PublishAmerica: Now With 67% More Poodoo!
Fun fact: did you know that back in 1997, Miranda Prather (Executive Director of PublishAmerica) was arrested for faking a hate crime?
This doesn’t really surprise me. After all, this is a company widely reviled by anyone with the slightest clue about publishing. It’s the company that accepted the deliberately and brilliantly awful book Atlanta Nights, the same company that published Night Travels of the Elven Vampire with a horribly Photoshopped (and illegal) cover of Orlando Bloom. The Absolute Write boards have a great deal of info on PA, everything from their $1 advance (so they can claim to be an advance-paying publisher) to advice on how to get out of a PA contract. Here’s a summary at AW about why they don’t recommend PA.
Apparently it’s now reached the point where even PublishAmerica wants nothing to do with PublishAmerica. From Writer Beware comes PA’s latest “offer” — PA authors can get their books relisted with a new imprint called Independence Books with the following benefits:
- Not registered as POD in vendor databases.
- Not registered as PublishAmerica.
That’s directly out of PA’s letter to their authors. I’m suspicious of the PoD designation thing, but it’s the second part that gets me. I wish I could have been there for the meeting where they decided the best thing they could do to sell books was to try to disguise them as non-PA titles. Just for fun, I’m imagining the conversation with various Star Wars characters doing the voices.
Emperor: “It appears that we’ve so thoroughly destroyed our reputation that bookstore staff spontaneously burst into sickly green flames at the mere mention of our name. Something must be done!”
Rookie Stormtrooper: “Hey, what if we tried producing better-quality books, and maybe started trying to sell those books to readers?”
::Flushing sound as the new guy is dropped into the rancor pit::
George Lucas: “We should hire that Brittany Spears guy to produce a video where he cries and says ‘Leave PublishAmerica alone!’ Better yet, I’ll create a CGI alien to do it in a really bad accent.”
Emperor: “Implement this plan immediately.”
Vader: “Perhaps it’s time to offer another ‘deal’ to our authors. Our prices are 50-75% higher than other publishers’ titles, so we can let our authors buy books at 40% off and still the Empire shall profit.”
Emperor: “Inform our authors that we are displeased with their lack of progress. That should frighten them into buying more copies. But it still doesn’t fix our reputation.”
Jabba the Hutt [Translated (badly) from Huttese]: “Dude! You should, like, totally change your name. Like when you were sayin’ ‘I’m Senator Palpatine,’ but then you went all ‘I’m Darth Sidious, fool!’ Because nobody saw through that one!”
Emperor: “Excellent. Be sure to make them pay for the privilege…”
Jabba the Hutt: “And you should totally call it ‘Imperial Poodoo!'”
#
Seriously, when things are so bad that you’re offering your own authors the opportunity to hide their association with you, maybe that should be a clue that it’s time to give up and go home.
D. Moonfire
July 19, 2010 @ 10:21 am
As long as there are people desperate to get published at any costs, there is no reason for them to change. Like spam mail, PA is around simply because people are still handing them money. And, most of the cases, they are catering to that need to be “published”. Education may be helpful to teach people about PA, but it really comes down to one thing: money.
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David Forbes
July 19, 2010 @ 10:49 am
Brilliant. One minor fix, and then it’s perfection:
“Better yet, I’ll create a CGI alien to do it in a really bad, stereotypical racist accent.”
My work here is done. You can tip me on your way out. 🙂
Sean S.
July 19, 2010 @ 11:05 am
Heheh.
Tempest
July 19, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
I suspect that the whole Publish America scam has done better for them than expected. Who knew it could last this long and still have loyal customers. Obviously this new thing is a way to extend the scam even longer, now that they know it’s a sure-fire money maker no matter what people say or do.
Jim C. Hines
July 19, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
Education won’t help everyone, but I hope continuing to talk about it might help those open to hearing how publishing really works.
I came very close to submitting to one of these vanity presses years back. I understand the desperation. But if all you want is to be “published,” shell out a few bucks to Lulu.com and voila. There you go. If you want to be read, or to have your work sold in bookstores, it’s better to know up front that PA isn’t going to get you what you really want.
Jim C. Hines
July 19, 2010 @ 2:01 pm
At this point, I don’t really see them going away short of legal action. There are just too many would-be writers willing to believe anyone who tells them what they want to hear. “You’re wonderful and talented and shouldn’t listen to those meanies in New York who rejected you.”
I don’t expect PA and their ilk to go away, but I hope that there’s enough info out there to at least steer away those writers open to hearing the warnings.
Lorien
July 19, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
“bookstore staff spontaneously burst into sickly green flames at the mere mention of our name”
That’s right! I cringe inside when explaining to a customer why they have to prepay for a POD book. They usually look at me like I am trying to scam them.