Beware PublishBritannica/PublishAtlantica

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

Since there seem to be quite a few British aspiring authors here, I thought I'd start this thread to collect information on this company, which is apparently owned by Publish America. I found references to PB on the Neverending PA thread which I thought I'd collect here for easy viewing.

In the FAQ on the website www.publishbritannica.com I found this intersting passage:

However, if you are already committed to an agent, you must honor that commitment.

Note the spelling of "honor" in the last sentence. That is not the British spelling,; they didn't even bother to make that little change! In fact, the entire site is a replica of the American site

On the whole, Britain is failry unspoilt when it comes to vanity presses; yes, we do have them, but they are not nearly as aggressive and deceptive in their marketing as their American cousins. With Publish Britannica, we have the same underhand tactics as discolsed in the Neverending thread.

Anyway; I'll get back to this later and get the quotes from that thread together. If I can stop even one naive Brit from publishing there I'll be happy.

JennaGlatzer · Jun 30, 2005

Good idea. Thanks, Aruna!

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

OK, here are some messages gleaned from the Neverending thread:

This is something that has bothered me a great deal over the last few weeks. I feel it needs to be discussed, and that this is another thing we can point out to the BB and other authorities.

On the Publish Britannica website Publish America writes: The company is headquartered in Milton Keynes, midway between Birmingham and London.

A UK author emailed me about this and he told me it is a lie, that they have no office headquartered there. He checked it out personally and there is no Publish Britannica office anywhere in England.

He has given up on his book, and he said he cannot cash his royalty checks because they are sent in US dollars and it costs more to transfer them to pounds than to cash it in. If Publish Britannica was actually at the said location, then wouldn't UK authors be getting their royalty checks from that address and in pound notes? Instead UK authors have told me they get their checks from the Maryland office in US dollars.

What is in Milton Keynes is a division of Ingram Book Distributors. The above statement leads a prospective author in the UK to believe Publish Britannica is actually headquartered in England. In reality, they are located in Frederick, Maryland, the same office as Publish America. See the lie there? See the deception?

Their website: www.publishbritannica.com

A quote about the Maryland location.

PublishBritannica is part of an international book publishing conglomerate, spanning the North Atlantic, with presences in the United States, Scandinavia, and on the European mainland. World headquarters are located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, in Maryland, USA.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it. I mean PB is part of an 'international' book publishing 'conglomerate'. Sounds huge. And they are all over the world. In fact they have a world headquarters located in the DC area....ah, that's a little more than an hour west of DC in a sleeper town..

Quote:
Originally Posted by ByGrace
What is in Milton Keynes is a division of Ingram Book Distributors. The above statement leads a prospective author in the UK to believe Publish Britannica is actually headquartered in England. In reality, they are located in Frederick, Maryland, the same office as Publish America. See the lie there? See the deception?

Yes. I wonder if there are laws against false and misleading advertising in Britain. If so I believe the fellow may have a complaint.

What's in Milton Keynes is a Lightning Source International printing plant.

The easy way to prove that PublishBritannica doesn't exist is to look at the ISBN prefix. It's exactly the same as PublishAmerica's.

Here's my thought: PublishIcelandica and PublishBritannica are non-existent companies, set up so that Willem can vacation in Europe and write it off on his taxes.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

There is an additional problem U.K. authors of Publish Britannica experience on top of all those they share with the U.S. Publish America authors.

Their royalties are sent in dollars.

Some authors have said they can't afford to cash these checks. It's expensive, and the royalties are too low to make it economically viable.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

I don't think the extent to which Publish America/Britannica overprices books really hit me until I saw it in pounds rather than dollars.

Dragon Blaze by Peter R. Harris is a children's fantasy book, in paperback. It is 148 pages long. On Amazon the price is £12.50.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1413767060/qid%3D1120139660/202-1479570-9623863

The Publish Britannica online bookstore only has prices in dollars.

http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=36&subcat=36&cat=PublishBritannica+Authors

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

I am sure the Trading Standards woudl be intersted in this. I'll do some investigation in that direction.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

Here is one U.K. author's account of his experience with this company:

http://ezinearticles.com/?PublishAmerica---Publishing-Parasites&id=32046

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

Thank you. I have found the Trading Standards website and they DO look into scams - however, I doubt there is anything that can be done, seeing as all the "business" is carried out in the US. Are the books also printed inthe US, and shipped to Britain? Does anyone know anything about the legal issues? I don't see any way they could be legally stopped from Britain.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

We need to hunt down a U.K. version of Jaws

.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

This is a good site. It was previously linked to by Uncle Jim in the Big PA thread:

http://www.vanitypublishing.info/points.htm

The reason this is applicable is because Publish Britannica is a Vanity Publisher.

Although it asks for no money up front, its business model is to sell books to authors and pocket markets around the author. A commercial publishing house sells books to the general public through retailers.

And Publish Britannica's authors do pay the vanity fee. But instead of paying up front, they are encouraged to buy their books at inflated prices. Unfortunately Publish Britannica, as with Publish America, gives authors the impression that it is a commercial publishing house selling books to the public. That's the purpose of the token advance.

James D. Macdonald · Jun 30, 2005

aruna said:
Are the books also printed inthe US, and shipped to Britain?

Some may be, but some I'm sure are printed at the Lightning Source facility in Milton Keynes.

CaoPaux · Jun 30, 2005

aruna said:
Thank you. I have found the Trading Standards website and they DO look into scams - however, I doubt there is anything that can be done, seeing as all the "business" is carried out in the US. Are the books also printed inthe US, and shipped to Britain? Does anyone know anything about the legal issues? I don't see any way they could be legally stopped from Britain.

IIRC, the address given for PB is actually that of Lightning Source (the POD printer they use), so the books are produced in the UK.

MadScientistMatt · Jun 30, 2005

CaoPaux said:
IIRC, the address given for PB is actually that of Lightning Source (the POD printer they use), so the books are produced in the UK.

I have to wonder - from a legal standpoint, is merely pretending to do business in the UK enough to be prosecuted for charges about inappropriate business practices in the UK?

CaoPaux · Jun 30, 2005

MadScientistMatt said:
I have to wonder - from a legal standpoint, is merely pretending to do business in the UK enough to be prosecuted for charges about inappropriate business practices in the UK?

That might be question for Her Majesty's tax collectors, too.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

These statistics show that in the U.K. during 2001-2002 around 76% of books were bought from bookshops and other brick and mortar retailers.

http://www.booksellers.org.uk/industry/display_report.asp?id=483

And apart from one or two local bookshops, Publish Britannica authors cannot get their books into brick and mortar retailers.

This is because Publish Britannica isn't set up to sell books to the general public, so they don't allow booksellers to return unsold books, and they price uncompetitively.

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

They definitley claim they have headquaters here:

"The company is headquartered in Milton Keynes, midway between Birmingham and London." (PB Website http://www.publishbritannica.com/aboutus.htm )

But I can't find an actual address for them on their website. Or anywhere else so far. Still looking.

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

Trapped in amber said:
They definitley claim they have headquaters here:

"The company is headquartered in Milton Keynes, midway between Birmingham and London." (PB Website http://www.publishbritannica.com/aboutus.htm )

But I can't find an actual address for them on their website. Or anywhere else so far. Still looking.

There is an American phone number on the site. And if you click to their bookstore you go straight to the PA bookstore; and all books listed are in dollars. This means that they ARE printed in the US. The office in Milton Keynes is perhaps just a non-existant front.

I have a nasty vision of a PublishGermanica, PublishItalia, PublishFranka etc coming out soon.

DaveKuzminski · Jun 30, 2005

I'm waiting to see them open PublishLeavenworth.

aruna · Jun 30, 2005

aruna said:
This means that they ARE printed in the US. The office in Milton Keynes is perhaps just a non-existant front.
QUOTE]

OK, I retract. I found this on the neverending thread:

In regards to Publish Britannica.

I emailed a PA author friend of mine living in the UK and asked him if he ever had the chance to visit the office over there. On the PB website http://www.publishbritannica.com/ it says ‘The company is headquartered in Milton Keynes, midway between Birmingham and London.’

So my friend told me this address is the British headquarters of Lightning Source.

This is from Lightning Sources website. Interesting PA claims to have offices at the same address.
Introducing Lightning Source in the United Kingdom
In January 2001 Lightning Source set-up its first international sales office in Milton Keynes, England with a focus on print-on-demand services. Milton Keynes is located North of London on the M1 motorway (map) and is centrally placed for rapid distribution of books throughout the UK. By August 2001, Lightning Source UK Limited was printing books on demand in a new facility under its UK Executive team.

Click to expand...

JerseyGirl1962 · Jun 30, 2005

It's too bad Alcatraz is only open to tourists... :Hammer:

~Nancy

Trapped in amber · Jun 30, 2005

From the Lightning Source Web Page:

Publishers with an LSI US Dollar Account can …

* Sign-up for UK Distribution through Lightning Source UK and it’s channel partners by signing & returning a UK POD Agreement

* Print books in the UK for delivery to UK, Europe or other international addresses

https://www.lightningsource.com/index.htm

I take it from that it would be pretty simple for PA to set up.

logos1234567 · Aug 19, 2005

The easy way to prove that PublishBritannica doesn't exist is to look at the ISBN prefix. It's exactly the same as PublishAmerica's.

An ISBN prefix can be legitimately spread over several imprints. So Publish Britanicca is (probably) legally set up as an imprint of Publish America and (probably) does legally exist in its own right.

logos1234567 · Aug 19, 2005

Just looking at PB's website as I didn't realise these sharks existed over here. Found this rather amusing...

With the author's consent, the company will donate an allotted number of copies to a library for the blind...

what in braille?!!!

NicoleJLeBoeuf · Aug 19, 2005

logos1234567 said:
Just looking at PB's website as I didn't realise these sharks existed over here. Found this rather amusing...

With the author's consent, the company will donate an allotted number of copies to a library for the blind...

what in braille?!!!

What exactly about that claim do you find so amusing/surprising/ridiculous? There really are libraries for the blind out there--nothing weird or ridiculous about that. There are conversion processes to print books in braille, or have them read outloud (by humans or by text-to-speech sythesizers), or in large print, or into a format suitable for use with maginification viewers, etc, etc, etc.

There are many reasons to distrust or ridicule PB/PA, but I don't think this is one of them.

logos1234567 · Aug 19, 2005

I was NOT making fun of the blind - I am aware there are processes to transform reading material. What I do not think PA/PB would do is to go to the cost/expense of changing the book's format for said libraries though, perhaps making the gift a bit of a white elephant...that's all.

Beware PublishBritannica/PublishAtlantica

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

JennaGlatzer

wishes you happiness

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

Trapped in amber

Trapped in amber

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

Trapped in amber

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

Trapped in amber

Trapped in amber

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless

MadScientistMatt

Empirical Storm Trooper

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless

Trapped in amber

Trapped in amber

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

DaveKuzminski

Preditors & Editors

aruna

On a wing and a prayer

JerseyGirl1962

I heart Malamutes! :-)

Trapped in amber

logos1234567

logos1234567

NicoleJLeBoeuf

a work in progress

logos1234567