Re: "the cover of the book doesn't affect sales"
...the cover of the book doesn’t affect sales.
In the case of PA books, the covers really don't affect sales -- sales aren't made (and aren't intended to be made) to strangers looking at the books on bookstore shelves.
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Now, I mentioned four kinds of PA authors. They are:
1) The author who wants a few copies of his book typeset and bound. These can be for gifts -- mom's poetry. Or because it's more convenient than a stack of manuscript pages -- granddad's memoires. Or people who are just looking to sell books face-to-face and hand-to-hand -- the poet who wants to sell copies after his readings; the inspirational speaker who wants to sell copies from the back of the hall after her lecture -- and wants to have a steady supply without having to fill the garage with cartons of books. For these people, PA probably isn't a bad choice.
2) The person who wants to be an author as a Fantasy Role-Playing Game. They get an advance! They can get their picture in the paper! They can arrange a signing, and sit for an hour at a table in a bookstore! They're as much authors as Civil War recreationists are soldiers. But as hobbies go it's cheaper than photography and safer than sky diving, and only annoys the random bookstore owner. Probably not a bad deal for them, either.
3) The people who think that this was real publishing; they tried, it didn't work. Sigh. Too bad. These are the ones who honestly believe that PA is genuine publishing; they believe that most authors don't get bookstore distribution, they believe that authors are expected to do all the promotion themselves, they believe that editors only check for misspellings. They honestly believe that this is what publishing is like (perhaps with exceptions for celebrities) from Random House right the way down.
They're disappointed, but they aren't anti-PA; they're quiet in their disappointment. Perhaps they wrote a dandy book. Perhaps their current book wasn't too great (even if PA told them that it was publishable and selected and all) but their next one might have been, if they'd kept on writing. Even if they do keep on writing, they might not submit the next one, because who needs the hassle? Maybe they wrote to ask, and got one of those deliberately nasty "don't take that tone with us" blow-off letters.
For these people, PublishAmerica is a bad choice. They've been harmed, but we're not going to hear from them.
4) The fourth group are the ones who believed that PublishAmerica was a real publisher. They expected PA to act like a publisher. When they discover that PublishAmerica is to publishing what a mud pie is to an apple pie -- they get perturbed. These are the ones who are vocal. They wanted readers. They wanted a career. And they got zilch. For these people too, PublishAmerica was a bad idea. They're the ones who are hollering "Scam!" and you know something? They have a point.
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One of the things you keep hearing from PA is that if you complain that real publishers will know you're a whiner and won't even look at your next manuscript. This is a lie. It's designed to shut people up. The people who they're trying to shut up are in categories three and four.
Your big PA boosters are in categories one and two.
Thing is -- PA could go completely honest and not lose the Category One and Two people. Which means, to me, that an awful lot of their money comes from Category Three and Four folks.
