It will appear in the Washington Post's Book World section on Sunday the 23rd; you will be able to read it online at washingtonpost.com

An online chat is scheduled for 3 pm Eastern time on Tuesday, January 25. You'll find instructions on how to log onto the chat on the washingtonpost.com site.
***********************

So there you have it.

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Co-author of "The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Agents, Editors and Booksellers Behind Them,"
http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com

the article is up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Jan20.html

(you have to register to read it, unfortunately - and I don't want to clog space here.)

_________________
But Eeyore was saying to himself:
"This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it".

It let me in without registering.

Angela

good!

I went ahead and registered earlier today, so... can't really test that, doncha know...

:)

huzzah, I say unto you - huzzah!

:)

_________________
But Eeyore was saying to himself:
"This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it".

You can find the Washington Post article here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Jan20.html

Dee

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Co-author of "The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Agents, Editors and Booksellers Behind Them,"
http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com

*bam* *bash* *pow*

Holy newspress, Batman!!

And another article is at URL http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05022/446283.stm

Very interesting articles.

zubbycat

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"Read! Read! Read! Write! Write! Write! Rewrite! Rewrite! Rewrite!" - Pierre Berton
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

I have no stake in the self-publishing industry. But what is very interesting to me is that a staff of about 40 is cranking out 4000 books per year. That is about 80 books per week; or 2 books per per week per employee. Even if every single person worked in editorial, that would be a tremendous pace to churn out books. I have done a fair amount of copyediting and proofreading, and it seems pretty obvious that they are not spending much time on either at that pace.

I have a question; does PA require that you sell some minimum number of copies of your book? If someone had a book that they had written, and they wanted to see it printed for their own personal satisfaction but had no aspirations to sell or market it, could they send it to PA and have this done?

no, there is no specified number that they demand you sell. They do ask you to send a list (on stickers for easy application) of people for them to send a "new release" form to, offering them your book at a "discount", but that's not mandatory.

what they do is offer you 50% on your first purchase of 50 books or more (at least, two years ago when I was scammed), pointing out that book signings and the like usually demand that you supply your own books. After this you usually get emails every three-four months offering more "great deals" such as the push to have you buy books to get put into their New York Times ad - which ran for only three months and forgot such vital things as the IBSN of the books or what genres they were.

the pressure is there to buy your own books because that's often the only way you'll ever see them in the stores - you offer them on consignment to bookstores who won't order them due to the no-return policy and the like. It may not be in your contract, but it's implicit in their marketing to authors, not readers.

_________________
But Eeyore was saying to himself:
"This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it".

They could, Harry, but it would cost them $29 since Publish America requires their authors to buy their own copyright at $30. Subtract that $1 advance, and they have now spent $14.50 per book.

It was admitted in one of the two news articles that came out yesterday and today that approximately 1,000 books put out by PublishAmerica made no sales at all. Evidently, those authors weren't as happy as PA tries to make them all out to be. I suspect they saw the poor quality of editing and cover art and then just decided that they'd not order any.

In my opinion, that's the way to hurt PA severely. Send them a manuscript that you know can't be published anywhere else. Let them accept and publish it. Don't register the copyright, but do accept their editing changes. Then don't purchase any copies once they publish it. For every manuscript they publish that doesn't sell, they'll be out one more setup fee along with the salaries they have to pay to their editors. Another one or two thousand published books without any sales just might force PA to change its ways.

As Eric Sorensen of Resource-Media says, "Your opponents also know the value of science and scientists, and will use them against you. For example, it is still possible, in light of an unusual degree of consensus that human-caused climate change is bad and accelerating, to find scientists who dismiss the concept. Reporters bent on creating an illusion of balance in a story will find them."

You have facts, and the closest version of the truth we can know, yet a bald-faced liar zeros in on the absolute ultimate doubt and substitutes fantasy in place of sound scientific theory. The PA/AP story lends too much credence to 11,000 happy authors (happily duped for sure but happy now) and 25 disgruntled moaning minnies who thought they'd be famous with a Publishamerica POD book. That's bad framing.

The logline is that many more are disgruntled by the reality of the marketplace treatment of PA authors via the product i.e. not ready for publication, maybe ever, and the basic facts of the publishing industry that PA's vanity/hybrid model is designed to fail. For the authors that is.

PS: this is the only forum I haven't been banned from. It's odd really, but I can only attribute it to the high level of discourse from Mainers. I'm from Fairfield, Maine and my ancestors founded Gardiner and Orono. The latest was mindsight where one poster claimed I'd attacked her with diatribes and that "I played the truth casually." I'd never spoken to the woman or commented on her publicly, so I don't know where these people come up with this stuff. It's borderline libelous, but the fortunate part for me is that nobody considers them credible. It is insulting nonetheless.

I was first to go to the FTC about deception at PA and all I got was assaulted by agrieved authors too afraid to participate. I was called crazy and unbalanced; a lunatic. None of this including infringement of copyright was mentioned in the two stories. They just played the bizarre off the bizarre and Barnum and Bailey scam publishers waltz off into business history.

Many PAer's are overly sensitive and refuse to accept the realities of publishing. MY message is simple: submit to real agents and publishers if you want your work to really make it and be read and have a career. There's little evidence that anything else will work, ever.

_________________
Always report the truth

One more framing point, the advances were portrayed as $1-1000. That creates the illusion of a real small publisher. Really bad misinformation. Anyone one think they can produce the source who got an advance over $1?

I tested the complicated editing rejection criteria mid-way into my sting. My latest manuscript has over 300 endnotes and I tried to publish it to pdf on my laptop with wordperfect and it wouldn't publish to pdf. Since that's all they do, any complications are rejected as too much work. I wouldn't have given to them really. Just a test.

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Always report the truth

I think this is what I said earlier in my post. If you want a career, go the traditional route and take the time to do it right. But if you just want one book to hold in your hands -- and that's enough to consider yourself validated, then go with PA. You CAN market it well enough to sell a few thousand books, but that's NOT a career, and the industry will never consider you to be a published author. Unfortunately, as the Washington Post article accurately stated, many writers THINK all they want is a book in their hands when, in reality, they actually want a best selling book that the world recognizes as "real". That's not likely.

Thanks to those who notified me that I was being quoted (and quoted incorrectly and out of context) on another site by the unnamed person(s). I believe it's now been taken down. Unfortunately, while I'm not "anti-PA", some took that to assume that I'm "pro-PA". It's not that black and white, but for the record -- I'm NOT pro-PA as a traditional publisher. They are a printer, but they do have a niche in the world. Thanks to those who recognize the difference. :D

Cathy

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Smiles!
Cathy
Road to Riches, Western Reflections (5/03)
Hunter's Moon, Tor Books (12/04)
Secrets-Fact or Fiction, OxCart Press (4/05)
Moon's Web, Tor Books (8/05)
Touch of Evil, Tor Books (1/06)