PAMB and its quotes

Hmmm...wonder how long that post will stay on PAMB??

stormie said:

Hmmm...wonder how long that post will stay on PAMB??

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I thought PA would delete this pretty fast, too. It came on at 10:43pm last night.

This member posted this some days ago. A few days later he posted to the same thread again, only this time his words were much stronger about how he felt about PA's "editing" option #3. PA deleted that post. Unfortunately, I wrote over the copy I made of it. But, he basically says the same thing in this post.

My minimal exposure and experience has shown me that it really doesn't matter which option you select. I chose the slowest, supposedly most complete, and there was virtually no editing whatsoever.

I'm not slamming PA mind you - thanks to them we are all in print in the first place. But I was sincere about editing. i would rather have paid for a professional edit than to have to wait that extra time and still get no edit.

I wrote one technical book for the American Society of Quality Control back in 1993. When it came to editing they sent me their edited copy for my review and approval and I felt like I had just had a religious experience. There was more red ink on the pages than black. But, that's what an edit is for isn't it? If I did it wrong tell me.

PA has made a believer out of me and they have gained a life long follower but there are still areas they could improve as well.

Choose the fast one and get your book rolling.

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I wonder how he feels now, since his second post was deleted? I have not seen him on PAMB since that post was deleted.

stormie said:

Hmmm...wonder how long that post will stay on PAMB??

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Probably not long. I wanted everyone to be able to see it in all its glory before the Infomonster disappears it.
For their own good, of course. Can't have any negativity now, can we?

There is a thread on the PAMB entitled, “Burned by an Agent.” Here is a quote from one member who uses the Internet to do research.

I have to join your club. I had the same experience with an agent that made a lot of promises. Finally I did a search on the internet and found out that she was a crook. And then whenever I had an agent respond to my query letter with promises, I did an internet search and found out that they were crooks too. That's how I found PA.

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That’s how she found PA? I don’t think there’s an agent or publishing entity on the Internet that has as much negative information written about them as PA. How could she ignore that information?

I think that whole thread "Burned by an Agent" is a lesson in irony.

Tri

triceretops said:

I think that whole thread "Burned by an Agent" is a lesson in irony.

Tri

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I agree. Here's my favorite one from that thread:

The only time I put out money when I don't have a positive return is when I am playing poker. But that is called recreation.

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Nope. That is called gambling.

A woman is leaving the message boards after PA rejected her second novel because the first one had poor says. A happy minion jumps in:

I know your heart is broken. If I win the lottery tonight, we will buy so many of our books that Publish America will make us "Bestseller's"

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Then they'll drop you.

One person buys tons of copies =/= "best seller."

Tons of people buy copies = "best seller."

I know your heart is broken. If I win the lottery tonight, we will buy so many of our books that Publish America will make us "Bestseller's"

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This just hurts my brain. Let's say this author buys ten thousand of her own books. Yay, she's PA's bestselling author for all time. And then what? What do you do with ten thousand of your own books? Sign them all to yourself with love? The PA authors sound as though they have difficulty selling books even in small quantities; how could they move thousands of copies?

Queen of Swords said:

The PA authors sound as though they have difficulty selling books even in small quantities; how could they move thousands of copies?

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Poor writing skills, poor math skills....

I have to join your club. I had the same experience with an agent that made a lot of promises. Finally I did a search on the internet and found out that she was a crook. And then whenever I had an agent respond to my query letter with promises, I did an internet search and found out that they were crooks too. That's how I found PA.

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I'm just wondering what these agents promised and how they're crooks in relation to PA.

Here's one just posted:

Got my second check today!!!!!!!!
Six dollars and 53 cents.
I'm not gonna cash it though - -gonna keep it like the first one -- like trophies. I might even put it in the frame with the dollar advance.

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And another PA "author" response:

...you are a Romantic...But cash that bugger and put it in a special account and watch it grow...

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So sad!

That is the nature of this business. Even with other publishers. If a book store returns a book, that return is charged against the authors royalties. This is sometime we can't let hold us back because not every book is going to sale and the cost has to be recouped. Just think about those big named authors that have all of those books returned. That cost is charged against their royalties before they are paid so we are in good. Just have fun and things will work out as they should.

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I'll just, ya know, let you all sort this one out. That place just boggles my mind.
_________________

Trivia

Buy ten thousand books, you say? If you take a trip back into baseball history - Roger Maris has a museum (link: http://www.rogermaris.com/ ). While he was alive, he would sit down and sign about one hundred baseballs a day (month) for the fans. They were even given away at the museum or were purchased for a small sum of money to keep the lights on. At the time of this writing, there are a few signed baseballs that survive in the museum. He loved baseball and cherished his fans.

What does this have to do with buying your own books and selling them? Everything and Nothing. If you find yourself in a difficult situation with a friend, colleague, relative or acqaintence - giving your book to them may smooth things over. At the very least, if you have confidence that the book is well written, edited, and grammatically correct, the book may impress that person enough to have bragging rights. That, in itself is a “WOW!”

Going overboard by bankrupting your savings by purchasing a literal ton of your books is not a wise action or investment.

I have often posed this question on the boards concerning PublishAmerica placing a tin crown on a person and pronouncing them a “published author”.

(For some odd reason, I seem to be pontificating on this and other forums today!)

An author (in my humble opinion) is anyone who had the discipline to sit on their duff and create a document - whether it turns out to be a short story or large volume manuscript, and has it published either by mainstream houses or a vanity press. PublishAmerica is a reverse vanity press. Any and all products that are produced by PublishAmerica are considered “printed” not authentically published.

PublishAmerica is dedicated to sell books to their authors who are under the “ether”; and to their network of friends relatives, and acquaintances. This was admitted by Meiners at Mr. Dolan’s Arbitration meeting Linkhttp://www.freewebs.com/pozkin/legalwatch.htm). By his own words, Mr. Meiners admitted that the company is set-up for authors to buy their own books; and the author is the one solely responsible for selling the books.

Sure, PublishAmerica electronically posts the authors book on world-wide web sites, sends out flyers to the one hundred or so names and addresses that the author has provided, and produces a transparent press release on Google - which the verbiage is cut and pasted from other past press releases by Miranda Prather.

PublishAmerica’s distribution stream is nil. The author is the distribution stream. Other recognized distribution streams will not touch and or glance at a PublishAmerica product. The author is the one who must fight the battles, go through emotional turmoil, put on a happy confident face and sell the book. Making a hand puppet out of paper and selling it (painted and with sparkles all over it) door to door - Fuller Brush Company Style - is the distribution stream.

Gary Rogers

At http://bb.publishamerica.com/viewtopic.php?t=19777, one of the happy authors makes suggestions to PA how they could make their main page even better:

I have learned over the past two years that some people in the world simply misunderstand the main points on the first page of PA website.
For instance of those points:

We publish more.....
They may wrongly think that anything and everything gets published.

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How is that thinking wrong. Oh, anything and everything gets accepted, but not everyone agrees to let PA publish the manuscripts!

So I suggest to add to the list, in order to remove any doubts from the minds of strangers bookstores reviewers, etc., the following:

We do not deal with Self publishing authors and we do not charge our authors.

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We just charge them for their books. And shipping costs. And we let them pay the copyright fee.

We work with authors and we do not provide service for fee.
Although these may exist somewhere and embedded, but they need to be highlighted and clear and visible at first glance.
I think these will help PA and all of the authors here significantly.
So, I suggest these to be added and highlighted
Please suggest anything useful you can think of as well.

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Further downstream, he adds:

Here is something I saw on main page of PA which is good but I would even add more to it.
"We are the first traditional publisher in modern times to reverse the trend of outsourcing book printing, by building our own printing facility."

'We are using the popular JIT (just in time) concept in operations management for zero inverntory and therefore minimum operational cost.'

PRINT ON DEMAND covers this and also eliminates any risks for cost recovery of the books published.
Anyway, I have given many advices to big corporations and VPs and leaders that became success stories, so I am not shy to share my ideas with a company that has trusted my work as well as yours.

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And even further downstream:

Since this did not result in many suggestions, I will add one or more myself.
It would be nice to add a counter to main page of PA and have it count and updated daily with the number of manuscripts rejected. This will be good to teach others, strangers and cynical people and bashers, so that they know all books published here have value and merit.

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I'm guessing the counter wouldn't need more than two digits. Possibly one. The manuscript I submitted in my dog's name had no literary merit whatsoever! PA didn't even read it before offering the contract.

I think authors need PA more than PA needs them so to bring and attract more authors is easy for PA, and in fact potential new authors will learn that this is real serious business here.

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Authors don't need PA. PA needs authors. PA makes money from sales to its authors. That's the serious business of PA.

Who would have imagined some day JAVA(tm) would become a trademark? Well We may have to grab Just in time Traditional Publisher here before anyone else does (JITTP).

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The POD company Infinity Publishing called itself a "Just in Time" publisher a few years ago. "Just in Time" isn't original with PA. "Traditional publisher," now. . . .

Figured I'd better grab some of this thread while it's still there. I doubt it'll stay too long. PA doesn't seem to like it's authors suggesting alternate ways to do things.

I'm not gonna cash it though - -gonna keep it like the first one

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PA doesn't want you to cash that check. That's another three gallons of gas in Larry's SUV.

Although it is purely symbolic, today I got my first royalty check. It is really not much, but like I said before, the check is totally symbolic, because just the thrill of having this little money sent to me for my first book titled "A Dishwasher's Journey to Dreamland" is very gratifying indeed.

Since the royalty check is symbolic, and the 1.00 advance is symbolic, then you can readily see why PA's quote of "We treat our authors the old-fashioned way, we pay them", is also highly symbolic.

The next declaration we're apt to hear is "Writing a book is totally symbolic."

Tri

I received my first statement and praised God anyway. Official release of my book is xxx but several were ordered this past week and I am about to place an order for my first 50.
SO come August $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

No royalties paid on books the author purchases from PA.
Boy, is this author in for a nasty surprise.

Rllgthunder said:

I'll just, ya know, let you all sort this one out. That place just boggles my mind.

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How Stephen King has suffered for the public's reading pleasure! And let us not forget the sacrifices of J. K. Rowling! Oh, the humanity!

--Ken

I wanted to clip this and place it here just in case it disappears. The irony.

Thanks for the quick reply. I know that it is common practice for returns to be charged against the royalties. I was just concerned with the "you do not owe us any payments at this time" statement on my royalty check. It is listed right after it mentions that I have unsold books that were returned by bookstores. Does that mean that I will have to pay Publish America if I don't sell enough books to cover my returns? And if I have to pay for the books, what happens to the books that are returned? If I have to pay for them shouldn't I get the books? I don't really care about making any money on my first book as long as my book is being bought. That is good publicity. I'm not really being negative. As I said in my last post, I was happy with how my book sold last year. In fact, I have a couple traditional publishers interested in my next book. I am actually very confident with my book and feel it will eventually do well. I was just curious about the statement on my check. I know there is someone that has experienced this. Thanks!

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Very, very simply:

Book sold = $ to author
Book not sold = nothing to author

Book sold + book not sold =/= $-$=0

Oh that one almost made me cry. I can't believe they believe that. Especially the person who commented on it

That is the nature of this business. Even with other publishers. If a book store returns a book, that return is charged against the authors royalties. This is sometime we can't let hold us back because not every book is going to sale and the cost has to be recouped. Just think about those big named authors that have all of those books returned. That cost is charged against their royalties before they are paid so we are in good. Just have fun and things will work out as they should.

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Even with other publishers. If a book store returns a book, that return is charged against the authors royalties.

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This statement could be true if we are talking about a reserve policy being in place, and the author returning royalties already paid, not the retail price of the book. Unless, a returned book can't be reshelved as we all know they aren't, but stripped.

So what does PA do with a returned book that shouldn't be re-shipped to the next store ordering copies?

Do they warehouse them, and re-ship? Do they destroy them, and take a loss? (sic)

Have they held a reserve of royalties against the book, and who pays for the printing cost if the book can't be sent to another store. After all PA is a POD printer. We print it, you bought it and paid for it up front.

No royalty from a PA book is going to pay for the retail price.

If a 5% discount is offered, books shipped at a 19.95 price per title, the sales price is 18.95. The royalty at 8% is 1.51. None in that hoard of writers could hardly see a check for 18.95 in royalties to pay back for one POD book.


PA is not going to take a loss on books printed.

They shouldn't be warehousing them and re-sending them to the next customer because of quality issues due to handling.

What happens to that book.

Very likley that the author must pay for the book they themselves talked the store into stocking.

Dear author, You, not PA talked the store into stocking a book that can't be re-stocked again due to quality issues. Therefore as PA is a POD publisher, as you know, it is your responsibility to pay for the returned book.© No PA you may not use my weasel worded response.

Thank you,
Nasty reply to YOUR problem.

(See history on owing ones soul to the general store). For further information.

Reading this thread has actually answered some questions I've had on the royalty and return processes. So people "publishing" with PA is an educational experience!

Most places do keep them and reship, Ken. At least with trade paperbacks. Only MM books are stripped. I don't know specifically how PA's books hold up under handling, but I know my publisher gets returns from bookstores and holds them to be reshipped. Most of the time they're fine, because the bookstore doesn't want to be charged if they send back books in bad shape that can't be resold - you break it, you bought it sort of deal.

But I also can't imagine PA has anyplace to store returned books. They might, but with their return policy being as unenticing as it is, bookstores might just trash them instead of return them. They lose the money they paid for the book, yes, but then they don't have to pay the return shipping plus restocking fee.