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I'm a Little Bit Published!
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By Lisa Maliga
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The concept of being "a little bit published" is a viableoption for those of you who have never been published.
With the onslaught of electronic publishers, your manuscriptcan be uploaded and downloaded within a matter of days. Instantmoney will fill your online mailbox and your career as a writerwill be launched.
Better still, what if an online "traditional" publisherpromised you the opportunity for your manuscript to be turnedinto a trade sized paperback, which would then be sold in "brickand mortar" bookstores around the world? Not only that, yourbook would also be available for those people who hung aroundonline a lot and bought from known bookstores like Amazon, B&N,Books A Million, and Powells. And no more waiting for months oryears for your book to be edited like with those otherpublishers; your precious paperback can be available to thewaiting public within one month.
This isn't some vanity press, which charges thousands ofdollars, either. This revolutionary "traditional" publisher,PublishAmerica, is out to alter the entire publishing industryby letting everyone who has ever written a book on virtually anysubject, providing it's in English, have their story turned intoa real book with pages that are turned and not downloaded.PublishAmerica allows you access to closely monitored public andprivate messageboards, provides you with a free website thatthey edit, and, best of all, there is no pricetag to any ofthese convenient services. In fact, this company will even sendyou a single dollar bill to show you how much it thinks yourbook is worth.
In 30 days your book will be for sale online, costing you only$30 to make it "legal" by registering it with the Library ofCongress. Think of it as an insurance policy for your words.Words that may have taken you decades to put together. Wordsthat remain unedited, as one of the ways to rush your book into"print" is by choosing a non-editing clause.
Before your book is made public, PublishAmerica asks that youprovide a list of up to 100 of your families', friends' andassociates' names and addresses. Who will be the largest marketfor your book--those who know you. Who won't? These people...thevery folks they're discouraging you from contacting as theywrite: "please do not include businesses or organizations of anykind, including bookstores, media contacts, or governmentorganizations."
Since all PublishAmerica books are either unedited, or, if"edited," simply run through a word processor's spell/grammarcheck program and not actually read by a professional editor whomay offer character changes, chapter revisions, point outinconsistencies, etc., the quality of the tomes are almostconsistently amateurish. Books are way overpriced, have lowdiscounts, and are nonreturnable, even if a recent memo claimedthat the policy would change if at least 40 titles of eachauthor's book was sold that month. The September 2005 returnspolicy change was e-mailed to all PublishAmerica authors as aclever way of selling 40 books back to the author. Selling booksback to their authors is what allows Publish America to thrive.Three unpublished authors, namely Willem Meiners, Larry Clopper,and Miranda Prather, run this company. These con artists with acombined total of 0 books in print with publishers other thantheir own, are revolutionizing the industry which allows anyauthor who's typed up a few thousand words to become a littlebit published.
The concept of being a little bit published means that youreceive two free copies of your printed work. It also means thatyour book won't be available in libraries due to the fact thatyour book won't have a CIP [Cataloging-in-Publication Data]number necessary to include it in high school, university, orpublic libraries. And if you think your book will be appearingin bookstores nationwide, you are strongly disillusioned. Maybeone or two copies in a local shop--but unlikely your book willstray into stores in other states, counties or cities.
The PublishAmerica scam is similar to a Category 5 hurricanestill far from shore. There's a lot of anticipation and bluster.You prepare your promotion plan which encompasses schemes like:press releases, web sites, link exchanges, free copies toreviewers, booksignings, attempts to get other PublishAmericaauthors to review it, and a frantic quest to have everyoneyou've ever met in your entire life to buy, buy, buy your book.But, the gust of your book's impending arrival diminishes intodead air. Only your bank account, time, and pride have beenshamefully damaged.
Reality intrudes in the form of your royalty check, usuallylittle more than that $1 they sent you. The money wrongfullytravels from the author to PublishAmerica you learn. That paltryroyalty check, which not every author bothers to cash, in turnmakes the scam artists still more money. After being embarrassedout of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars buying his/herown book, the scammed author slinks away, maybe never to writeagain, embarrassed and ashamed. Most attempts to get the book'srights back result in a harsh missive from the nameless "AuthorSupport Team" reminding you that Publish America owns that title.
If you read that contract, or had a lawyer look at it, maybethat seven-year term didn't seem so harsh. Delusional thoughtshave been known to befall writers desperate to be published -even if it was only a little bit...
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