I did it too thanks to PA

Oh... I know Massena! That's about two hollers from here. At least your Mexico is warmer than my Mexico right now.

The next question is exactly what PublishAmerica did that you couldn't have done yourself, at lower cost, by self-publishing?

James D. Macdonald said:

The next question is exactly what PublishAmerica did that you couldn't have done yourself, at lower cost, by self-publishing?

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$1.00 advances?

James D. Macdonald said:

The next question is exactly what PublishAmerica did that you couldn't have done yourself, at lower cost, by self-publishing?

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Even I could answer that. Convert file into form for book printing. Create cover. Obtain/assign ISBN. Mail notices to the list of friends and family. One can argue how well or badly PA does those things, or whether the hidden and back-end costs are too high, but most people--even writers--do not know how to lay out a book or design a cover (nor should they), and ISBNs are not free. Nor is printing/mailing of notices. Someone has to lay out files (margins, section breaks, headers, footers, headings, font selection, TOC, and so on) and design ancillary materials. Subsidy publishers charge hundreds of dollars (if not thousands) for those services. Even a short run of books could easily cost thousands of dollars -- and one then has to arrange his or her own marketing and distribution on top of whatever it has taken to get the file and cover in shape. Want your own block of ISBNs? That starts at a couple hundred dollars plus. Even a one-off ISBN from Lulu (which is optional) is $100 to $150 -- and you have to upload a file that works.

I am no fan of PA, but still have to admit that the attraction for a lot of folks has to be pretty obvious, especially when coupled with the veneer of a "traditional publisher" that wants to "give your book the chance it deserves."

All IMHO.

--Ken

If you're producing the book for your family and friends -- or to have one to hold in your hand -- you don't need an ISBN.

And there's nothing hard at all about creating the PDF ... you can flow your raw wordprocessor file into the wizard at Lulu, and pick one of their stock covers. The wordprocessor I use (WordPerfect) has a print-to-PDF function. (One such PDF is here: http://www.sff.net/people/yog/crackofdeath2b.pdf )

See also http://www.lulu.com/content/132312 and http://www.lulu.com/content/219003 for two other books that I did at zero-point-no cost to myself, and time measured in a few hours. Check the Preview function to see how they look on the inside.

So, aside from the ISBN, I'm not seeing any advantage ... and given the difference in price you make up the cost of buying an ISBN pretty fast.

Don't forget giving up your publishing rights for seven years on the down-side of the PA equation.

Welcome, C.C.

Keep in mind my friend that if you buy any of your own books from PA, you paid to publish.

Having authors buy their own books makes up many times for the cost of publishing.

I'm sure some here could give you the correct figure of cost to PA.

It is said that PA is vanity in reverse. They get you all excited about your book and then you'll spend money to (Hold a lot of them in your hands.)

I was with PA. Bought 1,597.00 dollars worth of books.

There was no way to make my money back.

You can publish your book though Lulu press for free, also. The best part is you keep the rights.

I thought my dream was fulfilled, too, but I found later that it was all smoke and mirrors.

Good luck to you.

I will say that getting the word doc to the .pdf in the proper size took me ten hours to figure out, and a lot of frustration.

Eventually I did find the answer on the Lulu help boards. You have to add a special size into the processor to 'print' to .pdf. I use Primo, which is free and does a pretty good job. Single pages and stuff from 8.5x11 TO the same size are easy cheesy.


Once I figured it out, it was a piece of cake, except that I couldn't get the headers and page numbers to come up. But that might have been my .pdf thingy. And I suggest looking at it in 'print view' or 'book view' or whatever it is in Word, because I had to make a new file when I figured out I needed extra blank pages to make sure things were on certain pages. With a little practice it does become easier. And a little fun too.

James D. Macdonald said:

. . .And there's nothing hard at all about creating the PDF ...
Don't forget giving up your publishing rights for seven years on the down-side of the PA equation.

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A junky file turned into a pdf will be a junky-looking pdf. I addressed manuscript formatting, not conversion from Word to pdf.

As for publishing rights . . . those are completely irrelevant to a manuscript that is not, and never will be, publishable and of which the author only wants a few copies available for friends and family.

At some point, one really does need to temper hatred for PA with an acceptance of aspirations of those who cannot write a publishable manuscript yet have dreams.

IMHO.

--Ken

PA's earned every drop of the hatred around here. We're an amicable bunch by and large.

Manuscript formatting isn't impossible to do. There are programs, and you can always just ask people for help. It's not worth the barrel of snakes that PublishAmerica rapidly becomes. Becomes mind you. At first, it's all peaches and cream. It's like an abusive marriage.

PeeDee said:

Could be worse.

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Ahem... WHAT is that supposed to mean?!?

It's cool to finally see someone from Mexico (the real one ) on these boards. Welcome, CC!! I hope you'll enjoy your stay!!

ResearchGuy said:

At some point, one really does need to temper hatred for PA with an acceptance of aspirations of those who cannot write a publishable manuscript yet have dreams.

IMHO.

--Ken

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Hear, hear! Also, the fiction market in particular - even for those who are talented / skilled / working at it - is still very tough. Try looking at this, written by Jim Cypher, an experienced agent:

http://pages.prodigy.net/jimcypher/fiction.htm

The formatting of a Word file dumped through a .pdf conversion utility isn't noticably worse than the formatting of most PA books. I didn't spend a whole heckuva lot of time formatting any of the examples I posted above.

If it's just for family and friends ...

We didn't address whether the book was legitimately publishable -- only that the author's intention was to give a few copies to his friends.

Let's take the example of Richard Paul Evans' The Christmas Box. (Not typical, I know.) Evans had no intention of selling the book. He printed a dozen copies quite literally at Kinko's to use as Christmas presents. It was the fact that he kept the printing rights that allowed everything else to follow.

ccomer said:

I know lots of you are against PA. But it doesn't matter to me. And I appreciate your views. I've heard them all. But I reached my goal thanks to PA. My book is being published. I accomplished my one last dream. I get to hold my work in my hands in book form. I get to see my name on that book. that is all I have ever wanted since I started this venture 10yrs ago. I've been on many adventures in my life. I have won many body building contest. I have survived cancer three times. But this tops it all.
Clea

www.freewebs.com/ccomer

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If you're sincerely happy than I'm happy for you. Welcome to AW and I hope you stick around.

PeeDee said:

. . . Manuscript formatting isn't impossible to do. There are programs, and you can always just ask people for help. It's not worth the barrel of snakes that PublishAmerica rapidly becomes. Becomes mind you. At first, it's all peaches and cream. It's like an abusive marriage.

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Fair warning: this rambles and you are not going to like its content. Don't read it. If you read it anyway, do not bitch at me about it.

Not at all impossible. During more than a decade of preparing fully-formatted camera-ready copy in Word in an office that publishes and distributes public policy reports, I learned the tricks and became the resource for the fine points for the secretaries in my office. Now I include those services as part of freelance technical editing. I have never even heard of a program that will in any way automate the use of heading styles, paragraph styles, font selection, fine-tuning of spacing, cross-references, headers, footers, pagination, section breaks and use of sections--let alone copyediting and proof reading (not to mention the more demanding forms of editing or the overall design of a book). All of that stuff has to be learned and done by hand, although if one uses headings and captions right, Word will happily create tables of contents, tables of figures, tables of tables, and so on. Word will even create an index if one has appropriately marked everything that is to be indexed. Even in an office full of professional researchers and writers, I encountered few who even knew how to use headings properly, let alone the other formatting features of Word.

Folks with experience and expertise can make short work of formatting and design that would completely flummox an inexperienced amateur, who might not even know what the right questions are, let alone the answers. (Likewise, folks with experience and expertise can perform oil changes, brake jobs, tuneups, and transmission servicing. Some folks do that sort of thing for themselves. Most take their vehicles to an auto service shop rather than learn how to do those tasks and acquire the necessary tools.)

Folks are free to ask me for help -- at $75/hour (less a 20% discount for folks with suitable referrals or affiliations). "Asking" folks with expertise usually involves paying. Else, it involves outright imposition, the expectation of getting free professional services.

Bear with me while I share some thoughts, ok? Feel very free to NOT read the following, though.

For those who have no prayer of a commercially publishable manuscript and who really do not care that PA is not real publishing, its shortcomings and even outright deceptions are irrelevant. How else to explain the novelist who has multiple books with PA, is entirely satisfied with PA after YEARS, and recruits other writers to PA?

I am approaching the point where I would be inclined to refer other equally unpromising but hopeful writers to PA rather than to inflict on them the frustration, disappointment, and likely embarrassment of attempting to secure an agent or gain interest from a commercial publisher. I hope never to actually reach that point (I am not quite that cynical yet), but have to recognize that in steering hopelessly unpublishable writers away from PA I take on a sort of moral responsibility to help them find an alternative. I do not have the time for that and it is an unwanted burden.

This is a real dilemma, folks. There are no easy answers when face-to-face with real people--people who typically cannot craft a query letter or book proposal and who have absolutely no clue about how to find an even theoretically appropriate agent or publisher. If I tell them to write a proper query letter, I fear that I am taking on a responsibility to help them WRITE such a letter on behalf of a manuscript that is not and never will be publishable, even if it might have a modest local audience of the author's friends and family.

Try to put this in personal terms. Jane Doe, writing in her 60s or 70s
(and hence not in a position to go back to Square One and study writing), bubbles that she has submitted to PA her manuscript, which you know to be incapable of being brought to publishable standards, and that PA has sent an acceptance. Do you recommend that she instead pitch her unpublishable, unfixable manuscript to legitimate agents and commercial publishers, knowing full well that they will throw her work back at her or toss it in the trash? Do you even tell her how bad her writing is? Do you offer to help her craft a query letter for her unpublishable manuscript anyway? Do you offer to edit her manuscript into some semblance of readability (knowing that it is probably an impossible task and a certain time sink)? Do you offer to do that for free? Do you refer her to an outright subsidy publisher like iUniverse? Do you tell her to forget it, to stick the manuscript in a drawer and find another interest? Or do you mumble congratulations and let it alone?

Seriously. Think about it. These are not merely hypothetical questions if you find yourself in the company of such writers.

I will probably get trashed here for my views, despite the bold warning at the top, but they reflect wrestling with real situations and trying to figure out what is right. It is a lot easier to deal with such matters in the abstract than face-to-face with a real person. Somewhere there is a line one should not cross between raining on someone else's parade and peeing on his sandwich. One might have to settle for mentioning that the content of the sandwich is perhaps not actually green cheese, but rather green balogna, and that caution might therefore be appropriate. But ultimately, the sandwichee, so to speak, has to make the decision. Maybe spoiled balogna is their best option.

--Ken

I said it to Ken in rep points, but I'll say it here. I have no problem with the business model of PA. None. I agree on many of his points. It has its place, surely, just as vanity publishing has its place.

I have problems with...other... things when it comes to that particular business.

And I agree that if the author is happy with the way things turned out, there's nothing wrong with it. It's the unhappy ones that get the short end. And invariably they're unhappy because there were 'miscommunications' between them and their publisher. (I hope you all know what I mean when I say that.)

I'm not going to trash you, Ken. I'm not going to agree with you either, but I'll leave it at that and remember why I normally stay out of the B&B area of the forums as religiously as I avoid the TIO area.

I understand your dilemma, Ken, and it is an honest one.

ResearchGuy said:

At some point, one really does need to temper hatred for PA with an acceptance of aspirations of those who cannot write a publishable manuscript yet have dreams.--Ken

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Hatred for PA and acceptance of new PA authors are not mutually exclusive. With the exception of a very few PAvidians, this forum supports PA authors who have taken the plunge before testing the waters. *Hatred* for PA is too mild a description. Add loathing, disgust, revulsion and abhorrence for starters. IMO.

James D. Macdonald said:

The formatting of a Word file dumped through a .pdf conversion utility isn't noticably worse than the formatting of most PA books.

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That's how PA does it. Anyone with some basic formatting skills can learn to do it and those skills aren't rocket science either.

Bienvenido.

In reply to Ken.

I personally point them to alternatives, like Lulu and the like. I tell them how hard it is to get published, what to expect from publishers, I point them to various threads that explain the process. I urge them to post their work in the SYW section so they can get a gauge on their writing. If they aren't willing to accept any form of criticism, I've done my part, what they do with their lives from there is their own.

If they are willing, I try to help as much as I can, point them in the right direction, as right as I can. I urge them to improve their weaknesses, cheer them on and mostly be their friend. If they want a book to hold in their hand and nothing else they generally go to lulu. If they want a career they work at it. If they aren't serious about it, nothing encouragement, or pushing them down in the mud will change that.

But I don't see how pretending scam companies aren't scams helps anyone. We state the facts, we save whom we can, we help whom we can, and that's all anyone can do.

ETA: I strongly believe that most people who are beyond helping have put themselves in that position.

Thank you.

I Take Exception...

“Miscommunication between the author and their publisher..”

Tracy and I were strangers and met on the old PublishAmerica Board. When we became friends and I eventually moved in with her in South Dakota - We found that we had more in common than being an author and being Printed by PublishAmerica.

We found is that they did not live up to their part of what they had promised to do on their website. That is what drew me to submit my memoirs to them in the first place. Same with Tracy Sutterer. Plus, their complicity in the H.B. Death Hoax that, at the time, broke everyone‘s heart on that board. H.B. tried to recruit Tracy in his hoax - but settled on Mark Wurtz to carry out his plan.

Miranda Prather virtually admitted to me on the telephone, that they fully endorsed H.B.’s Death Hoax plan, by saying: “ He was just trying to kill off his pen-name.” That was the last straw. Tracy and I began a long fought War of e-mails to PublishAmerica, and we received their pre-paste & cut replys.

Finally, after one year of confrontations and their arbitration loss to Dolan, Tracy was released first - Then, after a few months after my heart attack - I was finally released.

There was no miscommunication between us and PublishAmerica. They flat out lied. Want to talk about their ridiculous return policy? Huh? I could write a nice short story about that joke, too.

I am happy that you realized your dream to be published. Tracy & I had the same dream too. However, PublishAmerica’s business plan is to sell books to the author, their family & friends. Their business plan does not include the general public. The Trade paperback books that they produce are so over priced, it is ridiculous, and their return policy is a far flung attempt to pacify their critics. They are not a “Traditional Publishing Company,” a phrase that Clopper coined.

It was not my plan to insult you on this thread. My desire was to open your eyes & give you a little history lesson. If I have indeed hurt your feelings - I apologize in advance for doing so.

Argile Stox - Proud Ex-PublishAmerica Author (with a completely intact ego and my health is finally getting back to normal.)

I don't know how relevant this is, but I'm fairly technologically incompetent. I use my laptop as a glorified typewriter, and about the only thing I like about Word is the Comments feature.
I managed, following the Lulu guidelines, to turn my Word doc into an oddly-formatted (square) small book with a table of contents (done by hand, because I couldn't get Word to paginate the way I wanted--see above about my incompetence). Uploading the text was dead easy. I struggled with uploading the cover pictures, but that was more likely my connection and impatience than lulu. And after about a half-hour, it was done.
I can't swear that it all worked until my sample copy arrives, but certainly the process wasn't difficult, even for me.
And I still have the rights, which is good because I'd like eventually to work the story up into something full-length and submit it for real.

I do agree with Ken that there are people who are better served by not seeking commercial publication. I agree whole-heartedly. I am well served by not seeking a career as a singer. Talents and abilities vary.
I'm just wondering whether he isn't setting up a false dilemma of sorts in suggesting that PA as the primary alternative to commercial publishing?
I may be misreading him, for which I apologise, but if he is suggesting that PA is a valid alternative because it offers skilled formatting, of the level he can provide, I'm dubious. Nothing I've read about PA suggests that its staff is well-trained or stays long enough to gain real experience.
-Barbara

Argile,
I know the history. I have to be careful what I say here, however. I guess YOU missed that part.

I LOVE computers, so I'm pretty good at manuscript formatting. I published a book of poems through lulu.com, and I like it better than PA because they are more upfront about the costs, the distribution, and the whole yard. I decided to go with lulu because traditional publishers normally do not accept poetry, but I had enough poems for a manuscript.

I have also finished a novel and I am trying to get it published with a traditional publisher--Zebra Books is interested in seeing a partial of my manuscript, I would much rather go with Zebra than PA any day. Even if Zebra rejects me, I am glad that I was able to get an Editor to look at my novel, someone who actually read the whole thing before rejecting it or accepting it. I don't mind waiting to find a good publisher, because I know that eventually get published. Patience is an important craft, with writing, publishing, or anything else you have to deal with in life.

I don't mind the authors who go with PA, but I personally would not sign a contract with a publisher that I am not familiar with. No offense to anyone who published with PA, of course. If you like them, that's great.

Apryl