read ths email that they gave me- "PublishAmerica Author Support" <
[email protected]>-You seem to have fallen for some very old, and very false, news.
We can back up everything we say. It's old, sure ... dating back to the day PA was founded. And it's new, too, as recent as this morning, because PA hasn't changed its business plan.
>What
>you saw posted is simply, plainly, false.
We'll see. As I said, we can back all of it up with documented facts.
Please read the following
>information carefully, and we will be happy to answer any further
>questions that you may have.
Okay. Here are some questions you might ask: What are the typical sales of PublishAmerica author? How many PublishAmerica books have been shelved nationally by a chain bookstore? What is the typical royalty check of a typical PA author? How many copies of his/her own book does the typical PublishAmerica author buy? Isn't it true that PublishAmerica relies on sales to its own authors to stay in business? What is the actual number of books sold by PublishAmerica in physical bookstores? (Not percentages, numbers. And not at the special order desk, at the regular cash register.) What is the total number of PublishAmerica books sold directly to their own authors?
>As for the hoax, what you read is false. No, we did not publish it.
What you just implied is false. No one said you published it. We said that you accepted it and offered a contract. On the advice of counsel, we did not sign the contract.
>There is little truth to the story that you read. The authors of that
>story know very well that it is almost completely fabricated.
I'm here, right now. I organized that hoax, and I can tell you that what we posted about it is completely true.
>PublishAmerica initially accepted the manuscript based on a quick
>skim of the contents, and when we actually began reading the
>manuscript we rejected it.
By a weird coincidence they rejected it the day
after we went public with the hoax! How about that! But even if it were true, it's damning: What kind of publisher offers a contract based on a "quick skim"? (And I further say that even a "quick skim" should have shown anyone literate in English that
Atlanta Nights is an unpublishable mess.)
We rejected it long before the hoaxers
>made their false claim.
This is an outright lie from PublishAmerica. They rejected it only after we went public with the hoax.
>Partly as a result of the on-line efforts that you read, our
>popularity has risen so dramatically that each day over 100 new
>authors contact us, wanting to join PublishAmerica.
So what? There are lots of hopeful/desperate/deluded authors in the world.
I'd imagine that any legitimate publisher gets as many or more. The difference is that those legitimate publishers don't offer contracts to the majority of the submitters.
I
don't claim to run a publishing house. Would-be authors send me submissions too.
>We have very good news from the Better Business Bureau. According to
>BBB statistics, filings from contracted authors and customers amount
>to a very tiny fraction: less than half of one hundreth of one
>percent. All Of these complaints have been closed, of course, and
>this is an excellent record, especially considering our 30,000
>authors, eight years in business, and almost three million
>(3,000,000) happy customers.
The BBB in general is useless, but here even more so. The BBB (and the FTC) don't consider author complaints to be consumer complaints. Author complaints are considered business-to-business, and entirely out of their purview.
The consumer complaints that they would handle are on the order of "The book I bought was was printed backwards," not "This book sucks!"
>The websites to which you refer have long ago lost credibility, and
>it would appear that they are rarely taken seriously.
This is a lie.
We've seen them
>mocked many times.
Really? Where? Could you provide a reference for this?
In fact, as we speak their ringleaders are being
>sued in New Jersey by a third party for libel and other objectionable
>behavior.
I can't comment about ongoing litigation.
Their attorney in that case, who also is a frequent poster
>on these websites, was suspended from the practice of law by the
>Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission because he
>defrauded an elderly lady. In the Commission's order, it said that he
>is "unfit to practice law", "poses a threat to the public and the
>integrity of the legal profession", and that he was "lying upon lying
>upon lying".
This in itself is false, known by PA to be false, and potentially libelous. Would you please forward this letter, including full headers, to John P. Campbell, Esq., Schenck, Price, Smith & King, LLP, P.O. Box 905, 10 Washington Street, Morristown, New Jersey 07963-0905 (
[email protected]) Thanks.
>Fortunately, few people take them seriously,
You already said that. Few people who submit to PA take us seriously, perhaps, but a year later it's different. The folks who don't submit to PA may well have taken us seriously ... or they may have just done their own research and discovered that PA's business model doesn't pass the smell test.
and we rarely hear their
>name mentioned from any of our roughly 30,000 happily contracted
>authors or from the almost 200,000 aspiring authors who have sought a
>PublishAmerica contract to date.
How many of them are happily contracted a year later?
Among these are thousands upon
>thousands of professionals, including lawyers, doctors, and
>professors, plus many previously published authors and celebrities.
Being a "professional" doesn't mean one can write a publishable book, nor does it make one immune to the pixie-dust that falls in any would-be author's eyes on hearing the words "we want to publish your book." We've already exhaustively discussed those "previously published authors and celebrities." The short version: Few, and minor.
>PublishAmerica represents traditional publishing for thousands of
>authors, both new and old, and the end of the vanity publishing
>industry.
Oh, bull-pucky. PA is itself a continuation of the vanity publishing industry.
Therefore, we are bound to make headlines, and to cause
>concern to those who profit from charging authors money.
But you don't cause any concern among those who profit from charging readers money, and sending that money on to authors.
>Many businesses proudly boast that they have a 95% customer
>satisfaction ratio. Our ratio is far, far and away above 95%.
Do you think you can prove that in a court of law? I may be able to arrange it so you can try. But tell me: Who are your customers? The readers who buy your books, or is it perhaps your authors?
We
>operate within only the highest ethical standards.
I'm laughing at you now.
Now take some of those testimonials by authors who have had their book out for more than a year. Contact them. See if they still feel the same way about PA. Isn't it true, PA, that many, if not most, of those testimonials came from authors who were in that first flush of honeymooner excitement between getting the acceptance and getting their first royalty check?
>There is no problem of any kind. What happened was that a small group
>of detractors contacted every "authority" that they could find, and
>each authority, without exception, found no problem with what
>PublishAmerica is doing.
This isn't true either.
Here is a brief overview of PublishAmerica:
>- Each day, over 100 new authors request to become PublishAmerica authors
La-de-dah. And how many of them are offered contracts?
>- Each year, over 25,000 new authors request to become PublishAmerica
>authors
That's the same as the last statistic, isn't it? Trying to puff up your list by listing things twice?
>- 2,000,000 million households served
Whatever that means.
>- 30,000 proud authors on board
Really? How many of them who've been with you for a year or more are still "proud"?
>- Thousands of positive newspaper reviews, interviews,
>or feature stories
Of the "local man writes book" variety. Human interest stories in small newspapers.
>- Thousands of book signing events in bookstores across the nation
Arranged by the authors at their own expense.
>- Eight years in business
>- Eight years of steady growth
Just proves that author vanity is a powerful force. There are old-style vanity presses that have been in buisness for fifty years or more.
>- Eight years of doing what no other publisher has ever done before,
>much less for free: bringing a status of class to a previously
>ignored mass of aspiring authors.
The ones who've written unpublishable, unreadable books. But another publisher did do it, for free, before you. That was X-libris, before they took a different vanity route.
>Barnes and Noble alone orders 120 books from PublishAmerica each day.
Okay, 120 books per day. 365 days per year. That's 43,800 books. Barnes & Noble has 797 stores. That works out to 4.5 PA books per month per store. For all PA authors. Combined. Out of 30,000 PA authors. Five books per month. That's mom and dad and Aunt Sue and your best friend from high school all ordering your book at the special order desk. Why at the special order desk?
Because Barnes and Noble has a policy against stocking PA books. We have that directly from B&N.
>Thousands, each and every month, of PublishAmerica books are sold in
>bookstores across the nation.
Again, at the special order desk.
Bookstores buy books from us each
>and every day.
Special ordered by the author's family and friends. On average, counting author purchases, PA books sell 75 copies per title.
The PublishAmerica message board is overflowing with
>testimonials from our authors about their books being stocked in
>bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books.
"Hundreds of bookstores" when there are thousands of bookstores possible? And all of those are due to the authors' efforts, going in person to the managers and begging to get a book shelved.
>We hope that this information is helpful, and that you will be very
>happy with our ever-growing family of authors.
Oh, it's certainly helpful.
And again, if you have
>any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let us know.
I hope I've given you some questions.
>Thank You,
>
>PublishAmerica Author Support
Hi, Miranda! How's your horse doing?
