University Press of America / Hamilton Books

http://www.hamilton-books.com

Our mission is to provide the opportunity for authors of serious non-fiction to obtain a top-quality book publisher without the typical hassles and extreme selectivity enforced by other companies. Hamilton's publishing program is based on a model that offers serious authors a welcome alternative to traditional publishing.

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When a manuscript is accepted at Hamilton Books, the author is offered a contract, which specifies a quantity for pre-publication purchase by the author to share a portion of the up-front production expenses.

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They'll publish anything and charge you to do it.

This is not a good thing.

Keep looking.

UPA's purchase requirement is 100 books, and you have to provide camera-ready copy. I'd suspect that Hamilton's requirements are similar.

UPA/Hamilton are divisions of an established publisher (Rowman & Littlefield), so unlike many other publishers that take money from authors, it's unlikely they'd rip you off--but this is not really a respectable way to get published.

- Victoria

supernegm said:

Hello,
Has anyone dealt with them before? I'm new and know nothing about the trusted agents or publishers.
(Note: Hamilton book is some kind of a publisher related to University press but specialized in the fiction genre.)
Thanks

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You pay them, rather well, in fact, to be published.

I wouldn't.

Hamilton Books

I have an author friend who was given a contract by Hamilton Books 10 days after submission. A red flag went up with me because of the T & C they offered. They wanted him to submit camera ready copy; they offered 0% royalties on the first 500 books sold, 5% on the next 1000, and 7% on all sales after that.

Although they are part of a large organization, Rowman & Littlefield, they hide everything--no web site, no publication of terms & Conditions, etc. I suspect they are a POD publisher who don't have any quality control, get the author to buy the books at "half off" and expect him to do the marketing.

I've not been able to dig up much information about them. Anybody have experience with them?

raffellis said:

I've not been able to dig up much information about them. Anybody have experience with them?

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Unfortuantely, yes. At least it wasn't my book.

I worked for an academic research organization housed within a public university. People who did not know better decided that this was a good publisher to use for a collection of essays on the credit crisis in the US.

For whatever reason, UP of A kept dropping the ball: They would say that there was a problem with an illustration, then after my office would send them the new file and after UP would promise that the the text would be ready for indexing, nothing would happen. My office would call, and call, and leave a message, and e-mail (eventually this was my job), but UP of A wouldn't return any kind of message.

Finally my boss took the nuclear option, as she called it: She e-mailed everyone at the company: HR, the director, the assistant director, and reamed them out for their complete and utter incompetence. UP of A staff apologized like crazy, but here it is, almost a year after the "we're so sorry," and the book, while listed on Amazon.com with a publication date of 12/2011, is not available.

Never made any sense to me since UP of A wasn't going to see any money until my employer bought the required # of copies.

Maybe they're a shell company for something else?