PublishAmerica Management

PVish · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
So today I inquired about advertizing here: http://www.eagleinteractive.com/contactus.htm because of an email I received advertizing Newt's latest book. I may also try http://magazine.townhall.com/Contact.aspx the problem being I don't have money to advertize and PA isn't helping by overcharging, keeping most of it, and paying only bi-yearly.

Because your book isn't readily available, it would do little good to have it advertised—especially if you had to pay to have it advertised.

FWIW, I don't buy books promoted in spam-emails. I will, however, consider a book a friend mentions in a personal email—if I can pick up the book in Barnes & Noble and look at it, or see inside the book on Amazon.com.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

benbradley said:
If you don't believe this, have a friend order your book. PAY them to order it. See how long it takes them to get the book, if they ever do.

Done. Ordered Sept. 21-22 arrived Oct. 28, about 5.5 weeks. Not Print On Demand, more like Print A Month After Demand (PAMAD).

benbradley said:
If it brings you around to what everyone else knows and is trying to tell you in this thread, it will be money well spent. It will also save other posters here from hitting their heads against a brick wall.

Please. Think of your fellow posters.

I now know the PA service is way less than desired with no advertizing, slow printing, and high prices, just a place to park your book while you do something else possibly including write a better one, self advertizing, or a day job.

Many authors fail miserably at self advertizing. Take a lesson from "The Apprentice" nobody wins many sales by chasing customers on the street. You have to partner with a big event promotion. In publishing the book signing isn't enough, you have to do better. The best is you already have name fame then do a media blitz like President Bush is doing for his book. You have to do somewhere in between otherwise just consider it a hobby, buy some to give to your friends, and have fun.

Many of the books PA publishes aren't that good so would be rejected by agents and non-agent publishers, so it's the best the authors can get. If you do find an agent who offers an advance, $299 isn't too much to pay to get free of PA. But then I guess agents may prefer to consider a virgin book. Some agents cater to small niche publishers which in some cases authors could do on their own.

You can go to PA to get your book listed on Amazon but not one will sell without advertizing. For the small level of sales most PA books have, most PA authors would be just as well off to write on a forum or blog and forget publishing or print it yourself to give away. Making a living wage requires a lot more work than PA provides.

Anything else that fellow posters should know?

Calla Lily · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
Anything else that fellow posters should know?

Yes. This:

Kirk Fraser said:
Many authors fail miserably at self advertizing. Take a lesson from "The Apprentice" nobody wins many sales by chasing customers on the street. You have to partner with a big event promotion. In publishing the book signing isn't enough, you have to do better. The best is you already have name fame then do a media blitz like President Bush is doing for his book. You have to do somewhere in between otherwise just consider it a hobby, buy some to give to your friends, and have fun.

Many of the books PA publishes aren't that good so would be rejected by agents and non-agent publishers, so it's the best the authors can get. If you do find an agent who offers an advance, $299 isn't too much to pay to get free of PA. But then I guess agents may prefer to consider a virgin book. Some agents cater to small niche publishers which in some cases authors could do on their own.

I am only one of many AWers who has no name, no connections no platform, and most emphatically do NOT consider that writing is a hobby. I queried my agent as just another writer, with the query letter and the first chapter.

I am not buying my books to give to anyone. My publisher is giving me a box of my book to use as blog giveaways, contest prizes, etc. they are already marketing my book; I already have pre-orders on Amaz0n and B&N (that I know of). My long-term goal is to keep making more money at writing by gathering a fan base--of total strangers--as I write more books in this series.

IOW, writing is my profession. I am treating it as such. The Day Job is here so I can pay the bills and keep my mind free to write.

A writer doesn not need to be "known". A writer needs to write a commercially marketable book. The getting knows part happens later.

/soapbox

Unimportant · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
Done. Ordered Sept. 21-22 arrived Oct. 28, about 5.5 weeks. Not Print On Demand, more like Print A Month After Demand (PAMAD).

Ergo, all the advertising in the world will do no good. If readers want to buy the book, they expect to receive it promptly.

Kirk Fraser said:
Many authors fail miserably at self advertizing. Take a lesson from "The Apprentice"

A book is not a TV show. Take a lesson from the thousands of books published each year. Which ones do readers buy? The ones that publishers get into bookstores and into the hands of readers. Those are the publishers you want to publish with. John Grisham and Danielle Steele and JK Rowling didn't have name fame or a media blitz. They had good books that were published by commercial presses.

Kirk Fraser said:
Many of the books PA publishes aren't that good so would be rejected by agents and non-agent publishers, so it's the best the authors can get.

If those books would be rejected by agents and commercial presses, and therefore aren't good enough to appeal to readers, what's the point of publishing them at all? However, under no circumstances is PA the best any author can get. Any author can go with Lulu or CreateSpace for a lot less money and grief.

Kirk Fraser said:
Anything else that fellow posters should know?

Yes. Let's go back to "Many of the books PA publishes aren't that good." Why is that? It's because writing a good book is damned hard work. Learning the craft of writing is damned hard work. Ask any of the authors here -- Stacia Kane, Victoria Strauss, eqb -- how long it took to get them to get their writing to a level that was "good enough" for commercial presses. How many books they wrote and trunked before their work was good enough to get them a literary agent. How many hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of words of crap they had to write before they produced prose that was good enough for commercial publication.

I wrote a book is not the same as I wrote a book that readers will want to pay money for. If commercial presses and literary agents who specialise in your genre are sending you nothing but form rejections, the most likely explanation is that your book isn't well written.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

Publish America is better than CreateSpace for the low income writer. CreateSpace wants $700 up front then will sell you copies at $3 each. A better price per copy but that $700 can be a lot more than one has. Unfamiliar with Lulu.

As for my writing quality, read the sample chapter at http://congressionalbiblestudy.org before you opine, please.

Unimportant · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk, you asked what else fellow posters should know. I gave my suggestions, based on my own experience and my knowledge of the publishing industry. Ignore them or not, as you choose, but it's unrealistic to retrospectively require I read your work before I make those suggestions.

For fellow posters: AW has an entire subforum dedicated to self publishing: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=47 You can find a lot of useful info there.

Also for fellow posters: AW has a password-protected "Share Your Work" section where you can post your writing and receive critiques and feedback from fellow writers. Most people find it very helpful.

ResearchGuy · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
Publish America is better than CreateSpace for the low income writer. . . . .

Given PA's continuing descent from the absurd to the obscene, it is hard to see where it could ever be a rational choice for anyone.

--Ken

izanobu · Nov 10, 2010

Uh, Createspace is free unless you want the premium service... then it's 39 dollars per book plus 5 dollars a year. That gets you onto amazon and into their library distribution as well as to other places. Oh, and you keep all your own rights and can set your own prices etc.

Not sure how that compares even a little with the evil that is PA

Silver King · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
...As for my writing quality, read the sample chapter at http://congressionalbiblestudy.org before you opine, please.

Kirk, I'd suggest you stop advertising that site before it appears you are spamming this forum. You've already done so five times in the space of sixteen posts, far more than is generally acceptable.

kullervo · Nov 10, 2010

And you misspelled the first word in your sample chapter.

Hey, at least I clicked.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

izanobu said:
Uh, Createspace is free unless you want the premium service... then it's 39 dollars per book plus 5 dollars a year. That gets you onto amazon and into their library distribution as well as to other places. Oh, and you keep all your own rights and can set your own prices etc.

Not sure how that compares even a little with the evil that is PA

Wrong context. That may apply to ebooks but not paper. Createspace phoned me and gave the $700 / $3 figures.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

kullervo said:
And you misspelled the first word in your sample chapter.

Hey, at least I clicked.

Wrong. Try a different spell checker.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

ResearchGuy said:
Given PA's continuing descent from the absurd to the obscene, it is hard to see where it could ever be a rational choice for anyone.

--Ken

Hard to see? Then try giving all your money away and look around from that perspective.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 10, 2010

Unimportant said:
Ergo, all the advertising in the world will do no good. If readers want to buy the book, they expect to receive it promptly.

Unfounded opinion.

Unimportant said:
I wrote a book is not the same as I wrote a book that readers will want to pay money for. If commercial presses and literary agents who specialise in your genre are sending you nothing but form rejections, the most likely explanation is that your book isn't well written.

Your insult indicates your opinion isn't well thought through or you lack experience in dealing with the truth which many always reject. For example you probably are unaware of the fact that 25% of women lie about rape as proven by DNA tests which can be wrong 20% of the time and 90% of the nation's prisoners are there with no physical evidence against them. If injustice happens in courts, it can certainly happen with publishers, making PA's open door policy refreshing.

Unimportant said:
Ignore them or not, as you choose, but it's unrealistic to retrospectively require I read your work before I make those suggestions.

You could at the time have returned to erase your presumptive insult.

CatSlave · Nov 10, 2010

Well, this thread seems to be deteriorating nicely.

benbradley · Nov 10, 2010

I bettter pop some up before the curtains close...

:popcorn:

izanobu · Nov 10, 2010

Kirk, it is for paper books, actually. Createspace charges nothing or 39 dollars per book. Just look at the website.

And people here are trying to give you good advice and constructive help.

Unimportant · Nov 11, 2010

Time to post the link to Slushkiller, I reckon.

Adding: And the link to Strunk & White. They cover punctuation for dependent clauses quite nicely.

Marian Perera · Nov 11, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
If injustice happens in courts, it can certainly happen with publishers, making PA's open door policy refreshing.

In that case, continue to send your work to PA and best of luck.

Momento Mori · Nov 11, 2010

Kirk Fraser:
If you do find an agent who offers an advance, $299 isn't too much to pay to get free of PA.

Agents don't offer the advance. It's commercial publishers who offer an advance and the agent takes commission from the amount paid.

If you want to pay $299 to get your book back then that's up to you. The problem though is that even if you get the rights back you have lost first publishing rights in your book. That therefore means that it is going to be very difficult to find a commercial publisher who would be willing to publish it. In those rare situations where previously self published books have been picked up by commercial publishers (e.g. THE SHACK, ERAGON) it's because the self published sales figures have been sufficiently high for the commercial publisher to decide that it's worth the commercial risk as there's a market for it.

Kirk Fraser:
Publish America is better than CreateSpace for the low income writer. CreateSpace wants $700 up front then will sell you copies at $3 each. A better price per copy but that $700 can be a lot more than one has. Unfamiliar with Lulu.

Except that PA keeps all your publishing rights for 7 years (including audio, translation, subsidiary and electronic book rights) and takes 90% of the total for every book sold on their site, leaving you with having to buy books and sell on at a profit to make any money. At least with Lulu you can decide what you're going to do with the book, set the price yourself and keep 80% of the monies earned per copy sold.

Kirk Fraser:
Unfounded opinion.

It's an unfounded opinion that people who order books expect to receive them quickly? Okay then ...

Kirk Fraser:
Your insult indicates your opinion isn't well thought through or you lack experience in dealing with the truth which many always reject.

You sent your book to over 100 publishers and got rejections from all of them. That could be for a number of reasons:

1. you didn't research the publishers with sufficient thoroughness and so were submitting to some who did not take Christian material of the type you are writing.

2. you did not comply with the submission requirements.

3. your query letter was not sufficiently enticing to make it through the first round of review.

4. your opening chapters were not tightly enough written to make it through the first round of review.

5. the publishers had bought similar work to yours for their forthcoming slots and so did not have space for your work.

6. your book is not good enough to be published.

7. your book is currently something that the market isn't ready for, but may be in future.

Now, it might not be nice to hear any of that (and it's certainly easier to think that your book is great and it's that people aren't ready to hear your message) but any or all of those reasons could apply.

Regardless of the reason though, the fact that you have published it through PA means that your first publishing rights have gone and the chances of you being able to do anything with it other than self-publishing are very low.

You can accept that or not but snarling at people for telling you something you're not ready for face doesn't make the situation go away.

Kirk Fraser:
For example you probably are unaware of the fact that 25% of women lie about rape as proven by DNA tests which can be wrong 20% of the time and 90% of the nation's prisoners are there with no physical evidence against them. If injustice happens in courts, it can certainly happen with publishers, making PA's open door policy refreshing.

Well done. Equating PA with a falsely accused rapist is always going to win you friends and influence thinking. What I will say about this frankly ridiculous and offensive statement is that your conclusion that 25% of women lie about rape because 90% of the US's prisoners have no physical evidence against them shows wooly thinking and flawed logic. The fact that a man has been imprisoned without physical evidence may suggest that he did not commit the crime, but it does not automatically lead to the conclusion that no crime was committed.

Back to the subject though, if you find PA's open door policy so "refreshing" then by all means stay with them and good luck with it.

However, the fact that you seem to be convincing yourself that it's best to stay with PA does not mean that there is any "injustice" in the comments made here and elsewhere about the company's existence as a vanity publisher that does little for its authors other than make money from them.

MM

Christine N. · Nov 11, 2010

a) I think 'archaeological' is one of those words that is also accepted without the extra 'a'. Two different programs allowed the spelling either way. *shrug*

b) 100 publishers, usually, is a benchmark that you need to go back to the manuscript. Hey, I've been rejected on the current ms. making the rounds for reasons ranging from "not right for our list", "didn't love the voice", "didn't like the alternating POV" (who was the only one who said that, everyone else including beta readers liked it), "not for me/not my type of story", to "normally this would be right up my alley, but I have one just like this on my list already" (THAT'S a bummer, let me tell you).

BUT

The entire ms is also with two editors (for usually closed houses; I met the editors at a conference and had permission to submit) and I got a full request from an agent. So there's SOMETHING there, but you see the small percentage of return. If it had been rejection all the way across the board, I would have gone back to the ms for another go round. As it is, I already want to change something in it, nothing major, but I will wait until I hear back from all interested parties.

It's possible you're not submitting to the right markets. Happens ALL the time. Like I said before, perhaps your query needs tweaking.

Controversial books are published ALL THE TIME. If you've gotten 100 rejections, something YOU are doing is not getting their attention - query letter, improper market, or yes, the writing itself.

Kirk Fraser · Nov 11, 2010

Momento Mori said:
It's an unfounded opinion that people who order books expect to receive them quickly? Okay then ...

Taking a quote out of context isn't a sign your analysis is accurate. If you want to learn to properly parse truthfully, you should read both sentences I quoted. The first said all the advertizing in the world would do no good. That is false on the face of it. The second sentence that people who order books expect to receive them quickly is plausible so maybe I ought to change my buy link to Amazon so they can provide faster service. But PA's 6 weeks although very slow isn't so slow as to be a contract breaker.

Momento Mori said:
Well done. Equating PA with a falsely accused rapist is always going to win you friends and influence thinking. What I will say about this frankly ridiculous and offensive statement is that your conclusion that 25% of women lie about rape because 90% of the US's prisoners have no physical evidence against them shows wooly thinking and flawed logic. The fact that a man has been imprisoned without physical evidence may suggest that he did not commit the crime, but it does not automatically lead to the conclusion that no crime was committed.

Hmm, perhaps you need to return to grade school for a few lessons on reading. No reader of average or better skills would think I was equating PA with anything in that statement. I was equating the 100+ rejection editors with unjust courts, filled with unjust judges and gullible juries easily swayed by DA vaudeville acts because of their failure to realize the State is just as likely to lie as the defense. Trusting the state puts more innocents behind bars than criminals.

Interpreting that, most Christian publishers are unjust courts because they are catering to an audience of Rev. 17:5 prostituted churches instead of to the furtherance of Truth. And that I believe contributed to most of my rejections ON MY FIRST BOOK (a decade ago), NOT MY CURRENT BOOK while other considerations like already having a similar product were involved in a minority of the rejections.

Momento Mori said:
However, the fact that you seem to be convincing yourself that it's best to
stay with PA does not mean that there is any "injustice" in the comments made here and elsewhere about the company's existence as a vanity publisher that does little for its authors other than make money from them.

All publishers exist to make money from their authors. It's a matter of how much they do and what they do to earn their money. PA does almost nothing without subsidies in the form of author purchases and what little they do is sometimes aggrivating, slow, and expensive. Other publishers invest more time and money in books they think will win a market but reject many books, some good ones, and some just because they are too successful on existing authors so they can afford to ignore new authors.

Marian Perera · Nov 11, 2010

Kirk Fraser said:
All publishers exist to make money from their authors.

The question is, are they making money through selling your books or through opening your wallet?

I prefer the former, but if you can handle the latter it's your choice.

Other publishers invest more time and money in books they think will win a market but reject many books, some good ones

Just curious - have you ever walked into a bookstore and bought every single book on the shelves?

If you haven't done this, weren't you rejecting many books, some good ones?

DaveKuzminski · Nov 11, 2010

Hmmm, my publishers don't exist to make money from me. Each of them make it from their customers who happen to be among the reading and purchasing public. So far, I've only received money from my publishers. So, where did you get that false premise since I've already disproved it?

Kirk Fraser · Nov 11, 2010

Christine N. said:
b) 100 publishers, usually, is a benchmark that you need to go back to the manuscript. Hey, I've been rejected on the current ms. making the rounds for reasons ranging from "not right for our list", "didn't love the voice", "didn't like the alternating POV" (who was the only one who said that, everyone else including beta readers liked it), "not for me/not my type of story", to "normally this would be right up my alley, but I have one just like this on my list already" (THAT'S a bummer, let me tell you).

BUT

The entire ms is also with two editors (for usually closed houses; I met the editors at a conference and had permission to submit) and I got a full request from an agent. So there's SOMETHING there, but you see the small percentage of return. If it had been rejection all the way across the board, I would have gone back to the ms for another go round. As it is, I already want to change something in it, nothing major, but I will wait until I hear back from all interested parties.

Congratulations! That conference submission is something more than a book signing like I was talking about.

Christine N. said:
Controversial books are published ALL THE TIME. If you've gotten 100 rejections, something YOU are doing is not getting their attention - query letter, improper market, or yes, the writing itself.

Again the rejections were on my first book a decade ago. The current book can be seen in part as a complete rewrite and so far it hasn't been rejected. I have emailed one agent about it who says he takes two weeks to respond so I'll either have a better than PA acceptance or rejection soon.

Another idea though is to just forget writing on paper and start writing on hearts. I hope to get a group of kids who want to learn to do church like Jesus did (without a collection plate) by memorizing a Gospel and doing what it says as much as possible. That will be better.

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