Authors market
There was a paragraph on that website that got me thinking.
"If advertising would launch a bestseller, they would spend the money in a heartbeat. Imagine, if it were only that simple, who would not happily spend a few thousand dollars on ads if it would bring hundreds of thousands in return?"
I could be wrong, but isn't this what PA is doing with the NYT ad?
Something else that makes me wonder.
"First books are rarely bought because the story catches on. They are bought because there is something about the author that fascinates the buyer."
How does this explain authors like Bentley Little who are very reclusive and hardly ever give interviews or let the world see him? Plus, what was so special about Stephen King? He didn't stand out, he was just an English teacher. His book stood out, not him. What about J.K. Rowling? What was so special about her? She was a single mother, that's it. Her book stood out, not her.
And this statement, which they say over and over, really made me laugh.
"Stop being a writer, and become a salesman."
Are they telling you stop writing and become a salesman? Now why would they do this? They want you to push the book you have out and make them money. If we spend all of our time trying to promote our book we will not have time to write another, but they don't care do they?
"Almost 18 percent of all books are sold through book clubs,"
Well, if they know this then why didn't they pick up the idea that I, and other PA authors, sent them. We had everything worked out for them already. A book club, even one just for PA authors and their family and friends, would make PA a lot of money.
" Author Stephen King pioneered the technology by selfpublishing his "Riding the Bullet"in e-format a few years ago, and sold a few hundred thousand copies, but this has remained an isolated incident, and not a very indicative one. After all, there is only one Stephen King and, moreover, the "book" counted no more than 66 pages. The average fiction book counts 225 pages."
I guess they forgot his "The Plant" which was also an ebook. Though not finished, it is a bit longer than 66 pages. They aren't one to tell the whole truth though are they?
"Even the staunchest tree huggers who want to write a book, for example about protecting the environment, would prefer to see it in print."
Tree huggers? Not very PC of them.
" Do they actually sell? No, they don't, not by the thousands, and generally not even by the hundreds. People don't like reading e-books the same way they like reading printed books," "Trade paperbacks have replaced the vast majority of first hardcover editions, and e-book releases are now replacing what used to be the cheap paperback edition."
Well, they say ebooks don't sell, but then turn around and say that ebooks are replacing cheap paperback editions. If ebooks didn't sell then why would they be replacing paperback editions? Do they sell or not? As for trade paperbacks replacing hardcover? I don't think so. You still see a lot more hardcover books than you do trade. Most new authors start out as mass market and if the author catches on their next book will be made available in hardback.
"Some writers have built a name for themselves by writing spin-offs of hugely popular movies, such as Star Trek, after all the characters and story parameters had been handed to them on a silver plate by the story owners who licensed the merchandising rights to a publisher. It requires some talent, but not too much, to write such a book."
This is basically a slap in the face, not only to Crispin but to Friedman, Mack, Ward, Shatner, Greenburg, Krauss and Golden and any other Trek writer out there. But I guess these people are not good writers, just because PA says so.:rollin
"There are some others who, particularly in the field of Fantasy, rewrite all but everything under the sun that has already been written before. They rummage through books on mythology, steal a character here, borrow a plot line there, throw in a wizard from King Arthur, and literally loot all the mythologies ever written."
Isn't there a saying in the literary world that goes something like this--'every story has already been told, there is just variations of those.'
"In the book industry, being published as an e-book writer amounts to not being published at all."
In the book industry, being published by PA is not being published at all.
"It happens, and alarmingly it happens more and more. Generally not to POD books, though. When books come apart, it is usually an offset product. Not only that, it is usually a book from a major publishing house, such as Warner, HarperCollins, TOR, Simon&Schuster, Little Brown, St. Martin's, and the blacklist also includes the entire Harry Potter series by Scholastic."
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have only had two books fall apart on me. One was used and about 10 years old, the other had pictures in the front of the book and one of them fell out. Besides those two, this has never been a problem for me. I have heard of PA authors getting an order of books that were falling apart, so this goes to show that it isn't just a problem for print run books. Doesn't the publishers mentioned refund your money or give you another book if this happens? Will PA do that?
A few people had told me to be careful about the fake mss I sent to PA. Saying they could sue me for making them lose money by keeping authors away from them. Well, this statement, from Authorsmarket could be used against them by the so called big publishers.
"There is a variety of options for you. First of all, check out one of those publishers listings. Your local library carries them. Focus on finding very small publishers only."
Here they are telling authors to only submit to small publishers and not the big ones. This could keep people away from the big boys and cause them to lose money, so the big publishers should sue them for making them lose money.
Kevin
g or at least :gone avoid PA. I remember that when that site first went up, someone on PA's boards gave it a glowing review, and at least one of PublishAmerica's SF and fantasy writers read that site and was just a ... bit... offended.