The Newer Never-Ending PublishAmerica / America Star Books Thread

Tobby C. Cantrell

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Don, I think you're right about PA holding your contract hostage for 7 years if you don't buy any books. They already made money off me. I just wanted my rights back so I could perhaps rewrite it (my first draft has several scenes I left out of the final copy) and try to get it commercially published. Like so many others, I was deceived into thinking I would be a PUBLISHED author. If PA was legit, the 7 years wouldn't matter to me. Anyone can go with POD. That's why there's so much slush out there. No offense to any aspiring writers out there.
 

Blake M. Petit

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Nice, liberating feeling, having both of my books back. Today I submitted (the revised version of) my first PA book to the Amazon kindle store and began revising my second one. Once I've got those out there in the ether, it's time to turn to some new stuff.
 

AnthonyJones

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So someone told me today that because I paid to have my rights returned to me, that I'm still binded to the contract. Other people are saying this is not true and now I'm a bit confused . . . again.
 

Chris P

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If you got the termination paperwork I think you are free and clear. Read some of the "Buying my rights back from PA" threads. I would be very surprised if even PA pulled a bait and switch like that.
 

brianm

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More unhappy PA authors...

Publish America has done nothing but send me to the cleaners. I have a whole closet full of my books and no where to sell them.
Don’t go with Publish America. I got as far as saying I would use their illustrator for my picture book and sent them the $599.00 for 10 pictures. I never signed the contract because of some fears about the price for the book and the seven year tie up of the book. At that price, $24.95 it won’t sell, and canceled my future service with them. They said they couldn’t do the illustrations without a signed contract.I didn’t sign the contract, and yet they won’t return my money.
I am so sick and tired of Publish America and all of it’s crap. Everytime I turn around, they want money from me in order to promote my books somehow. If I buy so many books, they will send the same amount to Barnes and Noble and local bookstores, etc. How is that promoting my books?
... I am bombarded by offers to push my book to the front on dozens of book fairs, or an agent in France or Israel or you must bear the expense of converting your book to Kindle, Ebooks,or some other thing to boost your sales or exposure.Each time these offers are made they cost between 49.00 to 129.00.And even if you pay, how do you know that they did anything at all. Say 300 authors all pay 69.00 to have them represented at the Paris Book Fair, what did they get for their money-a mention on a 30 page list? If the publisher was worth a damn they would pay for all these-Cause they are for sure making a helluva lot more than the 2.00 I ma getting for each sale. Why should I spend my money to make them more money for PA.
~brianm~
 

AnthonyJones

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Well my book was finally taken off of the PA website. Yes! I'm free. Can't wait to get my documents. I've changed some of the things in my ms and as well as the title and trilogy name, and I'm sending it off tomorrow to 2 of the 13 agents I have picked out.
 

Bookgirl2021

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I have a question. A lot of people use Wikipedia to research things. I know anyone who researches PA at all in depth will end up finding this or its listing on P&E, but not all will. Would it be wrong to have a link to either this thread or the listing on P&E on the PA page on Wiki? Not that PA's ever done anything wrong, right? ;) Really, though. There's not much information there, but some of the stuff it had made me want to send a message saying, "Do you know how many people this thing has screwed over?" It doesn't take sides, but it also doesn't seem to show at all what PA really is. And the only outside link was to PA's site. Like people will find any *real* information there. ...Just curious.
 

B.L. Robinson

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I guess I went about it the wrong way then... in my emails, I basically told them to keep the **** book, I was just going to rewrite it a little, change the name and publish it myself, it wasn't like anyone would recognize it since no one had ever read it.
 

darkprincealain

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IIRC, an editor at Wikipedia actually was trying to get the PA article labelled biased, but it did not go through, because of course people pointed out that there aren't very many reliable sources that had much positive to say about PA. In other words, there are some companies that are just bad.

I think to add any more criticism--although valid--would spark the "Wikipedia articles should be neutral" argument off again, and IMO those adding to the page would need to bring another round of defense of their edits.

I hope that makes sense. It has been a really rough day here and my brain is fried.
 

Rachel77

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Is it me (it could just be my computer) or is the search functionality on the PA website not working? I was trying to search for a particular book (I'm not looking at them for a manuscript, just trying to decipher an odd email from a PA author), and every time I tried a search (author, title, ISBN), I got an error.
 

Chris P

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It's working for me; I found my book with no trouble.

I know in the past PA didn't allow direct linking to a specific book; it redirected you to the main bookstore page and you had to search from there. I thought they no longer prevented direct linking, though.
 

merrihiatt

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Remember that little box underneath the cost of the book, how many pages, etc. in the PublishAmerica online bookstore? The one where authors could buy the space and advertise their book? Well, here's what's being noted in that space right now:

Latest News: Research shows that our average customer purchases 7 books per order.


Customer/Author = the same thing to PA, that's why there are seven books being ordered at a time. PA authors are ordering their own books. The note makes it look as if readers are purchasing seven books each time they order from the PA bookstore. Another mislead from PA. Color me shocked (not!).
 

DreamWeaver

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I think this has been brought up before, but isn't the title misspelled? (yippee = cry of joy, yipee = trade misspelling for entertainment website, equivalent to lite, kake, lo, tastee, etc.)
 

Torgo

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So, I am at the London book fair. PA has a stand! I guess they'll let anyone in. I say a stand; it is a table in a booth with a woman (Miranda?) sitting there talking someone into doing something inadvisable. Will post a snap later if anyone is interested.

Also present: the Bounder's Strategic Book Group! His scam appears healthier than PA's, just going by his (slightly more impressive) stand. There is even a woman standing there with a name tag that identifies her as an 'editor'.