Meet the New Boss - Same as the Old Boss

Yay! How often do I get to use The Who's lyrics for a blog post?

Okay, okay, I know that line's used so much it's a cliche (and I'm a writer, I know cliches. :D) But in this case, it applies just so perfectly that I couldn't resist.

Anyone who's read this blog for any amount of time (and I really hope there is someone out there who has, winkwink, nudgenudge) knows how I feel about the pit of sleaze and ooze that is PublishAmerica.

Well, meet Independence Books.

Here is an email PublishAmerica sent out:

Dear author:

Sometimes a book deserves a new start.

Not labeled in book vendor databases as POD.
A low list price.
A new publisher.

Introducing:

Independence Books.

Independence Books is our new subsidiary. It is treated as an independent publisher. Not registered as POD in vendor databases. Not registered as PublishAmerica. Uniform list prices are $14.95.

Want a new start for your book? We will cause it to be published as an Independence Books title. It will receive a new ISBN and the new $14.95 list price. It will not show as POD. It will not list as PublishAmerica. ISBN-fed databases will show that your book is an Independence Books book, readily available from Independence Books.

Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your softcover, add to cart, use this discount coupon: IndyBooks40. Minimum volume is 7 softcovers. For 12 or more softcovers use the IndyBooks45 coupon.

This will cause your book to be published as an Independence Books title. It will no longer be available from us as a PublishAmerica softcover. (Your book’s paperback or hardback versions, if already activated, will keep their PublishAmerica designation.) Your order today will be printed under the new Independence Books logo ( www.publishamerica.com/independence), with its new ISBN. Transfer may take up to 6-8 weeks to be completed and will be permanent. Book remains under contract with PublishAmerica. Use this coupon for your softcover only; other applications will not be processed. PublishAmerica’s online bookstore will re-list the book as an Independence Books title generally within 24 business hours. Other vendors may do so at their discretion. Thank you.

–PublishAmerica Author Support Team

But, to quote the Disney movie Aladdin (one of my favorites, btw) "Do not be fooled by its commonplace appearance."

Independence Books is no less a vanity press than PublishAmerica. Once more, the Three Stooges (Miranda Prather, Larry Clopper, and Willem Meiners - although Meiners has since left the company.  Still, Three Stooges has a much nicer ring, doncha think?) are operating a vanity press, but trying real hard not to let on that it is, in fact, a vanity press. Just as PublishAmerica tried to hide its true self by calling itself a "traditional publisher" (a term that doesn't even exist in the publishing industry. PA created it to "differentiate" themselves from other vanity presses. Non-vanity/non-subsidy publishers are called commercial publishers, NOT traditional publishers.), so does Independence Books.

So, it looks like PA is trying to start all over again, under a new name - one that isn't tarnished with the slime PA carries. For months, PA has been going crazy, soliciting their authors will all kinds of "deals" such as:

1. Buy x copies of your book, and we'll send x amount of copies to: Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, et al

2. Buy x amount of copies of your own book and we'll donate x amount of money to Haiti, The Gulf Coast, Katrina victims, et al

3. Buy x amount of your book in hardcover and we'll send x amount to... well, you get the point.

It's all been seen as money grabs, and now, even the authors on the PublishAmerica Message Board (PAMB for short) are getting weary of the non-stop solicitations. Even the staunchest PA defenders seem to be growing weary, which leads to the speculation that PA is trying to reinvent themselves by erasing only their past. It doesn't look as though they are changing their business format - which is still selling to their authors rather than the general public, as all commercial publishers operate. They are still a vanity press. And if Independence Books operates the same way PA does (and I see no reason why they wouldn't. The Stooges don't give a rat's ass about being a commercial publisher - they make far too much money operating the way they do. It's easier, less work, no publishing experience knowledge needed. And sadly, there will ALWAYS  be a glut of would-be authors who are either:

a. too lazy to research the industry
b.too naive to research the industry
c. only want a handful of copies to give to friends/family members
d. don't/can't accept the fact that they've produced a book that simply is not publishable and refuse to move on and learn.

Which means there will always be a pit of sleaze such as PublishAmerica willing to separate these people from their money.

Now, of course, there is always the possibility that Independence Books will try to walk the straight and narrow. Time will tell, but given what I know about the Stooges and PA, that isn't likely.

As far as I can tell, the only thing different about Independence Books is the name. Books will still not be edited, will be overpriced, will have stock covers that may or may not have anything to do with the book's content, will be extremely difficult to get stocked in bookstores, will only receive author-propelled marketing, and will lack serious distribution.

In short - PA books without the stench of PA tied to their names. For now. If Independence Books lasts, I won't be the least bit surprised to see google searches of "Independence Books" + "scam" bring up the same number of hits as PA does.

A Friendly PSA

Over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler, you will find some of the best information, most amazing people willing to help and offer advice, support, etc, and some really heated political discussion - in addition to some serious terrific publishing knowledge.

One of the sub-forums is the Beware & Background Check (B&BC) - there people post about this agent or that publisher and others chime in either from their own experience or what they know about the standards in the industry.

The other day, a question popped up about a certain e-publisher and that they charge a $90 set-up fee if one of their contracted authors opts for the POD (print on demand) option. It's a one time charge (per manuscript) and only applies to the option of having your work available in trade paperback as well. They don't charge for editing, cover art, or ebook set up fees. Just for the print option.

For anyone considering a publisher like this - remember one of the Golden Rules of writing: Money flows toward the author not  away from the author. It's called Yog's Law and it's a biggie. Really. Any time a publisher asks one of  their authors to contribute financially to the creation of their book - you're dealing with either a vanity press (such as PublishAmerica) or a subsidy press. Either way, neither one is considered a professional writing credit and I think such fees hurt epublishing because authors should NEVER have to pay a fee of any kind to a publisher. Never. Publishers pay you, not the other way around. And yes, PublishAmerica IS a vanity press. It masquerades as a commercial publisher (or, as they like to call themselves, a traditional publisher. Which is BS because there is no such animal in commercial publishing.) No, they don't initially charge - but they bury their authors alive in a continuous landslide of emails - Buy x amount of copies and we'll send a copy to Oprah/Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg/President Obama. < - Seriously, they have been deluging their authors with ridiculous pitches like these. PublishAmerica. Vanity. Press.

So before you seriously consider paying a setup fee to any publisher, make sure you've exhausted ALL other publishing houses because you're about to sign away your book to a vanity or subsidy press. Any epublisher that expects to be taken seriously cannot charge these set up fees and hope to achieve the level of respect that epublishers such as Samhain, Loose Id, Ellora's Cave, Aspen Mountain have achieved. It just won't happen.

Just a friendly public service announcement from your friends at A Few Thoughts. :D

Qualifications and Advice

Oh, lookahere! It really is a new post!

So, while I have a little bit of a break between edits, and I'm taking a time out from the research I've been doing on Victorian London, so here we are with a shiny new post. Yay.

Anyway, I came across something on another blog, which struck me as both kind of amusing and fairly frightening. The blogger in question is a PA author (a new PA author, I might add), which is fine, I suppose (though we know how I feel about the vanity publisher that is PublishAmerica.)

But, this blog is aimed at giving advice to other writers. Okay, his intentions may be good, but upon reading this blog, good intentions are really all he has going for him. He's spouting off misinformation and half-truths as facts. He doesn't know what he's talking about, to be honest, and if an aspiring writer stumbles across his blog... To make matters worse, the advice he's offering is also loaded with grammatical errors as well.

So that got me to wondering, what, if anything, qualifies a writer to give advice?

I've been asked for advice, but beyond the most basic of info, I hesitate to offer any simply because I don't feel I'm qualified to offer it. Yes, I have some experience, but not nearly enough that I feel comfortable telling someone else what to do. And who knows? Maybe I'm more than qualified, but since I don't feel it - I'm not going to do it.

Now, I have to wonder who on earth would accept writing advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between a plural and a possessive? Or doesn't understand that there/their/they're and to/two/too are NOT interchangeable? And it isn't that it was a simple typo, confined to one post. He consistently misuses these words, repeatedly. What's worse? When a commenter pointed out what he was doing wrong, instead of learning, the blogger grew angry and basically wrote the commenter off as being "elitist." So, not only is he spouting off wrong nonsense, but he won't even listen to reason and accept that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and learn from it so that he can actually help someone else.

So, what does qualify a writer to give advice? Number of books published? Who they are published by? How long they've been writing? What genre they are published in? Or does it even matter if the person has never been published?

Or am I just being too nitpicky?

In Which I Actually Blog About Writing

Every so often, I wander over to the PA boards - one, because I'm nosy and two, because there is just so much misinformation handed out over there that it's almost like a field day to go and dissect the many myths bandied about over there.

Well, not everything over there is a myth. Some of it is just plain ignorance of how things work in publishing. And there is a lot of that over on those boards. To be fair, some of the ignorance is understandable, as there are a ton of newbie writers over there and some of what they have to learn just isn't going to be found on PA's message board. PA won't allow some of it and the rest, well when the majority of people posting over there believe such nonsense as authors are supposed to pay to have their books published - well, you can imagine how they answer any of the newbie questions.

And that brings us to today's post.

Reviews.

Now, the main purpose of a review - be it on Amazon or in Publisher's Weekly - is that it is for the reader. Not the author. Say it with me, Reviews are for the reader, not the author.

Now, as an author, I have to confess it's nice to read a good review. Gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling to know someone liked your book. Conversely, it's not so nice to read a bad review. They sting, even though it's not possible for everyone to love your words (and if I could figure out how to make everyone love my words, buh-lieve me, I'd do it!)

But in the end, those reviews, good and bad are there to inform the reader. Or the prospective reader, to be more precise. They are ego-strokes (or ego-flatteners) for the author, but that's about it. That's not to say those reviews go unappreciated, but I know they aren't really meant for me.

Now, my publishers take care of sending out ARCs (Advanced Reading Copy) to reviewers. I have no say in where they go or even if my books are reviewed. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to well over a year to receive a review. It depends on how busy the reviewer is, and whether or not your book is picked up from the reviewer's TBR (Too Be Read) pile.

There are plenty of well-respected online review sites, but there are also a few less-than-respectable ones as well - such as review sites who offer "fast-track" reviews, for a fee. Now, these reviewers promise to give an unbiased review, but I have to wonder how that's possible. If I've paid to have my book "fast-tracked", how happy am I going to be with that site if they've charged me and then give me a lousy review? How likely is it that I'm (hypothetically speaking, of course) going to return to that site with a future book?

So, to me, one of the golden rules of reviewers is the same as for selecting a publisher. The author should not pay for a review. Ever. At one time, there were rumblings about Kirkus (an extremely well-respected organization) was going to offer pay-top-play reviews - but I don't recall if they went through with it. Either way, I still don't know I'd pay them, even though a Kirkus review is considered primo.

Then there are the peer reviews. This is something you see all the time on the PA boards. PA authors offering to review each other's books.

Now, I'm sorry, but nothing can scream rank amateur like an unknown author reviewing another unknown author's book. Especially when said review throws about superlatives such as, "instant classic", and "a must-read" yet fails to give any information about the story, such as, the plot. Most of the peer reviews you find on the PA message boards are so vague that you need only change the book title, and wham-o! it can be applied to any PA book. That's not a review. It's an ego-stroke and nothing more. And that's all most of those PA-peer reviews are - it's rare to find a PA author who didn't absolutely adore the PA book he or she reviewed. Which is fine, I guess, if all you want is smoke blown up certain orifices. But it helps neither the prospective buyer (a review is worthless to me unless it offers up at least a smidgen of what the plot is, or even who the main characters are. PA peer reviews are famous for stating, "I don't want to spoil the story, so I won't tell you anything about it.") nor the author (we all want to know what you don't like about our stories. At least, I do. Tell me and I won't do it again - I hope.)

Just as a PA printed book does NOT count as a professional publishing credit, a PA peer review does NOT count as a true review. Trust me on this.

PublishAmerica

Well, after many months of research and writing, Marian Perera has finished her her article on PublishAmerica. Instead of hitting you with the usual numbers and statistics, she tells the story of "Bob", a fictional author who learns the rotten truth about PA the way most PA authors learn - the hard way.

I've done quite a few posts on PublishAmerica, so it's no secret how I feel about them. And in this article, Ms Perera highlights all the reasons why PublishAmerica is to be avoided at all costs if you are seriously pursuing a writing career. You'll meet Bob, and follow him on his journey from starry-eyed acceptance to horrified realization as he learns what sort of "publisher" PA really is.

It's a journey that those of us who peruse the PAMB now and again have seen too often. A newbie bursts onto the scene, full of hope and excitement at being offered a contract on a manuscript that s/he has polished and perfected (sometimes for years). Maybe this manuscript has received nothing but rejections, perhaps the author has done no more research into publishers than doing a quick Google search and submitted to the first publisher that popped up.

Either way, the story is painfully familiar. Joy. Elation. Amazement. The ability to finally call oneself a "Published Author" (and yes, many do capitalize it - I don't know why).

But then, questions start to niggle at the Published Author. Why is my book priced so high? Why won't major chain bookstores stock my book? Why are my emails to PA Author Support going ignored? Why are they demanding an apology from me?

Yep - those are only a few of the niggles. You'll see what happens to Bob when he begins to wonder if all is as it should be. It's actually pretty heartbreaking to see what happens to Bob - especially when you realize that, while he is fictitious, there are real people out there going through the same thing because of Publish America.

So go check it out.

300 Posts!

Wow, I've made it to 300 posts... pretty cool, considering my first post was a very, very, very lame "this is my first post and I don't know what to say" or something like that. It's in the archives if you're feeling brave (or masochistic) and the first time anyone left a comment, I almost fell out of my chair. Someone else was reading this? Whoa...

Anyhow, I'm glued to the Olympics right now - Team USA Men's gymnastics. They are freakin' awesome tonight! Those high bar routines make my palms sweat, but talk about spectacular. Holy Moses, those guys are on fire tonight. On. Fire.

And how about Michael Phelps? And that 4x100 relay last night! And his race tonight? Amazing. There's no other way to describe it. He is amazing.

I should try getting in some more writing-related posts, and I will. I'll probably be getting back to writing sooner than I thought, since my hands are killing me from all the knitting and, believe it or not, typing loosens them up.

But since I don't have anything in mind and it's getting kind of late anyhow, so here's a great post on Marian Perera's blog about reverse shoplifting. That's when an author whose publisher (let's say, PublishAmerica, for example) has the barest minimum of distribution in place and makes it so difficult for bookstores to order books that authors resort to such practices as slipping books onto bookstore shelves in the hopes that store personnel won't notice when (by some stroke of incredible luck) a customer tries to purchase said book. And yes, people have tried this. Marian conducted a little investigation and blogged about the results. Take a look and enjoy!

Promoting vs. Marketing

There are times when I think people tend to confuse the terms marketing and promoting when it comes to books. PublishAmerica authors are some of the worst culprits of this - take a look at their public message board, and you'll see an entire section devoted to the marketing of their books. And skim through it, you'll see things that make you go hmmmm... Some of the suggestions there range from the bizarre - tissue boxes with your book information on them - to the downright pointless - take a copy of your book into XYZ store and just leave it on the shelf. And I'm not kidding, those are two actual suggestions over there.

And though some do seem kind of funny (business cards, with your book info, stuffed into the handles of gas pumps. Only in NJ, it really wouldn't work because it's illegal to pump your own gas here), it's almost a sad kind of funny. These people have to do whatever they can think of when it comes to marketing because Lord knows their publisher does just about nothing.

Now, to a vanity published author, marketing and promoting pretty much are the same thing - and they know that. But PA authors are led to believe they have been commercially published, and that all authors are busy having their book covers emblazoned on tissue boxes all around the world.

No.

PA would have you believe that Stephen King has always gone from bookstore to bookstore, asking the store manager to stock his book. Or that Nora Roberts does. And James Patterson does.

Again - no.

Authors promote, publishers market. There is a difference. Commercial publishers have entire departments devoted solely to getting that publisher's books into catalogues, which in turn go to book buyers. Which, in turn, leads to books being placed on store shelves.

Promoting, however, is an entirely different animal. Yes, authors should and do promote their works. Go to any writer's conference - chances are there is what's known as a goody room, where you'll find pens and keychains, bookmarks, matchbooks, etc. - all with an author's website information, or perhaps their latest book cover and ISBN on it - cute little things that you pick up and tuck away and maybe use eventually.

Promoting is holding a contest on your website, or giving away bookmarks at a book signing. It isn't getting a book onto a bookstore shelf. That's not your job as a writer, that's part of your publisher's job and it makes sense. Avon's goal is to sell books. To people besides the author and the author's immediate family. To people well beyond a twenty-mile radius of the author's home. That is marketing. And that is something vanity publishers don't do. And it's a given that they don't.

Unless, of course, it's a vanity press disguising itself as a commercial publisher.

And, to any PA author who might happen upon this - no, it doesn't work to slip a book onto a bookstore shelf. If, by some chance, someone does pick up your book and intend to buy it, it won't be in the store's computer system. (I don't really know what happens in that case, so if anyone out there works in a bookstore and does know, please, tell me.) And if a store employee happens to find it, it will more likely than not end up in the trash. In fact, my advice would be to give up your PA book as a lost cause, chalk it up to experience, and get to work writing your next book. Write the best book you can and run as fast as you can, and as far as you can away from PA.