Return of a Man Named PAMB and its Quotes

DaveKuzminski · Aug 2, 2012

Khazarkhum said:
Well, here's the test---is he 1000 years old? If not, then maybe it's not quite as good as he says.

Maybe they could get one of the PA staff to test it? Then all he has to do is live for a thousand years.

AlexPiper · Aug 17, 2012

DaveKuzminski said:
Maybe they could get one of the PA staff to test it? Then all he has to do is live for a thousand years.

Nah, PA execs survive the millenia by preying on the life-energy — the hopes and dreams — of aspiring authors, rather than drinking blood or 'correcting the molecular spin of fluids.' (Which, taken out of context, sounds either like some euphemism for something dirty, or else something you'd perform as an experiment at CERN.)

amergina · Aug 24, 2012

It's been quiet on the PAMB since the advent of the FB pade, but this was posted today:

Hi, I was wondering if anyone else ordered the Moms Plus package back at mother's day. I ordered this package for promotion and a copy of my last book for $44.99 and still have not recieved my book. Instead according to the support team, they claim I never ordered a copy of my book only the promotion, however my credit card was charged $44.99. The support team says I was only charged $22, does anybody remember this package? I don't understand how they could make this mistake when I still have my orginal reciept and order number. If anyone else has had this problem please let me know. Thank You

Sigh. Poor author. Contact your CC company.

BenPanced · Aug 24, 2012

Unfortunately, I think it might be outside the window to report the charges. Don't they have something like 30 days to contact their credit card company for a charge back?

ResearchGuy · Aug 26, 2012

BenPanced said:
Unfortunately, I think it might be outside the window to report the charges. Don't they have something like 30 days to contact their credit card company for a charge back?

I'd report it. It took a while for the fraud to become apparent.

--Ken

Gillhoughly · Aug 31, 2012

Willie posts the biggest load of BULLSHIT yet.

He's mixed in just enough truth to sound plausible and the rest is something Miranda should be shoveling from a stable.

http://www.publishamerica.net/ceo083112.html

My favorite part is when he accuses online vendors of lying.

It's a fat steaming load, so you can't trust the numbers. I'll paste the whole thing in below. Feel free to rip into it or throw up in your mouth a little.

Letter from PublishAmerica's CEO: Behind the scenes of royalties
August 31, 2012
Good morning:

In the next few days we're going to receive about 700 emails more than usual.

Happens every first week of September and March.

Royalty questions.

Yesterday all email royalty statements went out. Courtesy of Gabe DiGennaro who is our royalties engineer. He is responsible for entering all the sales data into a system that breaks them down, separates them by ISBN, adds them up, and connects them to the address, email or physical, of the author to whose book the ISBN belongs.

If you did not receive a royalty email yesterday, you either have a new email address that you forgot to let us know about (but then you also don't receive this letter), or, better: your royalty statement comes on paper, in the mail. There's a check attached to it. All statements+check are delivered at the post office today. That's the responsibility of Brian Burdette.

In all, tens of thousands of royalty statements have gone out. We distinguish between what we call zero-statements (no books were sold these past six months), $49-statements (books were sold, but total royalties do not exceed $49, which your contract says is the pay-out threshold), $99-statements (same as the $49s, but your unmet contractual threshold is $99), and paper statements (the ones with a check attached).

Most of the 700 questions will come from authors who have received their statement by email, with no actual payment. That number is always roughly the same; sometimes it's 600, occasionally it's closer to 800, but seven hundred is the average.

It's less than 2 percent of the total number of authors who receive a royalty statement, which always makes us feel pretty good.

About 500 of the questions that we're ready to answer in the next few days say this, essentially: Please check my sales numbers again because I thought that my book had sold more copies.

We always go back and check again, but the answer is always the same: nope, our numbers are correct. That's because we don't touch a book's sales numbers individually. There are only two ways, administratively, that we sell books: 1. through outside vendors, or 2. through our own direct sales. Outside vendors include wholesalers Ingram and Baker&Taylor. They report their sales to us electronically, and separate between them by ISBN. Our in-house sales are also registered electronically, because that's the only way we can generate an actual printing order. Goes by ISBN as well. Both outside sales and in-house sales are automatically stored in a computer program. No human hand ever touches them.

In other words, the 500 or so authors who thought that their book had sold more copies ask us for a reality check, we perform the check, and they accept our answer.

The other 200 authors don't ask us a question but make a statement instead. They insist that we have made a mistake, because their friend, neighbor, co-worker, mother, etc. has told them that they bought a copy of their book, so why is there no money check? In more than half of those cases they're right. Mother did buy that book, and so did two, or ten, friends. But that's not enough to meet the pay-out threshold of $49, or more recently $99, that the author agreed to when they signed their contract. So we remind those authors of what's in their contract, and that answers their question.

Then there's between 50-75 authors, every six months, who claim that hundreds, or maybe thousands, of books must have been sold because Internet sellers say they have copies. In stock! Well, excuse my French, but those online vendors lie. They don't have those books in stock. And if they do after all, it's because book printer Lightning Source has printed and sold those books to them, and those sales appear on the author's royalty statement. Lightning Source is owned by wholesaler Ingram. No sale there goes unreported. Therefore, if no such sales are on the author's royalty statement, it's because they don't exist.

Why would online vendors say that they have a book in stock? One, because anyone can say anything on the internet, true or false, and two, because they can actually fulfill a book order as if they had the book in stock. If the customer pays, any vendor can order a PublishAmerica book to be printed and shipped within 12 hours. That's called virtual stock, which is of course wonderful, but meaningless as long as no one buys and pays for the product.

So that's it? We never make royalty calculation errors? Well, yes, we do. It's very seldom when you look at the big picture, but every semi-annual cycle we may detect one or two. We call them field errors. They happen when the data are collected, a process that starts five to six weeks before we issue the statements. There are two stages where human error is possible. One is when someone enters an ISBN incorrectly (usually by failing to remove a hyphen, but that rarely ever happens because ISBN entries are almost completely automated), the other is when a field in a database is omitted or wrongly added for a calculation. We almost always catch them in time, because after so many years of paying royalties we know what to look for. But to err is human.

There's about 20 emails, out of the 700, that will cause us to look really, really close at what we did. Eighteen will show that we did it right. One may reveal that we overpaid. And one may make us doubt.

When we doubt, the author prevails.

I invite you to talk back to me. I don't guarantee a response, but I do guarantee that we listen. You can reach me by email at [email protected]. In the subject line write Attn. Willem.

Have a wonderful day!
--Willem Meiners

When in doubt, the author gets laughed at while the Stooges send another spam urging him to buy more copies of his book, the poor sod.

The disgusting #### himself. In case you want to point him out to the karma cops.

Shrouded · Aug 31, 2012

because anyone can say anything on the internet, true or false

Pretty much says it all in his own words.

BenPanced · Sep 1, 2012

Well, excuse my French, but those online vendors lie.

Hark! Is that the pot remarking on the blackness of the kettle?

(Tip o' the nib to John Allison http://www.scarygoround.com/)

JoGrix · Sep 4, 2012

They happen when the data are collected, a process that starts five to six weeks before we issue the statements.

What's wrong with this sentence, or is it just me? :Shrug:

JulieB · Sep 4, 2012

I believe he's originally form Europe. That's proper European useage as far as I'm aware. But you'd think he'd have been here for long enough to know better. ;-)

nkkingston · Sep 8, 2012

It's always nice to see 'data' correctly used as a plural, even in circumstances like this!

Surprised he doesn't also blame the reporting lag from Amazon and other online vendors for gaps between "I know I sold" and "we know you've sold", but then, that would require people to actually buy PA books from Amazon and other online vendors...

BenPanced · Sep 8, 2012

One datum, two data.

Richard Falk · Sep 12, 2012

Royalties rear their head again:

Ive been watching my mail waiting for my first check from PA but so far I haven't received anything! I was wondering if I was the only one that hasn't heard anything? Thanks for all the help

Since it appears that the latest version of PA's contract includes a clause stating that no royalties will be paid until $99 has accrued, I wouldn't be expecting a cheque any time soon. Or indeed, at all.

DaveKuzminski · Sep 13, 2012

Betcha it's a nightmare trying to keep the different royalty periods straight.

shaldna · Sep 13, 2012

DaveKuzminski said:
Betcha it's a nightmare trying to keep the different royalty periods straight.

In all, tens of thousands of royalty statements have gone out. We distinguish between what we call zero-statements (no books were sold these past six months), $49-statements (books were sold, but total royalties do not exceed $49, which your contract says is the pay-out threshold), $99-statements (same as the $49s, but your unmet contractual threshold is $99), and paper statements (the ones with a check attached).

I know of a couple of people who got cheques for 50 odd cents.

Strangely, they were all people who have been trying to get out of their contracts lately, and have been using the fact that they haven't sold a book in several years as part of their arguement.

Make of that what you will.

DaveKuzminski · Sep 13, 2012

shaldna said:
I know of a couple of people who got cheques for 50 odd cents.

Strangely, they were all people who have been trying to get out of their contracts lately, and have been using the fact that they haven't sold a book in several years as part of their arguement.

Make of that what you will.

Sounds like a contradiction or some kind of legal maneuvering if they received checks of $.50 when the minimum check amount they claim to pay is hovering at $49.00.

ResearchGuy · Sep 13, 2012

DaveKuzminski said:
Sounds like a contradiction or some kind of legal maneuvering if they received checks of $.50 when the minimum check amount they claim to pay is hovering at $49.00.

I don't believe that older contracts had that minimum. But yeah, suspicious. What isn't suspicious about PA?

--Ken

shaldna · Sep 13, 2012

DaveKuzminski said:
Sounds like a contradiction or some kind of legal maneuvering if they received checks of $.50 when the minimum check amount they claim to pay is hovering at $49.00.

One of them only discovered via her royalty statement that her book had been 'on sale' during the period.

allenparker · Sep 13, 2012

ResearchGuy said:
I don't believe that older contracts had that minimum. But yeah, suspicious. What isn't suspicious about PA?

--Ken

Older contracts paid from the first sale, but they had other interesting clauses. It might be that they didn't know they could ask for minimum payouts back then.

Marian Perera · Sep 13, 2012

Very dissatisfied author on PA's Facebook page. Apparently he had a few email exchanges with PA where he mentioned another ex-author, and was told that author was very happy, had written a glowing testimonial, etc. So he countered with this, an email written by the ex-author to him:

"Well here I am. I wish you could all read my books <titles> and see what horrible mistakes a man can make in his life. The Pub with P/A was just another one of them. Thank you all for standing behind me. I think that this is just another one of their dirty tricks using a letter sent to them in confidence for propoganda. "How dare I." That was before I recieved not one but two royalty statements saying I didn't sell enough books to meet their quota. And after the money I spent having them introduce my book around the world. Who the hell are
they kidding. Sure Alexis I wrote that letter but that was before I joined this site and I really knew what they were all about. I thought I could trust them but I was sucked in by their promises like everyone else. As for being happy. I would say that I am about as happy with them as a condemmend man would be with his warden when he recieved his
request for steak and baked potatoe before being sent to the gas chamber. lol. And you can tell that to P/A if you like."

He made several more posts but this one was the saddest.

DaveKuzminski · Sep 13, 2012

That author should contact the lawyers suing PA in that class action suit.

Richard Falk · Sep 17, 2012

Interesting question on the PAMB:

Hello, I am wondering if it is possible to retain the E-book rights when signing a contract with PA? I have my second book almost ready for publishing but I would like to keep the e-book rights.

I'll wager the answer would be an emphatic "no". If he could issue his own ebooks, he could make his work available at a price people other than his family and friends might be willing to pay.

Gillhoughly · Sep 17, 2012

All contracts are negotiable, but they'll say no anyway. They know if the poor victim knew anything about publishing that he'd have avoided them in the first place.

Unimportant · Sep 20, 2012

PA is, I think, unique among vanity presses -- not only do they not edit, but they actually add mistakes to the authors' manuscripts.

Person 1: I recently had my first book published and this Monday I received my books. My book had mistakes in it, I had sent an email saying there were mistakes but they didn't get fixed. I have sold a few books but I wonder if PA will give any money back for them having mistakes

Person 2: I had the same problem. 100 books , $900.00 and there are SO many errors

Person 3:You can make a deal with the publisher to make corrections for you for a fee.

Or, now that you are a published writer, you can start working on your next book and have someone responsible edit it for you.

Gillhoughly · Sep 21, 2012

I like the one who said that mistakes make the book more valuable in the long run.

I hope he meant it as a joke, since that applies only to a certain kind of book. Signed limited editions by well known authors come to mind.

Should Stephen King issue one with his name accidentally spelled wrong on the back cover, that's a legit erratum and it will totally shoot up the value.

With a PA book that's business as usual and no one in their so called editorial department gives a crap lest they be fired.

Return of a Man Named PAMB and its Quotes

Preditors & Editors

Wayward Wordsmith

Pittsburgh Strong

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

Resident Curmudgeon

Grumpy writer and editor

Ne tequcesiverius extra

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

I grow my own catnip

Bemused Girl

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

Author of "Warp"

Preditors & Editors

The cake is a lie. But still cake.

Preditors & Editors

Resident Curmudgeon

The cake is a lie. But still cake.

Naked Futon Guy

starting over

Preditors & Editors

Author of "Warp"

Grumpy writer and editor

No COVID yet. Still masking.

Grumpy writer and editor