The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

Why 7 years?

Because that's what PA uses as pressure to get the authors to buy. PA knows that all authors want their words read by someone. If it was only one or two years, most authors would just sit back and quietly wait it out. Plus, they'd have two copies for show. However, it's for seven years and the authors know that the only sales they'll get under those circumstances are what they arrange, even if it means buying and reselling their own books.


Essentially, the setup that PA has designed to entrap authors is diabolical, even though it would require no more than someone with an IQ of 60, possibly less, and a criminal mentality to develop it because it's so simple.

The logo speaks re: royalty discrepancies

I presume y'all saw this:

-----
Infocenter
Administrator
9/09/2004
12:10:44

Message:
Laura, Chris is right. It was someone else who spoiled your thread.

All: here are the facts.

In the last week of August, some 6,000 royalty statements and checks were mailed out. On a dozen of those, an error was made that pertained to books sold in the last few days of July. The error was made not by us, but by Verisign, the company that processes credit card charges for all major online vendors, including PublishAmerica. They did not authorize payment until Monday August 2. July 31 being our cutoff date for royalty payments, our own system, understandably, did not recognize those Verisign payments as July payments.

Because a few authors alerted us to the occurence, we became aware of it, and we have started, immediately, to issue additional royalty checks to those involved.

No sinister plot behind it, no dark agenda, no grand conspiracy. Just an honest mistake made by others than PA. Once we identify it, we remedy it promptly.

Each March and September we receive up to 200 royalty questions, which explains why a response sometimes takes a few days. That's 200 out of 6,000, a whopping 3 percent. We are human, sometimes we screw up: of those 200 questions, typically less than 30 result in payment corrections, or one-half of a percent. In all other cases, we have it right, and the explanation always turns out to be pretty simple.

Usually the misunderstanding is caused by one of two factors. Either the author mistakenly believed that all retail sales are immediately paid to us (a misconception -- vendors routinely have up to 90 days to pay for the books they have actually sold, therefore a book sold as early as late April may very well not yet show up on your August statement), or the author was told by others that they had purchased their book while in reality they were afraid to admit that they had not.

Those who are unwilling to give anyone except themselves the benefit of the doubt will never be convinced by anyone about anything. But the truth is that Royalty Month is considered sacred at PublishAmerica. Never in the past five years have we missed our payment deadline for anyone, ever. And never have we failed to pay our authors their full due, including those rare occasions when we had to correct ourselves.

Please stop and think about it for just a second: we have about three weeks to assess and establish everyone's royalties, and one week to print statements and checks, stuff envelopes, and mail all 6000. Three weeks, that is 2000 per week, or 400 per day, or 50 per hour, or about one minute per author. It is mostly automated, but some human intervention is necessary, if only for quality control. Our net error rate is one-half percent, or 0,005 out of 100.

Granted, it's not perfect. But it's definitely not bad. Not bad at all.
------

I'm reminded of the tap dance scene in Chicago.

Oh, who would have suspected?

Okay, then what's their excuse for the other instance in which it happened in 2002 as reported to P&E by one PA writer?

There may be other instances, but those haven't been reported as yet to P&E. In the meantime, I think we're seeing a pattern here that's finally being halted.

Books on Shelves

Did y'all know that you can check to see which books are actually on the shelves at Borders bookstores?

<a href="http://www.bordersstores.com/search/search.jsp?tt=gn" target="_new">Search Inventory</a>

A fun thing to do, for example, is to look at all the Borders Bookstores within, say, a hundred miles of Cleveland, Ohio, to see how many of them stock books by your favorite authors.

"Yes" means they have it in stock. "Order" means that the book will have to be special ordered.

Re: royalty check

just to add to James' post above, if the listing has a "Shelf Location" it means it's been stocked at a Borders somewhere at some time.

The logo speaks...

That whole post is just so full of holes and PA bs. If it wasn't so important to so many people it would almost be funny.

My take on it? Someone at PA has seen all the encouragement for authors to go to the IRS. Somebody is getting nervous!

I received my author copies yesterday from PA. What should have been one of the happiest days of my life passed by with hardly a notice. I just looked at the book and shook my head. Thanks PA! :gone

SB

Re: He's Coming

You'll be happy to know that three out of the six Borders closest to Cleveland Ohio have a book with a forward written by HapiSofi [not his real name] currently in stock, and six out of six have one or more titles by me (under one or another pseudonym).

(Note: I have never personally been in Cleveland; it's over 700 miles from my home, 450 from Sofi's.)

Re: The logo speaks...

Savannah, I'm really sorry about the thrill not being in it for you with the author's copies.

The day will come when you'll get the joy, when you have books in your hand from a real publisher, when your work and your hopes all pay off.

Just keep writing, keep working on your craft, keep submitting. It isn't easy, but it is entirely within reach.

Did you know, there was a full-page review for a first novel in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review. The door isn't closed.

I don't have my royalty check

"Never in the past five years have we missed our payment deadline for anyone, ever."

I haven't received my royalty check. Does this mean I'm the first?

Dee Power

Borders

Do me a favor and check out my book by the ISBN for Borders........just in case I need a witness that my book is in print and AVAILABLE TO BE ORDERED.

1413700985

There Ain't Enough Front Porches by Molly Marx Brent

My contract was cancelled in May and should be out of print and if they did not have any on hand, it should not be listed at all.

BTW, I'm sure it is a mistake but I have not received a check yet.......and the IRS did tell me they would investigate.

Molly

He's Coming

Mr. MacDonald,

Are you saying PA's official cheerleader's books are not stocked on the shelf at Border's in Cleveland?

He told everybody on the private board during the recent rebellion that his books are available at all bookstores in the Cleveland area.

Re: He's Coming

He told everybody on the private board during the recent rebellion that his books are available at all bookstores in the Cleveland area.

If "available" he meant "in stock" and by "all" he meant "including at Borders," he appears to have been mistaken. Check it out for yourself. (Though it's possible that the last copies were sold yesterday and they're waiting for more to come in, I suppose.)

If by "available," he meant they could be special ordered, they can indeed be special ordered.

That's the standard PublishAmerica weasel-wording.

Re: Why 7 years?

Dave, don't underestimate the sophistication of PublishAmerica's methods. Every component of an old-fashioned pocket watch is simple too. The art's in the way they all work together.

WM is an exploiter and abuser, but he isn't stupid, and PublishAmerica is the slickest, scammiest vanity publisher to date. I know you've cited some analyses of their model, so I won't go into detail about it, but it really is damned clever. If you didn't have a good gut-level understanding of how publishing works, you could stare at it forever without spotting all the gimmes and gotchas built into it. Then, once it's got them signed, PA keeps its authors running in circles with makework marketing that never quite succeeds, telling them that the answer to all their doubts is to work harder and never give up. By the time the authors are disenchanted enough to start analyzing what's happened, they're too exhausted, confused, and depressed to sort things out. And if they complain, or even question the PA view of things, WM does his best to crush them with his appallingly abusive, guilt-inflicting letters. It's evil, but it works, and he's making piles of money.

In my opinion, we've been lucky. Melanie Mills had a certain flair for fraud, but WM is the only scammer whom I'd say has a genuine talent for what he's doing. If you look at this class of fraud as a business enterprise, most of its practitioners -- the Deerings, the Titsworths, Appel & Sterrs, James Van Treese, Cris Robins, Sprachman & Leonard, Gail Manchur, Cynthia Sterling, Martha Ivery, Fletcher & Anderson & Maast, et cetera ad slime mold -- have been slow-moving, unimaginative, untalented bumblers. They would have been mediocrities in any business they engaged in. Of all that lot, WM is the only one who smells like a business executive.

BTW, does it seem to you like there are fewer dimbulb vanity publishing operations than there used to be? I think PA's been taking their business away from them, romping like an allosaurus amongst the herbivores. If I'm right, well, it was bound to happen. Small-time crooks always wind up learning the hard way that if you're going to live in the jungle, you're either the biggest carnivore out there, or you're lunch.

Why 7 years/The logo speaks...

if you're going to live in the jungle, you're either the biggest carnivore out there, or you're lunch

I'll be happy when PA is somebody's lunch. Hopefully the IRS.

Thank you, Jim, for your kind, encouraging words.

SB

Re: The logo speaks re: royalty discrepancies

Laura, Chris is right. It was someone else who spoiled your thread.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that InfoCenter isn't lying. (And recall that I and others predicted that the thread would be removed back when there was only one post in it....)

I'm the "someone else" that InfoCenter means.

Y'see, I have a copy of that complete thread, up to the moment that PA deleted it. There isn't anything in that thread aside from the first post that InfoCenter could possibly object to unless they're totally random and demented.

The Logo says that it wasn't Laura's post they objected to. It must have been my mentioning the thread here that made them delete it. (Not the first time that's happened, of course. PA keeps its eye on these boards.)

Or ... was The Logo lying?

It's not verisign's fault.

PA's explanation:

"The error was made not by us, but by Verisign, the company that processes credit card charges for all major online vendors, including PublishAmerica."

Verisign is definately NOT the only company that processes credit card charges. And they process these charges for small businesses online as well as 'major' vendors.

When a merchant account is set up, it is conjunction with a bank. The bank has to have a agreement with the credit card companies. The bank looks at a credit card account like they do a loan, the vendor is in a way 'borrowing' the money from the bank, until the credit card company approves the transaction. The bank is the entity that authorizes payment, Verisign just processes the transaction through secure servers. Most of the time the transaction is approved immediately and the transfer of payment into the vendor's (in this case PublishAmerica) bank account is within 24 to 48 hours. PublishAmerica should know this. Verisign notifies the vendor by email when the cc transaction is approved and when the payment has been made.

From the logo's explanation:
"They did not authorize payment until Monday August 2. July 31 being our cutoff date for royalty payments, our own system, understandably, did not recognize those Verisign payments as July payments."

The cutoff date for the special offer was July 30. PA should have been aware the processing would take 24 to 48 hours. They should have known that authors ordering on July 29 and July 30 would not be eligible for the royalty if PA only pays out the royalty when it gets paid.

From PA's explanation:
"Because a few authors alerted us to the occurence, we became aware of it, and we have started, immediately, to issue additional royalty checks to those involved."

So even though the PA iron clad policy is not to pay royalties until PA is paid, they made an exception in this case.

From PA's explanation:
"No sinister plot behind it, no dark agenda, no grand conspiracy. Just an honest mistake made by others than PA."

Why did PA bring up "sinister plot," no dark agenda," and "no grand conspiracy?"

Dee
www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com

Re: Oh, who would have suspected?

Because PA is trying to convince everyone that they didn't mean to defraud anyone. The problem is that the authors can show how they were treated that way before as well as now. This defensive action on PA's part is a whole lot late because they can't change their accounting books from those other instances at this late date and expect anyone to believe those were all mistakes on the part of a credit company.

Besides, if just one of those authors used a debit check, then the money was automatically transferred at the time of the transaction. Want to explain that one, PA?

By the way, James, I think what brought it to the logo's attention was my comment after yours. I do tend to attract the nicest logos, you know.

James, I felt I had to expose that troll on that board to those other writers since not all of them frequent other boards. They had a right to know of his agenda. I put up with it until then when he left himself completely open and painted himself with his own words.

By the way, PA's explanation placing the blame on the credit company doesn't fly for several more reasons: First off, they initially told the writers a different story than what they're claiming now. Secondly, if those monies are rightfully due to the authors as a number of us, the afflicted PA authors, and, now, PA are stating, then that should have been reflected in the accounting books. This is because we all know that those funds became a payable the instant the purchases were made in accordance with PA's offer.

Re: Why 7 years?

>>BTW, does it seem to you like there are fewer dimbulb vanity publishing operations than there used to be?<<

Nope. To me, it seems like new ones are popping up every week (literally). The most recent wants authors to agree to buy 1,000 or more copies of their own books for a lousy 30% discount off a high cover price (we're talking $9,000 here), and has a hideous contract into the bargain. Like many sleazoid operations, it cloaks itself in its Christian focus.

Sigh.

- Victoria

Sleazoids?

Victoria, share the info with me. I'm willing to list them by name at P&E.

Re: Borders

Molly, I didn't get a royalty check either. How many of us didn't? I have found my book has disappeared from a lot of online stores, with my own efforts. But Amazon told me they couldn't, cause they paid for books, they had to sell. They have one left, and more on the way. Even after I sent them proof they had no right to have it on their site, or sell. The personal emails from PA, spelling out my contract release. Told me also, that PA could recall the books. I told them I recieved no payment for anything sold, that they were splitting the price with PA and the printer. That is illegal I would think. Ingram said they removed it from their catalog.

I still suffer from so called reviewers who know nothing about my book, yet claim to do so. I know who started the mess, fanfic critics that hang out at fanfiction.net, doing the stalking, and I think there are some from another camp that have joined up.

Re: Borders

LaVerne, if you haven't already, write to the Maryland Attorney General, the Frederick, Maryland BBB, and the Federal Trade Commission. That might give PA an incentive to notify those retailers and put things right for you.

contract

LaVerne, I checked out your book on Amazon. They do say "one left and more on the way"

How can they have more on the way when your contract was cancelled?

Amazon UK still has the illegal cover.

She is worried about being sued and can't get them to remove it.

I thought the reviews were curel. If they didn't like the book, it could have been said in a more diplomatic and professional manner.

I don't think anyone should suffer this amount of ridicule, except PA.......which is where the blame belongs. She was promised a professioal editor.

The reviews sound to me very much like a bunch of snotty rich kids, picking on the poor kid.

LaVerne is a disabled mother of two with MAJOR PROBLEMS that I will not discuss but they are serious and have nothing to do with PA.

LaVerne has e mailed several times today. This lady is really suffering so please give her a break.


Molly

Re: Borders

Hey Dave, I did those things. I think that is how I got my contract back. Since it came right after I did that, and contacted the IRS. Maybe I need to add to my complaints with them. Amazon even said, we are sorry you don't want your book with us. Are they idiots, are learning from the knee of another company? No publisher will touch it, well the third it comprises of the new book, with it still out there.

Re: Oh, who would have suspected?

Dave, I really don't agree that "exposing" the "troll" helped at all. Facts win, when stated calmly and clearly. Flaming just makes you look like the jerk. Getting PA supporters to talk helps the anti-PA case.

Meanwhile, Amazon's "more on the way" is probably generated by a robot any time the number in stock goes down to one or two copies, regardless of ordering status. I don't think that's anything, unless someone buys one, it goes out of stock, then they buy another.

Sometime tomorrow I may go over to my local Borders and try to order Molly's book, just to see what happens.

Re: contract

Thanks Molly, such warm support is very appreciated. I can use it right now, as you well know. I just wish those "Reviewers" would leave me alone, and stop emailing me, and stalking me everywhere. They even made a website about the book.

Bad enough the fight to get my book back with everything else going on. Without this added to everything else. As you saw Molly, most of it isn't the editing as much as picking on, making fun of my charactors, and putting me down.

I have been going through this with this group for 6 months or more now. Same people told me to die even. Too many nuts on the web.