I have been sending them the "I do not intend to renew my contract please consider it canceled as of xx/xx/xxxx at 12:00 midnight." email for two months now, one email has been blocked already, or at least they no longer want to play on that one. My older, original one I still get their "fabulous" offers on and the latest turndown on my release request. My older contract states that the signing of the new contract has to be completed "No later than three months prior to the expiration" of the original contract, so I'm pretty safe there, no real gray area for them to assume that it was ok for them to continue on. I will attempt to purchase a copy a few days after sending them a cease and desist registered letter and see if I am able to purchase one and go from there. I wonder, if I blank out their name, if I could use all their emails in a book about the hazards of using some of the companies who are promoting themselves as publishers, since I have pretty near every email I have gotten and sent over the past 7 years. Pretty sad reading overall, especially the ones from Miranda!
The Newer Never-Ending PublishAmerica / America Star Books Thread
- Thread starter James D. Macdonald
- Start date
Oh, I like that idea. Make sure that you word it properly though ... "companies who are promoting themselves as traditional publishers, that have Testimonials on their site about their publishing 'greatness'".
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I went to the PA site last night to use the author support form to send yet another request for my rights to be returned and noticed that the link to the author support form on the Author Information page sent me to the Support Q&A page but there was no fill-in author support form at the bottom like in the past. Just how are people supposed to use the author support form when it's not even on their website?
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Oh, come on. You know no one can ax Author Support anything.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
My question is...why the new ISBN? A hardcover duplicate of the original hardcover, meaning reprint, but a new number? Or did the original have no ISBN before?
Color me verra confused.
ETA: I don't mean reprint, I mean second, third printing, whatever. Color me exhausted from work, too. LOL
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From a PA author's Facebook page, a reader asks,
The reply is,
Reminds me of when my book was just about to be released. A friend emailed my publisher to ask if she could read it on her Kindle, and she told me she had a response five minutes later (the response also wasn't "read the FAQ").
Actually, it's simple. PA is so cheap, they're changing the name of the type of book they sell rather than the ISBN so they won't have to order any new ISBNs since those cost money. It's just like when they declared themselves to be a "traditional" rather than a "vanity" publisher. They're playing semantics, otherwise known as Lawyer, the Role Playing Game.
Yeah, Dave, but it was stated as "new" ISBN.
Oh, wait....! Could it be they are scamming the unsuspecting authors again by stating it's a new ISBN when it is really that the ISBN got longer? I can't remember what year that all changed from X number of digits to an increased number of digits (13?) And I'm also not sure if publishers had to pay for that conversion or just send in forms to reclassify to the new standard.
"Scratches head"
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Well, if a PAYperback ever comes out on Amazon, we can check to see if the ISBN is just the 13-digit version of the original ISBN. For US publishers, the 13 digit ISBN has 978 added to the front, plus the very last digit is different. Everything else remains the same for the same book.
For what it's worth, I checked a few random PAperbacks. All of these in the list have ISBNs, Of the random ones I checked (not a scientific sample by any means), they were on Amazon but with a different ISBN. Most were listed as out of stock, but a few showed one copy left.
So apparently they ARE assigning new ISBNs to the PAperbacks.
As has been pointed out many times before, ISBNs are not expensive. Here's a price list. I wonder if they purchased bar codes as well?
So apparently they ARE assigning new ISBNs to the PAperbacks.
As has been pointed out many times before, ISBNs are not expensive. Here's a price list. I wonder if they purchased bar codes as well?
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PA to their authors: Oh why bother with silly bar codes, only book stores use those goofy things, who needs those?
I haven't read this thread in awhile, but just received an email from PA about getting the rights to my book back and wanted to know if others have received the same email and what they think. I've never given PA a dime, but their email is very tempting:
Dear author:
Your book has shown no sales for more than a year.
At this time you may want to have your book's publishing rights reverted back to you.
We can arrange that.
Go to www.publishamerica.net/product94552.html and instruct us to return the rights to you. In the Ordering Instructions box, write the title of your book. You will receive the termination documents by mail. There are no strings attached to this termination except the $99 processing fee that covers our administration costs and our de-listing obligations to vendors and/or wholesalers. You must choose a shipping option to activate your rights return instruction.
Thank you for having been a PublishAmerica author, or for sticking around if that's what you prefer!
--PublishAmerica Author Support Team
Dear author:
Your book has shown no sales for more than a year.
At this time you may want to have your book's publishing rights reverted back to you.
We can arrange that.
Go to www.publishamerica.net/product94552.html and instruct us to return the rights to you. In the Ordering Instructions box, write the title of your book. You will receive the termination documents by mail. There are no strings attached to this termination except the $99 processing fee that covers our administration costs and our de-listing obligations to vendors and/or wholesalers. You must choose a shipping option to activate your rights return instruction.
Thank you for having been a PublishAmerica author, or for sticking around if that's what you prefer!
--PublishAmerica Author Support Team
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Someone's started a dedicated thread for this exact discussion. Check out http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185642
Or, if my link-fu doesn't work, look at the $99 for my rights back! thread
Here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185642
Perhaps a mod can move your post to that thread.
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NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-!!!!!
DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!!
Sorry for yelling, but your contract will have something in it about how it is to be terminated.
It won't cost you a dime. Get your contract, and read for that termination clause.
This is just another GREEDY GRAB by those scum sucking leeches to cheat you out of money.
They KNOW the contract releases you without cost! All you have to do is state you will not be renewing.
And that's it. DO NOT SEND THEM A SINGLE DIME!!
Oh-- and welcome to AW
/facepalm
... Um, they have "Returning Your Rights" as a PRODUCT? Well, that certainly says something. Incidentally, it doesn't sound like a horrible deal for people who really want out altogether. However, this statement: "There are no strings attached..." would cause me to be cautious. Anytime, someone has to tell me something like that, it causes me to get my guard up. I don't know.
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I think QoS has it right over there. If they've not only lowered the going rate but also are actively soliciting returning rights, that has the smell of desperation for cash to me. I mean, considering the abuse they typically dish out over the issue. Wow.
NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-!!!!!
DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!!
Sorry for yelling, but your contract will have something in it about how it is to be terminated.
It won't cost you a dime. Get your contract, and read for that termination clause.
This is just another GREEDY GRAB by those scum sucking leeches to cheat you out of money.
They KNOW the contract releases you without cost! All you have to do is state you will not be renewing.
And that's it. DO NOT SEND THEM A SINGLE DIME!!
Oh-- and welcome to AW
It appears to be an early release from the contract though, in which case I can understand why someone would want to take them up on it. But, then again, they're pretty good misdirection ... emphasis on "appears"
I'm still highly amused that it's offered as a product.
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I absolutely go on guard the instant ANYONE says "no strings attached." There are ALWAYS strings attached!
The "string" in this instance is the 99.00 release fee dangling there like a hangman's rope.
Or piano wire around the neck of any desperate PA writer who twigged too late that his book is in a black hole and not coming out for 7 years.
I have a word--several!--for this kind of crap, but have been advised by the mods that it would be unwise to use them in a public forum.
Without posting it yourself, what do you call it when some playground bully holds something precious to you just out of reach, but says if you give him money he'll give it back? Once the next class starts, he has to give it back, but until then the bully keeps it.
Just THINK what you'd call that, but don't post it.
Just walk away, PA writers. Don't fall for this ploy. The bully has no power unless you give it to him.
.
The "string" in this instance is the 99.00 release fee dangling there like a hangman's rope.
Or piano wire around the neck of any desperate PA writer who twigged too late that his book is in a black hole and not coming out for 7 years.
I have a word--several!--for this kind of crap, but have been advised by the mods that it would be unwise to use them in a public forum.
Without posting it yourself, what do you call it when some playground bully holds something precious to you just out of reach, but says if you give him money he'll give it back? Once the next class starts, he has to give it back, but until then the bully keeps it.
Just THINK what you'd call that, but don't post it.
Just walk away, PA writers. Don't fall for this ploy. The bully has no power unless you give it to him.
.
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They're hoping the
Yet another clue about the boundless contempt they hold for their
"There are no strings attached to this termination except the $99 processing fee that covers our administration costs and our de-listing obligations to vendors and/or wholesalers."
Administration costs? Do they mean setup fees?
Vendors and wholesalers? Notice they didn't say distributor?
Inform Bowkers to show the book as out of print. It still won't take it off of Amazon.com etc.
This is the least expensive way to get your rights back that I've seen, but remember that PA gets money from you, for a book YOU wrote.
With this offer, PA could make a lot more money letting their authors go, than they have by publishing their books. That's not very traditional.
Administration costs? Do they mean setup fees?
Vendors and wholesalers? Notice they didn't say distributor?
Inform Bowkers to show the book as out of print. It still won't take it off of Amazon.com etc.
This is the least expensive way to get your rights back that I've seen, but remember that PA gets money from you, for a book YOU wrote.
With this offer, PA could make a lot more money letting their authors go, than they have by publishing their books. That's not very traditional.
I can see a last ditch attempt to grab money by simply taking in as many victims as possible, doing literally nothing (and I mean even less than they're doing now), and then offering rights back so the victim cuts their losses.