Growing publisher stirs controversy

The Associated Press is covering the pluses and minuses of PublishAmerica. Founded in 1999, PublishAmerica is now one of the industry’s fastest growing publishers, with more than 4,000 new books released last year. But the rise of PublishAmerica has prompted both praise and criticism. While many authors thank the company for championing their books, its claim to be a traditional publisher – not a vanity press – has been challenged by writers’ organizations such as The Authors Guild and debated on author Web sites such as WritersNet and Absolute Write.

January 27, 2005 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. rochelle says:
    January 27, 2005 at 4:51 am

    They suck!
    I worked with a PA “author.” She came to me looking for editing help, saying that she’d had her manuscript accepted. I assumed it was in pretty good shape, but when I looked at it, it was dreadful. It was typed, not word processed, and pretty much unreadable. I thought I would be doing some light editing, but pretty much ghost-wrote the piece. They do not offer editorial support, as claimed. They offer light proofing, poorly done. When I finally finished the manuscript for the woman, it came back from the PA editor in worse shape than when I sent it, with punctuation errors that hadn’t been there before (not sure what style guide *she was using).And if the deem that it needs more than light proofing, there is a charge, but I’m not sure how much.

    The advances are usually closer to the $1.00 end, and the marketing support consists of an arrangment whereby PA authors can organize their own book signing at Barnes & Noble. They do place the titles on Amazon & BN, but that’s it.

    I took the editing job because I wanted the experience, and because I was moved by this woman’s story, poorly written as it was. In addition to editing, I had to bring her back down to earth and explained all the fine print in the contract she’d signed. And it did cost her–although I underbid the project by about 60%, it was still a large amount of money to her. I suspect they would have taken her manuscript as is, and published it without more than a cursory glance.

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  2. Katie says:
    January 27, 2005 at 4:52 am

    2nd hand impression
    I have a friend who has two books published with them, and she’s done booksignings. She’s been happy enough with them, but is pursuing other avenues. I think the people in article that are most incensed by the practices are people who were uninformed about the publishing industry as a whole and didn’t do their research, or enough research. That’s the one thing I’m grateful to the writing organization I belong to: if nothing else, I’ve gained a strong understanding of the business of publishing.

    Reply

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