Well, I guess. We're all beyond PA
but considering we're still here talking about them, maybe not.
Neil
Neil--a number of PA writers lurk on this board. I often address them directly. More than one has written to say some of my posts helped them to make up their mind to leave PA. I feel good about that!
The Stooges are the 3 people running
PA: Willem Meiners, Larry Clopper III & Miranda Prather.
Meiners originally teamed with webmarketer Clopper and ran "a vanity press called Erica House, which charged its authors up to $8,000 to “publish” their books.
In 1999 they hit on the PA formula: promise to print
anything sent to them, give a 1-dollar advance, use the word "traditional" a lot because it makes people feel safe, and sell copies at an inflated price to their own writers. There are no upfront costs to "print" (the books are in a computer file).
They are gambling (successfully) that most writers will order copies--they do--and they count on at least 100 people a week to fall for their website's misinformation, lies, and claims that they are a real publisher, rather than a reverse vanity press.
Those new writers at first think they are now "published" and enter the "honeymoon" stage. PA gave their book the "chance it deserves." Most of them figure out all is not as it's supposed to be when, once they're locked into a crap contract, their e-mails go ignored, phone calls are not returned, books are late, errors are introduced to the text that PA charges 99.00 to remove, books are NOT in the stores, the royalty check is a joke.
They generally don't want to believe they've been had, so the honeymoon period can go on for quite some while. PA loves that and continues to send "buy your book" emails until the writers wake up and smell the coffee. Some find their way here, and we love when they do that. Others give up writing altogether, thinking all publishers are scum like PA. Many write better books and move on, which we encourage!
Miranda Prather lurks here on the AW board to keep an eye on us. This is why PA writers who want to break their contracts opt to not use their real names. She gets off on holding their books "hostage."
Know thy enemy. She put on her crazy hat in college, and still wears it. Many PA writers have gotten her infamous "tone" letters, where she berates them for not being "grateful" to PA and demands groveling apologies. Those letters have the signature of whoever they hired that month, but no mail goes out of that office unless she clears it.
Read these two posts and you can see how things are run inside PA.
She is referred to here as the "InfoMonster" since she patrols the PA message boards and removes ALL posts that dare to question PA's shoddy business practices. Even the mildest of reasonable questions vanish.
When that happens, we say they've gone to the cornfield, a reference to the
Twilight Zone ep. where the creepy kid with psychic powers runs things. Anyone who made him mad got wished to the cornfield--buried alive.
None of my wankage is aimed at PA writers past or present, but I will harsh on PA. The writers--I hope!--get that!
