Excuses for PA management

DaveKuzminski

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Lately, PA's management has found themselves up against a writer who knows his rights. Now they need excuses for why they shorted his royalties. Since PA's management is creatively challenged (also known as stipid), it behooves us to be nice and help them with some creative excuses they can use when the police show up.

Just to help things along, here's one. They could always claim that some of the receipts were lost during the fire drill at the convention. ;)
 

CACTUSWENDY

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:crazy: They have a convention? Cool...:Wha:
 

lucyishome

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I'd like to plead the 5th.


:hi:

Anne
 
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Sher2

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One of the former general partners ran it through the spell-checker and this is how it came out.

Cool thread!
 

Sher2

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"Excuses? What excuses? You are so nonsensical.

"And what are those little puncture marks on your neck?

"Watch the shiny, cracked spline, now. You are getting veeeeeery sleepy, ja, Liebling?"
 

James D. Macdonald

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Don't take that tone with us. Your claim that businesses keep records is so laughable that it is child's play to refute it. We won't waste our junior staffers' time on your nonsense.
 

Richard

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"Our lawyers are swarming all over the airport! I will take you to see them! In one hour! You PublishAmerican infidels will cower before Saddam! We will throw our shoes at you! Goodnight!"
 

Sher2

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WhisperingBard said:
"Willem's a foreigner. He can't count in English."

"Nobody told us we couldn't keep *all* the money!"

"We gave the money to charity: the Zobmi International Relief Fund."
I hereby nominate Bard to spearhead the planning committee to bring us ... the Concert for Zobmi Aid.
 

SeanDSchaffer

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"Tell 'em you were drunk when you [wrote] the contract!" -- Ed Norton

:faint:
 

Lisa Y

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What you are claiming is totally, factually, and ,completely untrue. We have 11,000 authors who are happy with they're royalty checks. You can prove this to yourself by checking our message board and our facts and figures page. And besides, even unknown authors who publish with big houses like Random House don't get big royalty checks. Didn't you read you're contract?

We will not answer anymore of you're future e-mails or letters until we receive a sincere apology from you.
 

lizziepants

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Thanks to the enthusiasm of authors such as yourself, an average 67 new writers ask us each day if they can join your ranks. They have heard about you, your book, your fellow authors, or your publisher through bookstores, newspapers, magazines, the internet, or through simple word of mouth. Imagine: that is more than 16,000 writers per year. This makes PublishAmerica by far the number one traditional publisher in terms of manuscripts submitted. And since the vast majority of all submitted works never make it through the full acceptance process, it makes you a member of one of the most envied crowds in the publishing world.

/email quote

"This makes PublishAmerica by far the number one traditional publisher in terms of manuscripts submitted."

Oh, hmm, I'm sorry, but I tend to measure the success of a publisher by how much MONEY they make their AUTHORS. Golly!
 

lizziepants

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Here's another one of my favorites:

Dear author,

They sure know where to join a quality crowd!

Although it is not unusual for PublishAmerica authors to have other traditional publishing houses requesting to contract their next book, it is just as common for authors from other well-established houses to come and join PublishAmerica.

Today we are welcoming the following authors in your midst:
*Novelist James W. Bennett came from Simon and Schuster with "Harvey Potter Does Dallas". Mr. Bennett was also published by Scholastic, of Harry Potter fame.
*Richard C. Mears joins us from Simon and Schuster as well. PublishAmerica recently released his book "Anubis Rex".
*Yolanda Smith comes to us from Random House. PublishAmerica will soon release her book "Worry Free Retirement Living".
*And two weeks ago, we also reached an agreement with a top award winning, world-renowned author, who will come to us from Harper Collins. We expect the contract to be signed this week, and an announcement to be made soon.

All this is happening at a time when more authors than ever are joining your ranks. To us, this is plain astonishing and amazing. Just a little over four years ago we built PublishAmerica with hopes to create opportunities for new authors. We figured we'd consider ourselves very lucky if we could help up to, who knows, maybe a thousand authors. How wrong we were. Today, almost seven thousand (7000!) authors call PublishAmerica home. Some are new, others are seasoned, some are relatively unknown, others are celebrities.

With so many new books and so much talent to choose from, we are currently offering gift and specialty stores a special volume discount schedule, and, as always, we are extending the same special discount also to our own authors:

50-99 copies: 40 pct discount
100-149 copies: 45 pct discount
150-249 copies: 50 pct discount
250+ copies: 55 pct discount

This offer expires April 15, phone orders only. Please call us at 301 695 1707.
Thank you!



We should play.. count the lies/idiocy/grammatical errors. :)
 

Sepisllib

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Ok - I'm new and frustrated

Like so many others I was desiring to publish my books and took the opportunity to jump on PublishAmerica's band wagon.

I failed to check out the company very well and "assumed" they were a well organized, respected and traditional publisher.

Boy was I wrong. Now I have a book that I cannot just "rewrite" and submit to another publisher anywhere as it would violate my contract with PA. The really sad part to me is that (I am biased of course), I feel my book has real possibilities that will never be able to live up to it's potential.

A friend in Shreveport went to Boarders to buy my book and they did not have it. She went to books a million and they told her they could not get it.

What is the real point of publishing books if they are not distributed for sale in bookstores????

Well - my book, "Golden Grass" will likely die a premature death because of what PA is not doing - I cannot even manage to obtain book signing dates with anyone....

Just venting ------ and I shall take my efforts elsewhere.

God Bless

Bill
 

darkprincealain

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Best thing to do is write a new and better book, do a lot of research on agents and publishers, decide what your goal is for your new book, and submit your new manuscript to reputable folks.

You may decide to try to get your rights back to your PA book. There are other threads here in the PA forum that show how that can be done, though success has been mixed. Only you can decide if it's worth the trouble, since the first publishing rights have been used.

One thing to note. Miranda of PA lurks here, and that you made a post here may not work in your favor with getting your rights back. If you're going to go that route, I'd recommend blanking the title of your book, since she can use that to identify you. Maybe that's playing it a little too close to the vest, but from what you can read about her elsewhere on the web, I'd say better safe than sorry.

Link to more on Miranda--not all of it has to do with PA, per se.
 

M.R.J. Le Blanc

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Like so many others I was desiring to publish my books and took the opportunity to jump on PublishAmerica's band wagon.

I failed to check out the company very well and "assumed" they were a well organized, respected and traditional publisher.

Boy was I wrong. Now I have a book that I cannot just "rewrite" and submit to another publisher anywhere as it would violate my contract with PA. The really sad part to me is that (I am biased of course), I feel my book has real possibilities that will never be able to live up to it's potential.

A friend in Shreveport went to Boarders to buy my book and they did not have it. She went to books a million and they told her they could not get it.

What is the real point of publishing books if they are not distributed for sale in bookstores????

Well - my book, "Golden Grass" will likely die a premature death because of what PA is not doing - I cannot even manage to obtain book signing dates with anyone....

Just venting ------ and I shall take my efforts elsewhere.

God Bless

Bill

Take heart; a lot of first completed books (if this is your first, if it isn't I apologize for the assumption) end up as trunk novels - meaning they're just not meant/ready to be published. Sometimes it's your second or third book that ends up getting the ball rolling, and sometime later down the road of your career it may be possible to bring back that trunk novel. darkprincealain is right, work on a new and better book. Maybe by the time the seven year rights-grab is over, you'll be able to revisit it, improve it and also give it another shot. If you've got one great story in you, there's sure to be more buried in there. Don't give up.

And stick around. There's a lot of good stuff on this forum.
 

Marian Perera

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Well - my book, "Golden Grass" will likely die a premature death because of what PA is not doing - I cannot even manage to obtain book signing dates with anyone....

Hi Bill,

I checked your book out on Amazon and it may also be crippled because of what PA has done.

For instance, the synopsis on Amazon suggests a Bridges of Madison County-esque love story, but the picture of the windmill on the cover doesn't suggest the same thing. In fact, coupled with the title, I would have taken this to be something nonfictional about agriculture (the cover is also a stock image, 24488419 on Jupiter Images).

Then again, PA isn't about selling to casual browsers in bookstores, it's about selling to authors and from them to the pocket markets of an author's family and friends.

Sorry you had to go through this, and feel free to vent at any time.