I hate seeing this...

I wanna know how he got a signing in a B&N. Must be a new CRM. She'll be getting 'the talk' from her regional manager afterward, I'm sure.

Either that or the author is bringing the books and B&N will pay them later. Much lster - it takes months for them to cut a check.

I know the feeling. Saw something similar at my local Borders many times. One girl must have had about 2-300 copies of her PA book (in a town of less than 40,000, the pile of books was almost to her waist). Another had maybe 20 and I saw maybe 19 in the 75% off bin a few months later. sigh.

Small town chain stores will do this for an author, especially if they lay out the cash for all the books.

That is just sad.

But did you catch this in the article?

PublishAmerica, which has printed the books of more than 20,000 authors

Ol' Fashioned Girl said:

PublishAmerica, which has printed the books of more than 20,000 authors

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That. Is. Priceless. Except it gives genuine printers a bad name. Printers don't tie up your rights for seven years. Even as a printer, PublishAmerica still sucks and is very expensive. You could save a lot of money just printing up a bunch of them at Kinko's or Lulu.

kristie911 said:

<sigh> I want to go to the book signing and give him the URL for AW and tell him we'll be here when PA lets him down.

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I really hope you don't do this. This is this author's "special day".

Even if you think the person needs a reality check, this is not the time to give it.

Lets hope she has her own books. A few will do it with the outrageous price PA stamps on it's books.
I have heard of book signings where the books never showed up from PA on the day of the signing. PA does not care that authors need them. If the author depends on PA to send the books for book signings, they will be humiliated by PA. If they depend on the store to order them, the author will be lucky if PA sends them for fear that the books won't sell and be sent back to PA. The only sure fire way to have books at a signing, is for the author to purchase their own books.

Our local paper ran a similar story just last week with a guy who had a PA book. He basically talked in the article about how hard it was to sell books to people other than friends and family, and he hoped to sell his 100th book at the B&N booksigning.

It simply tells me that my local B&N manager, whom I'll be talking with this weekend, is supportive of local authors.

This happened in a town not too far away from mine, and the girl had an article in the "Arts & Culture" section of the paper all about it....

The scary part was that I was curious and so I checked PA out. Thank GOD I came here to run a Background on them. *huge sigh of relief*

I felt really awkward though.... I mean, do you try to tell them what they're *really* getting into and run the risk of being called a "jealous gossipmongerer" (or maybe even something worse), or do you just let them find out for themselves?

Christine N. said:

I wanna know how he got a signing in a B&N. Must be a new CRM. She'll be getting 'the talk' from her regional manager afterward, I'm sure.

Either that or the author is bringing the books and B&N will pay them later. Much lster - it takes months for them to cut a check.

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Beleive it or not I had a great relationship with B&N in both Framingham and Marlboro. Caveat: I provided my own books at no cost to them I promoted myself heavily and when I left, the books that didn't sell went home with me. Christine is dead on about getting reimbursed later; It took about two months after I fille dout the sales sheet and mailed it back to B&N before I got my paltry piece of the pie.

Also, I was one of usually three local authors. (The other two were always much more well-known and well recieved.) I was like the bastard stepchild of local booksignings. I did it a few times and decided it wasn't worth the aggrivation and effort for two or three sales that I recieved such a small percentage on (B&N took a good cut). But Christine is right, both times the local manager made an exception because I was an 'in area' resident and B&N absorbed no real risk.

Borders was also receptive until they saw the price of the book when they tried to order it from Ingram's. This was the beginning of the end of my PAvidian dream. I wasn't a published author, I wasn't even an author, I was one of the many who'd been taken advantage of. The "Dream" had become a surreal nightmare.

THis is truly sad.

Congratulations to all those authors! I know how hard they must have worked to get those signings.

We'll see how they feel about PA when a year has gone by.

James D. Macdonald said:

Congratulations to all those authors! I know how hard they must have worked to get those signings.

We'll see how they feel about PA when a year has gone by.

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Truer words hath never been spoken; Amen Uncle Jim.

Where's the mainstream coverage?

The thing that has baffled me for over a year is why there has been so little mainstream (newspaper) coverage regarding the shenanigans of PA.

Yes, there's been a few articles. Perhaps it is a fear of legal repercussions, but they tend to be somewhat "watered down" (think Publishers Weekly).

It just isn't enough. Maybe not enough ex-PA'ers want to go on the record?

Tina said:

The thing that has baffled me for over a year is why there has been so little mainstream (newspaper) coverage regarding the shenanigans of PA.

Yes, there's been a few articles. Perhaps it is a fear of legal repercussions, but they tend to be somewhat "watered down" (think Publishers Weekly).

It just isn't enough. Maybe not enough ex-PA'ers want to go on the record?

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The two main tenents of journalism are "sex sells", and "if it bleeds, it leads." And that's all. Because of that, I doubt any story about publishing would ever be of interest to the general public. To the average Joe Lunchbucket, the writing world is arcane and its processes Byzantine; the triumphs and tragedies of writers isn't even a blip on their radar.

Quite so. Although I wish a few journalists would do research before writing thinly disguised puff pieces not of a specific author but the business model in general.

So depressing

Gravity said:

The two main tenents of journalism are "sex sells", and "if it bleeds, it leads." And that's all. Because of that, I doubt any story about publishing would ever be of interest to the general public. To the average Joe Lunchbucket, the writing world is arcane and its processes Byzantine; the triumphs and tragedies of writers isn't even a blip on their radar.

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You're right and it's so depressing. It makes PA seem even more leakproof.

Though...there are a lot of people who have thought about writing a book who haven't yet done so. Those that try to publish represent only a small fraction of those who've contemplated it (usually in relation to JKR-type fame). Maybe there are more interested readers (aspiring writers) who would be interested than the newspapers think...

I saw the 20/20 thread and that looks like a potential avenue of publicity. They have a knack for turning "special interest" stories into something the mainstream cares about. Shattered dreams could be a pretty big story...hopefully.

My local paper does this all the time. A few months back they did a whole, full color, front page of the "fluff" section of the Sunday paper for these twin brothers still in HS that used a vanity press (I don't remember who is was). Was first gripe was that they were from a very affluent school and family, so they could afford it. Now the annoying part was that these brothers didn't even TRY to go the traditional route. They heard how "tough" it was to get published and went straight to a vanity press. And they are obnoxious about it. Our local B&N has like fifteen copies of the book on the shelf. I could only get through about five pages before squeezing it back onto the shelf.

And you want to see great. I'm sure that someone has this up here somewhere but it bears repeating:

http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2007/03/nitwit-of-day.html#links

http://www.spaceark.net/

Hmmm, if it bleeds, it leads... maybe we should send Miranda a new Ginsu. Then she could put PA on the front page.

I don't know if anyone asked this before but did PA know about Miranda's criminal record when they hired her or did they not care?

zizban said:

I don't know if anyone asked this before but did PA know about Miranda's criminal record when they hired her or did they not care?

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Perhaps that was why they hired her.

"Local Man Writes Book" is a standard human-interest story. The newspapers, particularly small-town ones, don't enquire too closely about the publisher.

Some silly thoughts

I believe PA's model of business is based on the theme that everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. They sell the thing we want most at a price we can afford. If the price for being someone is an attic full of books, we gladly pay it to see our names in lights and our books in a store front.

It is an easy illusion to create. A good website, and snappy approach, a promise of being exclusive, and books available in stores from sea to shining sea. Who could resist such an offer?

Where the problem lies is in seeing your name associated with a scam. You feel humiliated, distraught, and small. You become just as dirty as the culprit.

The problem is that in some real situations, PA authors realize that dream, the 15 minutes of fame. My PA book was featured and reviewed in several nudist magazines. (I'm not talking about worldly fame and fortune, just a big fish in a tiny fishbowl)

Some people get their name in the local paper. Some see their friends and family rush down to the bookstore to order their babies. It is a real boost to your ego to see people genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Now, with this in mind, you see why some become long time PA people. In order for the people to stop cheering on PA, you have to exit your 15 minutes and find what others found, a shell of a company.

Perhaps if we could somehow cut this 15 minutes of fame out, we would cut off their market.

jat awp