Once again, we have lots of good news to share. There is praise and recognition for PublishAmerica and its authors everywhere, from local media to big-city newspapers to the chairman of the world's number one book distributor, John Ingram.

Newspapers all over the country are now writing about PublishAmerica authors in record numbers. A sample: an Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal reviewer calls a PublishAmerica book "enjoyable nostalgia," the Elmira (New York) Star-Gazette marvels at a local romance story, the Huntsville (Alabama) Times calls a book a "quality paperback," the Sampson (North Carolina) Independent concludes that a local PublishAmerica author's "dream comes true," the Florida Daily Sun notices that their local author's fans are "eager to read his story," and the Iowa Times-Republican champions a factory worker who is now a published author. And that's just a small sample of the roughly fifty clippings that we have seen so far this week.

With more than one million books in print, PublishAmerica continues to break new ground and new records. Last year, our authors were responsible for 25 percent of the total growth of the nation's newly released books: in 2004 you helped America's number of new titles in print to grow from 175,000 to 195,000, thereby substantially improving the variety of new books for readers to choose from. This prompted one of the country's largest newspapers, the Detroit Free Press, this month to highlight PublishAmerica's industry-changing role.

We are also happy to announce that PublishAmerica has recently intensified its cooperation with Amazon.com and book printer Lightning Source. Together with Amazon's headquarters in Seattle where, at their invitation, we visited earlier this summer, we are investing in developing new marketing tools for our titles. Together we have also streamlined supply procedures, and for a good reason: readers are buying a PublishAmerica book at Amazon every twenty minutes, every hour of the day, day and night, every day of the week!

As for book printer Lightning Source, they are increasing the number of books they print on behalf of PublishAmerica, by almost doubling our volume. Owned by the world's largest book wholesaler/distributor Ingram Book, Lightning Source serves all major traditional U.S. publishers. At the signing of our new agreement, Ingram's chairman John Ingram said, "Having worked with PublishAmerica throughout its six-year history of steady growth, I am proud to be associated with such a forward thinking company that is bringing the reality of traditional book publishing to many thousands of new authors."

With a total staff of close to 80 fulltime employees, almost 14,000 authors under contract, and record sales in June, PublishAmerica is the fastest growing traditional publisher in the world. It is also a company of excellent financial health, privately owned, and profitable since its first year of operation. Relying on revenues from book sales only, the company has never taken any loans or accepted any outside investment.

We continue to be well aware that our success story, widely recognized throughout the industry and the media, is first and foremost the success story of our authors. It is your achievement, your effort, and your enthusiasm that is setting the records and breaking the barriers, in numbers never seen before in the long and grand history of book publishing.

Cheers to you!

PublishAmerica Author Support Team

dated 27th July 2005

This is a joke, right? Anyone looked at Predators & Editors lately?

My God, they sound wonderful. Give me their address, I want to submit a manuscript right after stabbing myself in the eyes with pointed burning twigs.

covered in poison.

Colin M

My maths isn't great but if they have 14,000 authors and 1 million books in print, doesn't they equal around 71 copies on average of each author's book? Which is probably about the amount that each of their authors buys of his own book, i.e. their total sales to the general public are around, oh, let's say nought. They boast about printing more titles but with no or very low sales, that can only work against the authors they do have.

"Relying on revenues from book sales only, the company has never taken any loans or accepted any outside investment."

You leave out one tiny detail: these book sales are to the authors and their friends and relatives!

Please note I didn't write this, I just put it up for general information, to be taken however an individual choses.

Ta!

Wow, I was just reading about this on Preditors and Editors and apparently they are so after the money they don't even screen their submissions!

I checked out my publisher, but its just a link to their website, and seeing that they've won tons of awards, I think I'm pretty safe. Phew!

JB

I'm one of those unfortunate people who believed PublishAmerica's promises... and now my book is dead, killed by overpricing to the tune of about three times the average market retail price for similar books.

Yes, my friends and relatives bought it, and I did too... which is the normal way of things in the world of PublishAmerica. I spent more than $1,000 buying 100 copies of my own book! It would have cost me less to self-publish it.

PublishAmerica does no promotion and expects its authors to promote their own work. Fair enough... BUT... what is the point of promoting my poor little over-priced book? Especially since bookshops refuse to stock it because it's a Print-on-Demand (POD) publication (besides of course the ridiculous price).

However, I could have lived with all the above, and put it down to learning experience. I could have shrugged it off as my own silly mistake.

But what really hurts is that PublishAmerica holds the rights to my book for seven years and won't let me go...

So I say, if you are an aspiring author: don't believe everything a publisher (or agent) tells you; ask lots of other authors; do Google searches; get the Society of Authors to check you contracts before signing them.

In my opinion, if somebody has given up on commercial publication, Lulu is probably the best option, offering free printing, with an option to set your own retail price at a reasonable level, and no strings attached. But if one wants to become a professional author, no POD publisher is going to open that door - least of all PublishAmerica (sorry folks, I'm still a bit emotional about this, losing a book that took me the best of four years to write HURTS).

Lucia,

Thanks for having the courage to share your story. I'm really sorry that you've been conned in effect out of 4 years of your best working time. But your story will help writers on this site who may be tempted by PA's hype.

Seven years seems an awful long time to keep a product which, from PA's point of view, is not worth anything to them after you've bought your 100 or so copies. Do you have any idea why do this? Is it just so they can boast about all the titles they have in print?

Some POD publishers' contracts allow you to get out of the contract if you sell your book to a mainstream publisher. Does PA's contract allow for this?

Terry

From what I've learned, some author's have got out of the contract, but only with a bitch of a fight and that's with the help of a mainstream publisher. PA has a forum page, I dipped in their once just for a look-see. There seems to be, or was, an even opinion. It left me some what perplexed. PA certainly seems to be a murky pool.

I don't know why they insist on keeping authors for seven years, even when there are no sales. Many other writers, in the same situation as me, have speculated about this mystery.

Some think, as you say, that PublishAmerica wants to make sure it can boast about the number of titles it prints. Some think the owners hate published authors because they were unable to get their own books published (before setting up PublishAmerica). Some think it's just a case of sadistic cruelty. Some think that maybe they thrive on negative propaganda...

PublishAmerica has offered me an amendment to the original agreement, allowing for contract termination if I were to sell my book to a mainstream publisher. But the amendment means starting again from scratch, with another seven years (I have five years' and seven months left now). Then, PublishAmerica requires first of all to see a contract with a mainstream publisher signed by both parties, then it wants the author to sign a gag clause (agreeing to pay $5,000 if the author or his/her friends, relatives and acquaintances say anything disparaging about PublishAmerica), then PublishAmerica agrees to sign the termination agreement (no deadline given), then there is a nine month wait before the author's rights are released. I really can't see any mainstream publisher being interested in a book under these circumstances... unless, of course, it was written by Shakespeare.

It's a real bitch, but I would look at this as a learing curve, so don't be so hard on yourself. At least you know for your next book, hey! Better to have signed once and lost than twice and been a real sucker.

Just trying to give you a bright side.

You've probably thought of this, but is there any way in which they didn't keep strictly to their side of the contract? Like publishing later than promised, or not doing whatever promotion they may have agreed? I was once able to get out of a publishing contract because the publisher had not delivered on promises - in this case, it wasn't actually written into the contract but I had emails to prove it.

Terry

Finding a breach of contract is not easy, since it's been worded in such a way that gives PublishAmerica a free hand. For example, all the references to promotion contain the words "at the publisher's discretion". However, I'm still hoping to find some clause, eventually. Maybe, if I employed a specialised lawyer, he'd be able to find something. Thank you for the idea of looking at the emails too. I hadn't thought of that!

Can you plagiarise yourself? How many changes to the actual text would you have to make before it is legally considered a new work rather than a revision.

Otherwise, put it down to experience and keep working.