I, for one, cannot afford to do that. I doubt very highly
that
>>I am the only one.
>>
>>Ingram's is not a distributor, they are a warehouse. I would think,
as a
>>publisher, you would know that.
>
>No, you are completely wrong. Ingrams is the world's largest wholesale
>book distributor. We pay for the distribution of each title. Your book
is
>available through Ingram, as well as other distributors. Ingram is the
>major force in book distribution in the United States. Having your
book
>through Ingram makes it available for order at any bookstore.
>
>>However, with PA's no return policy, very few bookstores will ever
order
>>it, now will they?
>
>Yes, they will. If they think that it will sell, they will. Again,
many
>testimonials support this. It is unfortunate that they decided to
reject
>your book.
>
>>...the web site is quite deceitful in making authors believe PA will
be
>>doing much more.
>
>No, no one is "deceitful" at all. Funny that we've never had any
credible
>complaint from anyone feeling deceived. What we do have is 5,000 very
>happy authors in print who do not feel at all deceived.
>
>>As long as you have a huge volume of authors, you'll make money.
Being
>>the POD publisher that you are, (I know, you don't like to admit it,
but
>>we all know it's true)
>
>No, again. We print books on demand. We do not publish on demand.
>
>>In the past two years we have sold more than a quarter of a million
>>books, which stands in contrast to any allegation that our books are
not
>>competitively priced and/or supplied.
>>
>>I find it extremely interesting that you would admit this.
>
>Actually we misspoke. We will soon be approaching the million book
level.
>
>>Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in
>>bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books.
>>
>>Due to the hard work and diligence of the authors themselves. PA has
had
>>nothing to do with books being placed in bookstores.
>
>Not true.
>
>>I've spoken to several PA authors who have indicated that PA was
unable
>>to provide books for signings that were set up months in advance. If
I
>>were a bookstore manager and the publisher couldn't even provide the
>>books for the author's signing, it's doubtful I would be interested
in
>>ordering either.
>
>Not true. Our books are available by the thousands, and our turnaround
>times are well known and work very well.
>
>>I believed Publish America's statements on your web site were true. I
did
>>some research, however, when I first signed with you there were no
>>complaints as of that time. When I stupidly signed the second
contract my
>>first book had not been released as of yet. When I began hearing
>>rumblings of discontent among other PA authors I thought they were
>>attempting to cause trouble for a publishing company that simply
wanted
>>to make their authors' dreams come true. It took time, but I finally
>>discovered that PA is not, nor have they ever been, what they profess
to
>>be. I am shocked and appalled that anyone can so callously disregard
the
>>dreams of others. You make people believe their dreams can come true
and
>>then you sit back and profit from the unraveling of those dreams.
There
>>is a word for people like that, I believe it's criminal.
>
>You're making a spectacle of yourself with this sort of language.
8,000
>authors under contract, two or three complaining. That's a pretty good
record.
>
>>Due to the fact that Publish America has in the past and continues to
>>misrepresent their company as something it is not, I am requesting
that
>>you end both contracts for In Jessie's Shadow and Matt's Recovery
>>immediately and send a reversal of rights to me within the next 60
days.
>>I also want In Jessie's Shadow to be removed from your online
bookstore
>>immediately and the process for Matt's Recovery to be stopped at
once.
>
>>If you think for one moment that I will be unwilling to take this to
>>court, you should think again. My attorney is already investigating
this
>>situation.
>
>Your attorney's arguments will probably not be considered by us. Your
>request is denied. We will agree to revisit your request six months
from
>now. Please contact us again at that time. Also, please consider this
our
>final word on this issue.

Thank you,
Author Support Team
Support@PublishAmerica.com

I guess you were right, I got the "don't address us in that tone" letter. What I find hilarious is their claim that they only have 2 or 3 dissatisfied authors. Hmm, I know of many more than that.

Also note that they are now changing their number of books published to "closing in on the million mark". Interesting timing!
:rofl

DaveKuzminski

07-21-2004, 11:35 PM

"Well," Dirty PA sneered, "in all the excitement, I forgot to count. Was it 5,000 or 8,000 authors I wasted? So, you have to ask yourself this question. Do I feel lucky?"

My apologies to the Dirty Harry movies for this parody.

Now if only PA could respond in a credible manner. Something tells me, however, that they can't. In all likelihood, their claim of one million books is based upon the same false facts as their claim that their orders from that bookstore have quadrupled. After all, if you inflate one number, you have to change the rest to match. If I'm wrong, they can prove it by posting the invoices from their printers.

Also, I suspect that their sales average is closer to 50 books per author rather than the 71 to 75 that has been speculated about if only because it's a more attainable dollar amount for authors making personal purchases using their discounts.

aka eraser

07-22-2004, 01:27 AM

If I sell one book and then I sell a 2nd one, I suppose I'd be closing-in on a million too; just, really, really slowly.

DeePower

07-22-2004, 03:14 AM

newspapers they list. I have the email addresses of about half the editors, it shouldn't be too hard to find the other half.

Dee

James D Macdonald

07-22-2004, 04:01 AM

Yo, Gwen ---

I like the idea of changing the name and in my case, that would work because PA doesn't have any copy of my book--just the query proposal.

Hold up there. Let me see if I have this straight -- you're a first-time author, no track record, right?

They went to contract without ever seeing your book?

Is that right? Or did I miss something?

HapiSofi

07-22-2004, 04:49 AM

Jim Macdonald said:Yo, Gwen ---

"I like the idea of changing the name and in my case, that would work because PA doesn't have any copy of my book--just the query proposal."

Hold up there. Let me see if I have this straight -- you're a first-time author, no track record, right?

They went to contract without ever seeing your book?

Is that right? Or did I miss something?Dang! I missed that. Gwen, consider that request seconded.

lindylou45

07-22-2004, 05:22 AM

This was sent to another author who is trying to get out of her contract. :rollin

Do not address us in such a tone. :rofl Please consult a lawyer before making such nonsensical accusations.

You have not be given anything misleading or deceiving. It goes without saying that your contracts remain fully in effect and legally binding. A polite and coherent query will result in a response to your issues. :ha

Thank you,
Author Support Team

You are under a wide variety of misconceptions, and we will expect your apology.

We are not under any sort of investigation, by anyone.

We have never, throughout our history, been under any sort of investigation, by anyone. Not the IRS, and not anyone, ever.

We do not have any "German company," nor have we ever, throughout our history, had anything even remotely resembling a "German company."

No authors are "rescinding" their contracts. Such a thing would not be possible, as our contract is legally binding and not able to simply be "rescinded." :lol

If you want your ebook rights, we will grant them to you. We are a traditional publisher, and everyone of any credibility does consider us just that. :head

If you have valid or coherent concerns at all, we would be happy to reconsider our decision, but for now your request is denied, and your contracts remain fully in force.

Thank you,
Author Support Team

These responses have frightened the author they were sent to. I find them hilarious. It is an obvious attempt to use scare tactics to end the "PA Rebellion". I have news for them, the party has just started! :party

James D Macdonald

07-22-2004, 05:37 AM

Oh, goodness, it's line-by-line time again! I so love reading PA's stuff. Let me see if I can fool with the formatting to make this easier to read.

<blockquote>

Your misconceptions are so easy to contradict that your case has been given to Author Support.
</blockquote>

I think they meant to say "correct" rather than "contradict," but graceful English prose has never been their strong suit, has it? I wonder about that "so easy ... given to Author Support" thing. Author Support can't handle tough questions?

<blockquote>
Please do not address us in such a tone. Your facts are wrong, your insinuations are wrong, and you are wasting your and our time.
</blockquote>

You don't like the tone? Tough noogies, guys. Wait'll you see the tone a lawyer takes... And as far as wasting time, you didn't waste a lot on this one did you? You see complaints like this so often you have a form letter all genned up.

<Blockquote>
...However, the very fact that authors must buy their books (regardless of your denial) in order to stock bookstores simply means that you (PA) are getting your money after the fact instead of before.

No, this is laughably not true. No author "must" buy anything at all.
</blockquote>

No, no author "must" buy their books. It's observable, however, that authors "will" buy their books, if that's the only way to get copies to reviewers, or onto bookstore shelves, or into the hands of readers. Not only "will" authors buy their own books, they "will" buy them in predictable numbers. To help this along, PA regularly sends emails to their authors urging them, by various inducements, to buy multiple copies of their own books. Copies of these emails exist, and can be supplied from multiple sources. Author Support saying that no author "must" buy their own books is like a spokesman from Mohegan Sun claiming that no one who arrives on those special busses from Boston and New York "must" play the slot machines.

<Blockquote>
So you deny the fact that your company was Erica Books prior to changing it's name to Publish America when complaints began rolling in.

You lose credibility by using words like "deny." Listen carefully:

PublishAmerica has never changed it's name.
</blockquote>

No, PA has always been PA, even though it shared the same building and staff as AmErica House, and even though to this day, PA books are listed at bn.com as published by "AmErica House."

<Blockquote>
PublishAmerica has always been PublishAmerica from day one.
</blockquote>

"Day one" being the day they changed their name from "AmErica House."

<Blockquote>
PublishAmerica has never had any credible "complaints rolling in."
</blockquote>

What's this? Chopped liver?

<Blockquote>
PA's authors will have to spend a huge amount of money on promotion and marketing their PA books, money that they will never be able to recoup.

No, they do not.
</blockquote>

Right, PA. They don't "have to," it's just that if they "don't" there isn't any promotion or marketing of their books.

<Blockquote>
...PA should be more than willing to at least distribute the books to "brick and mortar bookstores" something that PA loves to advertise that they do.

No, we do not advertise that we do that.
</blockquote>

Quite right. They don't "advertise" that they do. They insinuate, they suggest, they hint, they imply, they allow others to draw the conclusion, but they don't "advertise."

<Blockquote>
No publisher can do that. Like all major publishers, our books are distributed to bookstores through the world's largest distributor.
</blockquote>

PA is relying on a confusion of terms here. The wholesale distributors, like Ingram and Baker&Taylor, and the smaller independent distributors that field their own sales forces and publish their own catalogs, are both called "distributors." PA is confused when they say "no publisher can do that." Yes, PA is hooked up with Ingram, which is a major wholesale distributor. But, unlike the "major publishers" PA doesn't have its own sales force, doesn't publish a catalog (incidentally, doesn't offer the standard "long discount" through distributors), and, as a result, does not distribute their books to the brick-and-mortar bookstores in any meaningful way.

The proof of this is simple. If PA had a normal distribution system in place, you would expect to find hundreds of PA titles on bookstore shelves. You can't. Therefore, PA does not carry out distribution to the brick-and-mortar bookstores.

<Blockquote>
...the only books that are placed in "brick and mortar bookstores" are those that the author has gone out and placed there themselves.

Sometimes this is true, and there's nothing wrong with that. But often this is not true. We won't bother to go into detail, here, but here's just one example of the contrary being the case:
www.publishamerica.com/cg...n/8622.htm

</blockquote>

"Sometimes this is true"? How about 99% of the time? The reason they won't "bother" to go into detail is because they "can't." What does the word "often" mean here? The thread they quote, there, is an isolated instance from last December of one guy who heard that someone found two copies of his book on the shelf of a bookstore he'd never been in. He hasn't repeated the feat, and the rest of that thread was filled with people wishing it would happen to them, too. As to how those books got on the shelf -- who knows? Maybe a clerk punched in the wrong ISBN, got the books by mistake, and couldn't return them? So ... two books, once, more than six months ago. Is that what you're resting your case on, PA?

<Blockquote>
Your marketing practices are limited to asking the author for a list of friends and family that you can send order forms to in the hopes that they will buy an abhorrently overpriced book.

Not true. You were already sent a description of other marketing that we do.
</blockquote>

I'd love to see this list myself ... wait, don't tell me -- you may, if you feel like it, send a review copy to a reviewer who writes to ask for it? You list the book at Amazon, at BN.com, and on your own website?

Oh, Author Support, do you have any conception of how pathetic that is?

<Blockquote>
Regardless of your belief that the price of your books are not an issue, I can assure you, it is a major issue in attempting to promote these books.

Perhaps for you it is, but for thousands and thousands of our authors, it is not.
</blockquote>

That's because for thousands and thousands of their authors, who are selling to Mom and Dad, the price could be $100 a copy and Mom and Dad would still pay. Price only becomes important if you're trying to sell books to the general public. Then, I assure you, price is a major issue.

<Blockquote>
As to your business model, I think we both know that your business model differs greatly from the "largest major publishing houses."

No, actually it is basically identical, including our marketing efforts.
</blockquote>

I call bullshit. A flat lie.

<Blockquote>
Again, every publisher differs from book to book as far as the marketing and promotion that they will provide. No book publishing company has the funds available to market each title for every author in the manner that you describe.
</blockquote>

What manner did you describe? Let me say this: Every real, legitimate publisher promotes their books in a variety of ways, many of them invisible to the authors.

If PA's style of "promotion" actually worked, real, legitimate publishers would be doing it too.

<Blockquote>
"We do not require that you ever purchase one copy of your book." No, you say you don't require that the author purchase copies of their books. What you don't explain, and continue to deny vehemently, is that bookstores will not place PA's books in their stores because of PA's non-returnable policy. In order to get books placed, an author must buy the books and guarantee that he/she will buy the books back if they do not sell. I, for one, cannot afford to do that. I doubt very highly that I am the only one. </blockquote>

PA doesn't even attempt to answer this one.

<blockquote>
Ingram's is not a distributor, they are a warehouse. I would think, as a publisher, you would know that.

No, you are completely wrong. Ingrams is the world's largest wholesale book distributor.
</blockquote>

Please note the word "wholesale."

<Blockquote>
We pay for the distribution of each title.
</blockquote>

They do this by means of the discount on the title -- the distributor sells the books at a higher price than the publisher sells it to them. PA notoriously has a "short discount" through the distributor. This "pay for" isn't in real money, it's in credit.

<Blockquote>
Your book is available through Ingram, as well as other distributors. Ingram is the major force in book distribution in the United States. Having your book through Ingram makes it available for order at any bookstore.
</blockquote>

"Available for order" isn't the same as "stocked in bookstores." And the short discount (not to mention the non-returnability issue) isn't going to encourage many bookstores to order.

<Blockquote>
However, with PA's no return policy, very few bookstores will ever order it, now will they?

Yes, they will. If they think that it will sell, they will. Again, many testimonials support this. It is unfortunate that they decided to reject your book.
</blockquote>

I call bullshit again. A deft attempt to shift blame to the author from the publisher, but I think we can all see through that.

<Blockquote>
...the web site is quite deceitful in making authors believe PA will be doing much more.

No, no one is "deceitful" at all. Funny that we've never had any credible complaint from anyone feeling deceived. What we do have is 5,000 very happy authors in print who do not feel at all deceived.
</blockquote>

You never had any credible complaint? Excuse me? What are you looking at right here? And if you've never had one, why did you feel the need to come up with a form letter to answer those complaints? (I kinda doubt the "very happy" bit with the authors. Are the ones who are posting that they can't get their books into bookstores, that their books are overpriced, that PA takes months to ship orders, "happy"?)

<Blockquote>
As long as you have a huge volume of authors, you'll make money. Being the POD publisher that you are, (I know, you don't like to admit it, but we all know it's true)

No, again. We print books on demand. We do not publish on demand.
</blockquote>

A distinction without a difference. PublishAmerica is a Print On Demand publisher.

I'll tell you what's going on here. Lots and lots of people know that "PoD" has a whiff to it. PA denies that they're a "PoD" publisher. Then, when someone calls them on it, they say words to the effect of "What do you mean? We denied being a Publish on Demand publisher, not being a Print on Demand publisher! We didn't fib, attempt to mislead you, or otherwise engage in fraudulent business practices!"

<Blockquote>
"In the past two years we have sold more than a quarter of a million books, which stands in contrast to any allegation that our books are not competitively priced and/or supplied."

I find it extremely interesting that you would admit this.
</blockquote>

So do I. More than a quarter million -- let's say that's 260,000, divided by that 5,000 very happy authors, works out to 52 copies per author.

<blockquote>
Actually we misspoke. We will soon be approaching the million book level.
</blockquote>

"Misspoke" as in "couldn't keep our stories straight"? Looked at from one way, 260,000 is also "approaching the million book level." It's just not approaching it very fast. Weasel-words and hand-waving.

<Blockquote>
"Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books."

Due to the hard work and diligence of the authors themselves. PA has had nothing to do with books being placed in bookstores.

Not true.
</blockquote>

Yes, it is. Or, perhaps, PA had something to do with the books getting placed in the bookstores. They printed them, didn't they?

<Blockquote>
I've spoken to several PA authors who have indicated that PA was unable to provide books for signings that were set up months in advance. If I were a bookstore manager and the publisher couldn't even provide the books for the author's signing, it's doubtful I would be interested in ordering either.

Not true. Our books are available by the thousands, and our turnaround times are well known and work very well.
</blockquote>

Very true.

How is it that H. B. Marcus himself, in his long-planned and highly publicized signing referred to on the first page of this thread, was only able to get two copies of his novel?

<Blockquote>
I believed Publish America's statements on your web site were true. I did some research, however, when I first signed with you there were no complaints as of that time. When I stupidly signed the second contract my first book had not been released as of yet. When I began hearing rumblings of discontent among other PA authors I thought they were attempting to cause trouble for a publishing company that simply wanted to make their authors' dreams come true. It took time, but I finally discovered that PA is not, nor have they ever been, what they profess to be. I am shocked and appalled that anyone can so callously disregard the dreams of others. You make people believe their dreams can come true and then you sit back and profit from the unraveling of those dreams. There is a word for people like that, I believe it's criminal.

You're making a spectacle of yourself with this sort of language. 8,000 authors under contract, two or three complaining. That's a pretty good record.
</blockquote>

Only two or three complaining? Really? I call bullshit a third time. Or do you mean two or three complaining today?

<Blockquote>
Due to the fact that Publish America has in the past and continues to misrepresent their company as something it is not, I am requesting that you end both contracts for In Jessie's Shadow and Matt's Recovery immediately and send a reversal of rights to me within the next 60 days. I also want In Jessie's Shadow to be removed from your online bookstore immediately and the process for Matt's Recovery to be stopped at once.

If you think for one moment that I will be unwilling to take this to court, you should think again. My attorney is already investigating this situation.

Your attorney's arguments will probably not be considered by us.
</blockquote>

Guys, it doesn't matter if the attorney's arguments are considered by you. What matters is whether they're considered by a judge in a court of competent jurisdiction.

<Blockquote>
Your request is denied. We will agree to revisit your request six months from now. Please contact us again at that time. Also, please consider this our final word on this issue.
</blockquote>

Their next notice should be from the process server. Go get 'em.

<Blockquote>
Thank you,
Author Support Team
Support@PublishAmerica.com
</blockquote>

DeePower

07-22-2004, 06:16 AM

This is a rather complicated email. I have broken down our
original May 20, 2004 letter to PublishAmerica demanding that
our contract be terminated. The paragraphs ****** before
and after are paragraphs or bullet points of our letter,
followed by the response from PublishAmerica. Because I know
so many people read this board I have also rebutted in several
instances the falsehoods of Pa’s responses. That rebuttal
is separated by ########.

Here we go.

*************************
Opening paragraph of Brian Hill’s and Dee Power’s demand for
termination of contract with PublishAmerica sent by fax and
US Postal Service Priority Mail with delivery confirmation.
This was NOT sent by email

Dear Mr. Meiners:

We are extremely displeased with our experience with Publish
America LLLP, in regard to our novel OVERTIME, which you
published in 2003. We entered into a contract with
PublishAmerica based on assurances, from material on your web
site and through e-mail correspondence from your company, that
you were a “traditional publisher.”

The bullet points contained in the letter are below with PA’s
response after each point.
***************************

PublishAmerica’s response

“Again, the tone of your letter is way out of place. Soon we
will sell our one millionth book! Neither your fax nor your
registered letter reached the intended recipient. Future
paper letters from you will be discarded unread.

“If, after reading our bulleted refutations below, you still
wish to end your contract, please renew your request, using support@publishamerica.com as your sole point of contact.

“None of it what we say is nonsense, and all of it is exactly,
completely accurate. What is nonsense is your tone, your
drama, and your whole escapade. There is no drama, no problem,
no attorneys in New York, and no issues at all. What there
appears to be is a simple request for contract termination.
We will deal with that request without any special
consideration at all.

“You do not need baseless jabs, drama, or a lawyer to request
termination of your contract. We will consider your request
at our next review meeting, to be held at our leisure,
probably within the next month or so. Our decision on your
contract will be made with disregard for your tone and
ridiculous and baseless accusations. Your communications with
us will not be made known to the committee making the
decision, and your untrue statements will not be considered.

“Your statements are so naive, so false, and so totally
baseless that it is difficult to even respond to them, but
we'll make a brief attempt.”
##########################################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

There is a real attorney in New York, experts in the
publishing and entertainment industry. This was no bluff on
our part and we are proceeding. Although going through legal
channels can be so d@mn frustrating because you have to wait
an appropriate amount of time before going to the next level.

********************************************
Our Bullet Point
Your no return policy has made it impossible to get bookstores,
particularly the large chains to order the book, despite the
fact we contacted numerous bookstores with personal letters
that included the excellent reviews our book has received.
We do not understand how you can represent your company as a
traditional publisher when you do not conform to one of the
basic standards of the publishing industry, which all
legitimate publishers follow.
********************************************

PublishAmerica’s answer

“- Return policy: Your statement is incorrect. Our returns
policy does not make it "impossible to get bookstores,
particularly the large chains, to order the book." Actually,
large chains order and stock our books all the time. Our
policy of accepting returns is in the experimental stage.
Non-returnable books may present some challenges, but are
becoming increasingly standard. Please see our message board
for testimonials by hundreds of authors whose books are
stocked in stores. There are hundreds and hundreds of
contradictions to what you say.”

############################################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

The contradictions are authors who have placed their books
in bookstores on consignment, meaning the bookstore has not
ordered the books and if the book sells they will pay the
author a percentage of the sales price usually 60%. The best
discount PA offers is 55% and the author must pay shipping.
So the author gets very little profit from a bookstore sale
on consignment.

Non-returnable books are only becoming increasingly standard
in PA’s mind, not the industry.

The message board is policed by PA and any and all negative
posts about difficulties with bookstores, reviews, anything
negative about PA are deleted and in most cases the author
banned from the message board.
##############################################

**********************************************
Our bullet point

When we contacted the sales director for a chain about having
book signing events at her stores, she said that PublishAmerica
books do not appear in their computer systems and thus they
could not order them.
***********************************************

PublishAmerica’s response
“- Sales director: Your statement is incorrect. The sales
director you mentioned is wrong. All bookstores have access
to Ingram's computer system, and all of our titles may be
found there. Additionally, all bookstore managers know this.”

##################################################
This happened to us at two chains. Additionally after
agreeing to schedule an event, one of the chains cancelled
it after realizing the book was by PublishAmerica. The only
reason, I believe the event was scheduled in the first place
was because the Community Relations Manager had done an event
for us previously concerning our business books.
#################################################

************************************************** *
Our bullet point

The fact you do not discount the books with amazon.com has
made it extremely difficult to sell our book there, as
consumers expect to receive the discount, and traditional
publishers offer that discount as a matter of course.
**********************************************

PublishAmerica’s response
“- Amazon discounts: Your statement is incorrect. We do
discount books with Amazon.”

##################################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

Of the nearly 4000 titles listed on amazon.com in the
beginning of June 2004, only six were discounted. And yes I
looked at every single one.
#################################

***********************************************

Our bullet point

We paid Amazon.com for a special promotion of OVERTIME to
coincide with the football season, but when the promotion
ran the book was on a 5-7 day delivery status because you
did not make the books available, which effectively ruined
the promotion. In paragraph 3 of our contract with
PublishAmerica it states that “to cause copies so printed to
be bound, from time to time, in sufficient quantities to
supply purchasers of the said literary work therewith.” You
did not do that.
**********************************************

PublishAmerica’s response

“- On Amazon and availability: Your statement is incorrect.
“Yes, we did do that. Obviously our books are available in
any quantity. To suggest otherwise is just laughable. We've
sold upwards of a million books.”

######################################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

PA says “Yes they did do that” But what? Not provide the
books?

PA was notified of the promotion and failed to provide copies.
The book went from 24 hour delivery to 5 to 7 day delivery in
less than a day. No doubt many sales were lost.
######################################

***************************************

Our bullet point

You do not provide a catalog description to the Library of
Congress, and thus libraries will not order the books.
Traditional publishers do that as a matter of course
**************************************

PublishAmerica’s response

“- Libraries: Your statement is incorrect. Yes, libraries
order our books all the time. And yes, our books are listed
in the LoC.”

########################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.
Only three PublishAmerica titles were included in the LoC as
of the end of May 2004.
*********************************

The incredible volume of titles you are now publishing is
giving your company a reputation in the industry as a publisher
that will accept almost anything, whatever the quality, and
that negative reputation has now reflected on us. You represent
your company as a legitimate publisher but yet you do not attend
the BEA convention, as all other publishers of any size and
industry reputation do. When the number of submissions you
receive, as stated on your website, is compared to the number
of books you publish, it is clear your acceptance rate is about
60%, when with traditional publishers the acceptance rate is
less than 1%
*************************************

PublishAmerica’s response

- Reputation: Your statement is incorrect. No, we have no
such reputation at all. We're in the news constantly, all
over the country, and it's all good.

###################################
Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

Notice that PA never really addressed the concerns merely
danced around them.

I did a google search and other than one news article couldn’t
find PA in the news anywhere.
###################################

*************************************

Our bullet point

As part of your contract you demand that authors supply you
with 100 names of “friends and family” that you can send
announcements to when the books is published. Brian Hill’s
name was misspelled in the flier you sent. That was
inexcusable
*************************************

PublishAmerica’s response

- Direct Mailing: Your statement is incorrect. No, it is
not part of our contract, and no, we do not "demand" that
authors supply "100" names of friends and family. We only
suggest a list of acquaintances, out of popular demand for
this service, and it is entirely optional. About 90% of
our authors supply this list.

######################################

Rebuttal – not presented to PA – but may be of interest to
readers of this board.

Actually PA is correct in that the demand is not in the contract
but part of the materials that must be sent with the final
manuscript. And it is demanded. They also never apologized for
the misspelling.
######################################

Okay that’s enough for today, the letter goes on with lots of
propaganda. I will continue with the rest of the letter tomorrow.
Except for one little point

PA said:

“PublishAmerica continues to grow faster than any other
traditional publisher, and today we are apparently the most
popular publisher among new authors. More than 50 new authors
contact us every day, hoping to join you as a PublishAmerica
author. That's more than 12,000 hopefuls per year. At
least 80 percent of them never make it to the "published
author" status, because they don't pass our acquisitions
process, but that does not seem to discourage anyone from
submitting their work to us in ever growing, and frankly
astonishing, numbers. We read every single submission before
we accept or refuse.”

They have been contacted by 12,000 “hopefuls” and they decline
80%, which would mean that they would publish 2400 books a year
or 200 a month. They published more than double that in June and
are on that same level for July.

Dee Power
www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com (http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com)

Sher2

07-22-2004, 06:37 AM

<You have not be given anything misleading or deceiving.

These responses have frightened the author they were sent to. I find them hilarious. It is an obvious attempt to use scare tactics to end the "PA Rebellion". I have news for them, the party has just started!>

You have not be? Boy, you gotta love their command of the language. LOL.

I agree, it's hilarious, albeit scary to some who are on the receiving end of the "don't use that tone, young lady" letter. Are you lurking, Ms. Prather? The "PA Rebellion" is all fired up, armed with facts, and ready to rumble. I don't get scammed often but, when I do, it tends to piss me off, you know what I mean?

Euan Harvey

07-22-2004, 06:43 AM

James wrote:

>More than a quarter million -- let's say that's 260,000, divided by that 5,000 very happy authors, works out to 52 copies per author.

Oh, I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Let's say they have sold a million books. Over those five thousand authors, that works out to 200 books an author.

What does the typical first novel sell from a traditional publisher?

Ten thousand copies? *

Let's be reasonable and halve that -- after all we're trying to put PA in the best possible light.

So an average first novel from an average publisher sells 5,000 copies.

The average novel from PA sells 200 copies.

That, I think, says it all. Even if you take the very best possible slant on their words, it's still pathetic.

Cheers,

Euan

* I got this figure from Eric Flint's discussion on building the Baen Free Library - www.speculations.com/freelib.htm (http://www.speculations.com/freelib.htm) . The sales figures are for 'Mother of Demons'. If anyone wants to correct me, go ahead and I'll edit the post. But I don't really think it's going to change the basic point.

Sher2

07-22-2004, 06:48 AM

<(MP: You lose credibility by using words like "deny." Listen carefully:
PublishAmerica has never changed it's name.)

No, PA has always been PA, even though it shared the same building and staff as AmErica House, and even though to this day, PA books are listed at bn.com as published by "AmErica House."

(MP: PublishAmerica has always been PublishAmerica from day one.)

"Day one" being the day they changed their name from "AmErica House.">

You did a terrific job of picking that turkey's bones, James. MP would no doubt be chagrined to know there's one image of a book cover still floating around the Net that says AmErica House, with PublishAmerica.com just beneath it. I saw it just today.

One last barb: MP says "PublishAmerica has never changed IT'S name." Excuse me, but isn't she the one who's supposed to be the English major?

DaveKuzminski

07-22-2004, 06:58 AM

"Soon we will sell our one millionth book!"

"We've sold upwards of a million books.”

Gee, they still haven't hired a decent editor to handle their own correspondence. Why would anyone believe that they'd hire one for editing manuscripts if something this simple in a single letter of probably no more than two pages can slip through? What's more, I'm not even going to point out the other problems with their letter because that would take the attention away from their outright lies.

That's right, PA. I called you a bunch of liars. This isn't a situation where you can claim advertising puffery. This is a response to a legitimate complaint and you're deliberately lying to the other party. You can't get away with exaggerations here like you can on your website.

In the meantime, please, try to take me to court for calling you a bunch of liars. I haven't had much fun lately and I'd so much like to embarrass and expose you in front of a judge and jury.

Sher2

07-22-2004, 07:00 AM

<Actually PA is correct in that the demand is not in the contract but part of the materials that must be sent with the final manuscript. And it is demanded. They also never apologized for the misspelling.

"We read every single submission before we accept or refuse.”

They have been contacted by 12,000 “hopefuls” and they decline 80%, which would mean that they would publish 2400 books a year or 200 a month. They published more than double that in June and
are on that same level for July.>

Dee, I've been following your dilemma on this board. Sounds like a nightmare!

I think I sent them only about 10 names because I was a little uneasy about what was going to be done with them. I think they said they'd send a postcard or something announcing publication of the book, but I held back because I didn't want it to be perceived as a solicitation. Which I now know, of course, it will be. I wonder what would have happened if I'd declined to provide such a list, period?

As for their figures, I find them questionable. There's no way they're reading more than a few of the manuscripts sent to them. And I think the converse of the 80% rejection rate might be more accurate. It's probably more like 80% accepted, 20% rejected.

astonwest

07-22-2004, 09:00 AM

"The average novel from PA sells 200 copies."

Hot damn, I'm above average...puh-shaw...

"You did a terrific job of picking that turkey's bones, James. MP would no doubt be chagrined to know there's one image of a book cover still floating around the Net that says AmErica House, with PublishAmerica.com just beneath it. I saw it just today."

Mine was printed that way as well...of course, that was a while back...I've always been interested in how the business is set up...PublishAmerica is apparently incorporated, and AmErica House Publishing Co. is an LLC?

Big Daddy West
:hat

07-22-2004, 10:58 AM

"So you deny the fact that your company was Erica Books prior to
changing
>>it's name to Publish America when complaints began rolling in.
>
>You lose credibility by using words like "deny." Listen carefully:
>
>PublishAmerica has never changed it's name.
>PublishAmerica has always been PublishAmerica from day one.
>PublishAmerica has never had any credible "complaints rolling in."

Funny, since I have two books in my hands right now that are from Americahouse and the two authors were regulars on the PA MB. If they never changed the name then why is some of their books listed under americahouse?

Plus I have complained to them numerous times. Plus there are many people her and at mindsight that are not happy with PA, not to mention the few that bring it up on the PA MB. Either they are lying to their authors or they don't know how to count, either way, it doesn't look good on them.

"Not true. You were already sent a description of other marketing that
we do."

Funny, I never received the list from them when I signed the contract. Maybe they forgot to mail me one?:shrug

"Perhaps for you it is, but for thousands and thousands of our authors,
it
>is not."

Guess the AST :rofl doesn't have time to read the boards before the ones complaining about high priced books are pulled or again they are lying. Either way, not good...and in case PA is reading this, not good means bad.

"No, actually it is basically identical, including our marketing
efforts"

Simple way to prove this statement really. Give us the name(s) of the people in your marketing department.

" Yes, they will. If they think that it will sell, they will. Again,
many
>testimonials support this. It is unfortunate that they decided to
reject
>your book."

Again, big lie. My book would sell, since in this area King, Koontz, Saul, etc. are some of the bigest sellers. My book lies in the same vein as theirs. Again, no bookstore would order it for the no return policy and bad experiences with other PA books. Bookstores not only rejected this person's book, but mine, as well as others, as well. It is a shame when I couldn't get my book stocked or get a signing and a week before I asked a man with xilbris had a signing.

"No, no one is "deceitful" at all. Funny that we've never had any
credible
>complaint from anyone feeling deceived. What we do have is 5,000 very
>happy authors in print who do not feel at all deceived."

Well, lets check out their site shall we?

FACT #1: Unique among all traditional book publishing companies, PublishAmerica counts more than 8000 happy authors. Each day, an average 5 of them ask us to also accept their next work, 25 second-book authors per week, 100 per month. By any standard, this is an amazingly high number of return authors, unseen in the rest of the book publishing company industry.

Here they say 8,000 authors, in their response, 5,000. Did they lose 3,000 authors? or is this a mistake? Couldn't be a mistake since they claim they are 8,000 strong all the time. So they eithr lost 3,000 authors or this is an old form letter. If this is an old form letter then why would they need it if their authors are happy?

FACT #3: Again, unparalleled among all traditional book publishing companies, each day an average 15 times a PublishAmerica author appears in the news media, in newspapers, magazines, radio or TV. The authors of this book publishing company have been interviewed, reviewed or introduced in literally thousands of newspapers across the country, from the Washington Post to the Clackamas County News, from the Kingwood Observer to the Los Angeles Times to Women's World Magazine. They have made appearances on local TV, and on national ABC, CNN, MSNBC and FOX TV. They also have been interviewed by radio shows hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus, Diane Rehm, and Oliver North.

What they don't say is that the authors did all of this theirselves, no help from PA. Plus I know of a few that were on talk shows for other reasons than their books. This makes the new author dumbfounded as they dream of getting on these shows. It doesn't say that PA helped them get on, but it doesn't say they didn't either. They leave it up to the new wannabe to make their own decison. It's deceitful to me.

FACT #6: PublishAmerica is a traditional, royalty paying publisher. We are strongly opposed to charging fees, ever. There's no catch, no hidden surprises. We even pay small advances to indicate our principle. The author is never, ever, under any obligation to pull their wallet to make any purchase whatsoever. We don't want their money. We want their book. All expenses involved with acquiring, producing, manufacturing, and publishing a book, and marketing it to the industry's wholesale and distribution channels for full availability through all bookstores at home and abroad are underwritten by PublishAmerica solely. This is one of our main claims to fame, and one that we are very proud of. All authors are treated equally here.

I posted this for the last sentence. Not all authors are treated equally. If you tote the line and claim PA is great, you are treated equal. If you ask questions you are banned and left with no answers to your questions. Not fair to me.

FACT #8: ALL publishers use digital (Print-On-Demand) technology for printing, from all major publishing houses such as Random House down. In fact, Random House produces significantly more print-on-demand books than PublishAmerica. They also use the offset technology. PublishAmerica uses the offset technology occasionally as well, each time a larger run is necessary.

Random House does more print on demand? Really? I didn't think no other company released 200-300 books a week. So this is a lie. PA uses offset technology? They claim to not print the book until it is ordered so why would they need to run offset? I can't imagine any bookstore ordering hundreds of copies and the authors don't order that many either.

FACT #10: If you are in a hurry, don't choose a traditional publisher. Pull out your wallet, pay a vanity outfit hundreds of dollars, then pay an extra premium, and maybe you can get your book printed within a mere six weeks. That's what you get if you don't mind the stigma of vanity publishing. They don't care what your book looks like. You demand, they publish. At PublishAmerica, we're totally different. With us, you'll need patience. We are very careful with our books.

We are very careful with our books. Another lie. I know of two authors that had their books messed up by PA. :smack

FACT #11: We assign an editor who goes through the text line by line. Let's put this in perspective. We don't touch style issues, we don't edit the author's voice, tone, or delivery. We edit for spelling, mechanics, grammar, typos, and trust us, that's a vital and time consuming job. Together, our editing staff makes more than 35,000 (!) corrections, each day, to the books they work on that day. We then send a book back to the author, up to three times, to ensure that it looks exactly as the author wants it to look. We assign a graphic designer who comes up with a unique cover design. They communicate with the authors, to hear their suggestions and ideas, so that they can be incorporated into the design. All of that takes time, and we believe that the authors WANT it to take time. After all, this is their life's work. They want it to be treated accordingly. They want time control, they want quality over hurry. We assure them both.

LIE, LIE, LIE, Uhmmmm, bullshit. There is no line by line edit, I can vouch for this personally. My book has the same spelling mistakes that the original mss had when I sent it in. My spellcheck didn't catch it, why sould theirs huh?:shrug

FACT #12: PublishAmerica is only interested in a book's publishing rights. We don't want any other rights, unless an author insists that we carry them on his/her behalf. Movie rights, audio rights, TV rights, merchandising rights, the copyright, they all remain the author's. We are a BOOK publisher, the only way we earn our money is by selling books, and we're very good at that. Everything else can be done better by others. Our contracts expire after seven years, unlike the life term that most other traditional publishers require. Maybe that's one of the reasons why our contracts seem to be particularly liked by lawyers: we count a few hundred attorneys among our authors.

Lie again. Man they are persistent aren't they? As it has been shown, the rights to the book are hidden in paragraph 24 I believe. They also throw in the ebook rights in the contract as well. They keep talking about the hundreds of lawyers, give us a list. I would like to see the names. From what I see, most lawyers think the contract is a load of crap.

And my best one.

We treat our authors the old- fashion way...we pay them.:rofl

They don't pay us, they spring for a happy meal every six months. For the rights to our books they buy us lunch twice a year. Damn, this is such a nice company isn't it?:ha

"Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in
>>bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books."

Well, this isn't very promising is it? I mean, come on. You have 8,000 authors and thousands sell a month? So, if you sell 10 thousand a month then each author only sold 1-2 books. That's not good is it PA?

"You're making a spectacle of yourself with this sort of language.
8,000
>authors under contract, two or three complaining. That's a pretty good
record."

See, here they say 8,000, when awhile ago it was 5,000. Did they forget how many authors they have? If they forgot this what else are they forgetting? Again, they can't count. I can name ten people off the top of my head that are complaining about PA, and this is just recently.

"Your attorney's arguments will probably not be considered by us. Your
>request is denied. We will agree to revisit your request six months
from
>now. Please contact us again at that time. Also, please consider this
our
>final word on this issue."

This is just trying to make them look big and bad. Trying to show the world that they can do what they want when they want. PA isn't above the law, and they will come down. When you are served, you are served. There is no consideration on their part. You would figure they would know this since they have hundreds of lawyers in their stable.

Kevin Yarbrough