The Old Neverending PublishAmerica Thread (Publish America)

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DaveKuzminski

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A recent response from a PA employee indicates that all is not well inside PA land offices. The return policy was instituted primarily in order to foster sales by those unfamiliar with PA's past behavior or still too trusting of PA. As well, there are now ten names of individuals whom Larry and Willem hate rather than the eight of yore. Those names are: Jenna Glatzer, Anne Crispin, Dave Kuzminski, Dee Power, Ed Williams, Victoria Strauss, Rebecca Easton, Lynn Price, C.E. Petit, and James Macdonald.

Speaking for myself, I revel in their hatred since that means I'm having some effect upon their operations by striving to help their authors and others get a fair deal. Between their hatred and the thanks I have received from many writers, I consider what I've accomplished so far to be worthwhile and important even though my portion has been but a small part of the overall effort.
 

Sparhawk

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I would think that the "Returns" policy is a smoke screen. If Publish America was serious about this they could have responded to the PAMB thread by actualy listing some of the books that have been made returnable over the past month and invited the dissenting PAvidians to research those titles via bookstores et al. This would have gone a long way to establishing some credibility to thier claim. (My PA book is not returnable yet. LOL)

The ambiguous claims of "Many" and "Some" which are frequently tossed around by Infocenter and Author Support leave holes big enough to drive a car through.

PA will not state which books are returnable because I sincerely beleicve that they have no intention of making thier books returnable. Bookstores don't carry PA books, so making them retunable has no impact on PA either way. If they wanted to really show thier authors that they beleived that PA books were just as good as real books; make them returnable from authors who buy in bulk for their local booksignings. Again, that would never happen because PA knows that there really isn't a market for Publish America's product save for the current 15,000 hostages they have under contract along with their friends and family. Makeing book returnable to authors woul dput them out of business.. Then we'd really see how many PA books are author purchases.

Words are powerful tools and PA slings words and phrases around like a seasoned con artist. Everything they say can always be interpreted more than one way and numeric figures or statistics are rarely cited or provided, and if provided have no real way of being verified. Publish America is good at what they do; scam. They're deliberatly vague about intentions and actions, this gives them more than enough wiggle room to dodge any accusations.
 

James D. Macdonald

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For all my PA author friends:

YES: Write to regulatory and law enforcement agencies, and to your local newspaper, telling the story of your experiences.

BUT ALSO:

Write a new, different, better book and start shopping it around to legitimate publishers. You're a writer. WRITE!
 

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DaveKuzminski said:
...As well, there are now ten names of individuals whom Larry and Willem hate rather than the eight of yore. Those names are: Jenna Glatzer, Anne Crispin, Dave Kuzminski, Dee Power, Ed Williams, Victoria Strauss, Rebecca Easton, Lynn Price, C.E. Petit, and James Macdonald.

Speaking for myself, I revel in their hatred since that means I'm having some effect upon their operations by striving to help their authors and others get a fair deal.
Well, laughingly enough, even though I'm ancient history I somehow made their list. Go figure. I don't revel in much of anything with respect to this company because they're small potatoes in my current world. Their highly questionable business platform serves as my personal inspiration to continually conduct a clean operation that supports the advancement, sales, and shelf space for our authors. For me, PA is an afterthought, much like an irritating bug. If being the antithesis of everthing PA represents draws their ire, then perhaps they should look at their reflection a tad more often.

Write a new, different, better book and start shopping it around to legitimate publishers. You're a writer. WRITE!
Jim is absolutely right. Be better than what you belive PA made you. Take the adversity with you and keep it close, but not too close. Cherish the lesson but transcend yourself beyond the insignificant boundaries of PA. They simply aren't worth the effort of your angst.
 
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DaveKuzminski

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Well, they hate you for at least two reasons. You proved that a company with fewer resources than PA could do legitimate publishing and succeed. You write better than Larry and Willem. ;)
 

Sparhawk

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My hats off to the top 10 enemies of PA. People are not only judged by their friends, but also by thier enemies. Being on PA's top 10 list simply means that you all have a sense of compassion, honor and fair play and you don't like to see new writers get hurt. I tilt my blade and bow my head in respect to each one of you. :Hail: Keep up all of your great work and THANK YOU !!-Sparhawk
 

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Topical question

What does a freelancer charge to do layout only for, say, a 360-page book.

While we say that PA does nothing that you can't get at Kinko's or through Lulu, they do at least drop your manuscript text into a formatting box. For a full cost comparison to Lulu, we should consider this factor as well.
 

Bonnie Gibson

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returnable books at PA

Christine N. said:
Yeah, I'd be interested to see what Ingram says about that. Someone should send them a screen shot of Infohelmet's answer about that. Especially the part where they say that "many of our titles are already returnable from the day we made the announcement"

Since WE know that Bonnie called, and that's a flat-out LIE. Wasn't she told, mid-month and just recently that NO PA titles were returnable yet?

I have found 2 that's returnable.

When I phoned Ingrams Customer Service she told me that they knew nothing of it. She offered to look up books for me if I'd give her the titles but I have that ability on Ipage.

Of course emails from PA said my emails to Ingrams were bizarre and I needed to apologize to them. (PA)
 
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NancyMehl

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A misconception...

aruna said:
While browsing on this thread I came across this terrible PA story:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=115273&postcount=10019

the story was so awful, with the PA author fearing destitution and homelessness, having invested $54000 in promoting his PA book, that I mailed him to ask if he is OK.

I read Larry's story...wow. Not only did he pick the wrong publisher, he learned a painful lesson - one that I am beginning to learn. He thought that most of the people who supported his cause would buy his book. Nope. As a long time book reviewer who has received dozens of thank you notes throughout the years - and as a reviewer who definitely has affected book sales in my own area - I thought that a lot of these "grateful" authors would show up to buy MY book when it came out.

Didn't happen.

At my recent local signing, exactly ONE author showed up. None of the other authors were anywhere near the bookstore.

Counting on people who know you to buy your book is a waste of time - and a huge error. That is why (I'm beginning to learn) it is so important to wait for a good publisher - one who can promote you and get you into bookstores. THAT is what will make you successful. NOT friends and family - not Internet buddies, and NOT publishers like PA.

I've decided that the NEXT publisher I get will be the right one. I'm done with small publishers who can't do the best job with my work.

(I mean it this time, Victoria.....<G>)

Nancy
 

MadScientistMatt

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LloydBrown said:
What does a freelancer charge to do layout only for, say, a 360-page book.

While we say that PA does nothing that you can't get at Kinko's or through Lulu, they do at least drop your manuscript text into a formatting box. For a full cost comparison to Lulu, we should consider this factor as well.

That assumes that they actually do any active layout work. If they simply convert it from a DOC file to a PDF and send it to Lightning Source, this isn't much of a comparison. While they may do a bit more - maybe a table of contents or some such - I wouldn't think comparing the job they do to what a freelance layout expert would do is a reasonable comparison.
 

DeePower

From one of the ten

If any of you are thinking about telling the media about your PA experience, writing to the authorities, reporting descrepancies, errors, misstatements, and falsehoods about PA, now would be a good time.

Dee
 

Canada James

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If things did work the way they claim, can you imagine being that poor Ingram employee who has to sit on the phone, type each and every 11,000 ISBNs, and individually mark them returnable? And only having *one* day a month to go through that?

I'd hate to be the poor person at Ingram who draws the short straw that day.

And I know from my own experience with PA, they will often claim that they sent the update but "it didn't take." So they will have to try again next month.

C. James
 

NancyMehl

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Canada James said:
And I know from my own experience with PA, they will often claim that they sent the update but "it didn't take." So they will have to try again next month.

C. James

PA seems to have the worst luck, don't they? The problems are ALWAYS LS, Ingram, or Amazon. Then there is the infamous - "Your e-mail was never received." (Hand in hand with "We e-mailed you immediately. Just because you can't read invisible messages - is that OUR fault????)

Nothing every seems to go right for them. Poor, poor PA. :Shrug:

Nancy
 

JennaGlatzer

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Shamelessly off-topic but I can do that because I run the joint (MWAHAHAHAHA!). Please check out www.storiesofstrength.com when you can. If you have a blog or website or e-zine, please mention this project. It's an anthology by Absolute Writers and a few famous guests, and all profits go to disaster relief charities. Several writers who participate in this thread are included in the anthology. (And Nancy Mehl's son designed the cover!)

One of our first goals is to beat Atlanta Nights' sales rank. ;) We've already raised more than $700 for disaster relief-- and we've just begun.

Back to topic: A large truck came by and snapped my cable wire a couple of days ago, rendering me Internetless for a day and a half. I spoke to ChunkyC, and he said, "Did you happen to notice if there was a PA logo on the side of that truck?" Dave's "10 enemies" list only solidifies this conspiracy theory. ;)
 

Bonnie Gibson

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returnable books at PA

I have just finished checking the top ten sellers from PA. NONE is returnable yet.

Wonder what happened? :Shrug:

I know, I know! :banana:
 

DeePower

Someone who is not a PA author needs to

Call Ingram and find out exactly what the procedure is to change a publisher's titles from nonreturnable to returnable.

Something tells me a clerk doesn't have to sit there and change each title, one by one. I would bet all the clerk would have to do is type in the range of ISBNs from the first one assigned to a publisher to the last one.

Ingram has over a million titles in their database, I'm sure they can access each one individually but logic says they also do a group all at once. PA's publisher code in the ISBN is 4137.

Now back to work.

Dee
Over Time: Money, Love and Football all the important things in life.
http://www.OverTimeTheNovel.com
 

DaveKuzminski

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JennaGlatzer said:
Back to topic: A large truck came by and snapped my cable wire a couple of days ago, rendering me Internetless for a day and a half. I spoke to ChunkyC, and he said, "Did you happen to notice if there was a PA logo on the side of that truck?" Dave's "10 enemies" list only solidifies this conspiracy theory. ;)

Well, you did lead the list. ;)

Hmmm, wonder what they have in store for me? Make me read Meiners' book?

And yes, those books along with all their information are kept in a database. We're talking about a five minute process to build a function (if one doesn't already exist) to go in and change one field in the database. Then one more minute to test it on a dummy copy of the database. Then one more minute to update those books with a returnability factor of yes. PA's answer is a pack of lies, damn lies, and even more lies. Come on, PA, prove me wrong!
 

James D. Macdonald

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DaveKuzminski said:
As well, there are now ten names of individuals whom Larry and Willem hate rather than the eight of yore. Those names are: Jenna Glatzer, Anne Crispin, Dave Kuzminski, Dee Power, Ed Williams, Victoria Strauss, Rebecca Easton, Lynn Price, C.E. Petit, and James Macdonald.

I'm sure HapiSofi is disappointed.

Was this posted somewhere?
 

mdin

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I have permission from Ed to post this:

http://p105.ezboard.com/bedandsootswritersguild

There's a forum on that link entitled "Talk to a PA employee." Ed is in contact with a person currently working at PA, and this person is answering questions left and right. The verbiage and writing style of the posts are being changed so the employee doesn't get busted, and PA is already aware of the leak, so I'm not getting anybody in trouble by posting this.
 

SC Harrison

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XThe NavigatorX said:
I have permission from Ed to post this:

http://p105.ezboard.com/bedandsootswritersguild

There's a forum on that link entitled "Talk to a PA employee." Ed is in contact with a person currently working at PA, and this person is answering questions left and right. The verbiage and writing style of the posts are being changed so the employee doesn't get busted, and PA is already aware of the leak, so I'm not getting anybody in trouble by posting this.

I'm sure I'll end up sounding like a PA-loving skeptic, and I noted what you said about the rewrite, but...this does not ring true. Everything Anonymous says may be true, but I get the feeling this is not an employee. The phrase "College or University" sounds like a Brit, and most of the text sounds like the exact things some people want to hear a PA employee say. Just me thinking outloud.
 

DaveKuzminski

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I've been in contact with more than one PA employee. Much of what's been stated over at Ed and Soots by that individual appears to be accurate.

James, the new list was one of the things mentioned by that individual.
 
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LloydBrown

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SC Harrison said:
I'm sure I'll end up sounding like a PA-loving skeptic, and I noted what you said about the rewrite, but...this does not ring true. Everything Anonymous says may be true, but I get the feeling this is not an employee. The phrase "College or University" sounds like a Brit, and most of the text sounds like the exact things some people want to hear a PA employee say. Just me thinking outloud.

It's possibly real. For one, the writing style has been modified, so you can't look at exact wording. Two, an IP check would at least verify that the person is posting from the right geographic area (it could be spoofed, but I'm talking about evidence, not proof). Three, the attention to certain details is exactly the opposite of the usual PA vagueness.

I'll admit the possibility. I guess we'll have to see if we can get some specific information that can be verified through another party.
 
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