I've waited for a little while before I came on here. I will be happy to tell you anything you want to know about PA. My motivations are plain and simple, I want to protect everyone from that place. So ask away, but please don't kill me.
PA from the inside
- Thread starter deepthroat
- Start date
Interesting choice of screen name there.
So...
Who are/were you?
What did you do there?
How do we know you worked for PA?
So...
Who are/were you?
What did you do there?
How do we know you worked for PA?
Well hi. 
I bet this thread is going to get interesting fast. I'm not sure what to ask. Did you have to deal with superiors yelling, "Give them no money! Send out more highly priced offers! Re-word that response - it's not threatening enough!" lol I don't know.
I bet this thread is going to get interesting fast. I'm not sure what to ask. Did you have to deal with superiors yelling, "Give them no money! Send out more highly priced offers! Re-word that response - it's not threatening enough!" lol I don't know.
I asked this of the last former PA employee who came here. Of the 50,000 authors, roughly how many were active? In other words, how many ordered books during any one billing period?
If you read P.N. Elrod's blog then you know who I am.
PublishAmerica is located in a plain looking brick building behind the Thomas/Bimbo Bakery on the edge of Frederick, MD. I floated around through a couple of different departments, and handled hundreds of books. If it helps there is a weirdly out of place poster of hot sauce across the hall from the kitchen, and Miranda's office is covered in horse stuff and New Orleans Saints stuff.
Well hi.
Believe it or not, until about a few weeks ago, we weren't directed to ask for money. Another department handled that. Also, if anyone knew who the superiors were, that would have helped. It's not quite clear who had what roles in that place. Except for the tripartite evil doers in that place.
Miranda was the final authority, but it depended. To this day I am not sure who I reported to in the different departments. It seemed to change daily.
I worked in all departments except, acquisitions and shipping and receiving.
I handled hundreds of authors. My guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 - 3,000 presently. Most of them in Children's Picture Books and Juvenile Fiction.
Quota numbers:
(Books must be completed, cover, layout, and in review)
Children Picture Books: 1 per hour, 4-8 depending on your shift.
Regular Books: 3 per day
eBooks: 6 per day
audio books: 1-2 per day
They have a crew of 15-20 at night working on children's books. The day crew is 30 strong in the book departments. Another 25 work in Acquisitions, support, shipping, and misc.
The book department has 3 working on eBooks, 3 working on Audiobooks, and 24 on new books.
16 in regular books, and 8 childrens.
Last edited:
Unimportant
No COVID yet. Still masking.
Staff member
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Why did you take the job? And why did you leave it?
Also: Bimbo Bakery? Seriously? What an odd name.
Also: Bimbo Bakery? Seriously? What an odd name.
I worked in all departments. No one really reports to anyone in that place. There is no clear structure of management in that place. The only certains are HR, Miranda, Larry, and Wilhelm.
Bimbo Bakeries USA is a big company.
Would everyone like to know a secret about that place?
In Frederick, MD there are three temp agencies that service PA. Aerotek, Speherion, and Randstad keep a supply of temps for the company to consume.
There is a high turnover at PA for a reason, Temps. I was hired through a temp agency. I left over ethics, and the fact that I could not sleep at night. After I was moved into a deeper role besides superficial layout and cover design; I saw the deep lies that flow through that place. There is no truth, and lies is all that comes out of that place. I was there under 6 months.
I left over health reasons. The stress of that place got to me.
It sucks because they actually paid me well. However, they didn't pay me well enough to continue. As someone who has worked in different parts of the publishing industry, this place drove me bonkers. Employees are put in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position. However, most employees, like the prey, are not aware of how things really work in the industry.
LoL. Bimbo's a national brand. He's a white, fluffy teddy bear in a baker's hat.
Not tooting my own horn, but people loved my covers. Covers are the only place where I could stretch my talent. My covers were the nicest. Everyone else does the generic covers. They aren't really creative. They just do them to get them churned out. I really didn't care about numbers. I broke the rules in a lot of respects and did some light editing. Since I don't work there any longer I can admit that.
My writers were pleased generally. However, some people can never be pleased.
Now, my experience is that PA is great at doing puffery. They are pros at lying, and make their authors feel they will be something they will never achieve at PA. It's sad but true. These published authors have not met the truth. I generally handled first timers. So I got the gullible ones.
One of the few things I will miss is the smell of the english muffins as they were going through the line.
The other thing I will miss is the very cute red headed girl that worked in the same part of the office as I did at the end.
I never had the gusto to destroy the no office dating policy. I wish I had.
I think the only thing that would really satisfy is a tell-all novella about the daily grind in a place like PA. People are asking facts and figures but honestly I kind of want to hear about if so-and-so was cracking an actual whip at employees or laughing maniacally in a swimming pool of money and children's tears. Just something interesting like that, lol. Probably not as obviously evil in reality though, huh? Ignore my feverish imagination.
Ignore my feverish imagination.
That's sad to hear but that sounds about right for what I've heard about PA. I'm glad that you did take some time to give authors nice covers. That does mean something, at least. I've seen the threads about recycled covers with minimal effort put in to them.
I think the only thing that would really satisfy is a tell-all novella about the daily grind in a place like PA. People are asking facts and figures but honestly I kind of want to hear about if so-and-so was cracking an actual whip at employees or laughing maniacally in a swimming pool of money and children's tears. Just something interesting like that, lol. Probably not as obviously evil in reality though, huh?
Nah Miranda, Larry and Wilhelm would have to crawl out of 7th and 9th circles of hell to do that. There isn't a swimming pool of money. However, I will say that they have great taste in French wine.
It is really quiet in that place. There isn't much conversation going on. Honestly, it is kind of odd. People really don't speak to each other unless spoken to most of the time. It's not comfortable silence; it's awkward. Everyone has their iPods or various MP3 playing smartphones on. So everyone is kind of locked in their own world. We really communicate through email. That at best can be described a few and far between.
They do recycle covers, and are really generic. I put effort into my covers and did nice effects to give their covers some zing. Even though my books would not be available in book stores. I wanted my authors to have something nice they could display. I mean these authors put their hearts in their books, and the least I could do is give them something beautiful and original.
I did my best with what I had. We only have Adobe Photoshop CS2.
Here is the list of programs we had at our disposal.
Adobe Photoshop CS 2
Adobe InDesign CS3 and CS5 (Not everyone has CS5 yet)
Adobe Pagemaker (used sparingly)
Microsoft Word
Corel WordPerfect
That was it.
Audiobooks are not read by live people. They are done with a program called Text 2 Voice.
Last edited:
Did they repeal the "no phone" policy one of the other former PA people mentioned here a while back?
Well if there is a no phone policy then everyone including the uppers are in direct violation. I think that policy was a rumor, and not the truth. It probably was repealed when smartphones had the ability to hold tons of music like mp3 players. Almost everyone that works there has a smartphone of some sort. Most people have Android devices. I noticed a few iPods, and iPhones in that place. Interesting thing though, Larry is a technology guru. Last year everyone got engraved iPod classics for a christmas present. This year we all got gift cards.
Last edited:
D: Wouldn't that be terrible, though? Unless it was much nicer software. I can't even stand to listen to the weather with an automated voice. It would suck to publish a book, get all excited about it being put on audio tape, only to find that it's just the MS dumped into a Text2Speak software. PA takes a lot of shortcuts I'm guessing.