Experimenter J.

Rather than launch into the typical "PublishAmerica did me wrong" diatribe, I'd like to propose the following experiment to anyone considering signing with PublishAmerica. This experiment will take some time and effort, but it will familiarize you with some aspects of the publishing industry, and works equally well for ANY publisher you might consider. Ready? Let's get started.

Step 1: Go to the PublishAmerica online bookstore: www.publishamerica.net.

1. Ask yourself how many times you have visited the PA bookstore before right now. This is slightly more times than 99.99% of your readers will have visited it.

2. Have any of your friends have ever talked about browsing for books at the PA online bookstore?

3. Ask yourself how many of these books you have seen on shelves at your supermarket, bookstore, or have heard talked about. Anything look or sound familiar? Do any of the authors names mean anything to you?

4. How many of these books would you buy?

5. Note the various editions of the books. Take notes of the price, binding, and page count. How much does a 150-page softcover cost? What about a 230-page hardcover? How much do ebooks of similar size cost? [FYI: PA books come in softcover by default; not hardcover, PAperback (yes, both the P and the A are capitalized) or ebook. These other editions are usually "activated" when the author pays a fee or purchases a particular number of books.] How do these prices compare to what you pay in bookstores?

6. Figure out how much your book will cost. (In general, the number of double-spaced, 12-pt manuscript pages on your computer is approximately the number of pages in a PA softcover, give or take.) The book will be approximately this price on all websites on which it will be available. Is this what you envisioned your book selling for?

Step 2: Finding PA books on other retail websites.

1. Choose five PA books at random from the PA online bookstore. Note their authors, genres (sci-fi, romance, and so on), and see if they have a theme of some sort (vampire, Iraq memoir, etc.). Now, go to the websites for Powells, Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, Books-A-Million; any one of these will do. Search for all five books in turn. Do the searches find them? Are they listed as available? The lack of availability of books on third-party websites is a common complaint of PA authors.

2. Now, back out to the bookseller's homepage, and try to come across any of these books by a casual browse, as if you had never heard of the book or the author and were looking for books on the subject. For example, say one of the books on the list was a memoir of growing up in the segregated South. You could start at the "Browse Nonfiction" button and work through the various categories. See how long it takes to find the book on your list. This is how long it will take casual browsers to happen upon the book you have written, and how many other titles are likely to suit the browsers's interest before they get to yours.

Step 3: Finding PA books in bookstores. This will take the most effort, but, especially if you go the PA route, you will want to talk to these people when your book comes out anyway so you might as well get to know them.

1. Take your list of five books to a bookstore, the bigger the store the better for the purposes of this experiment. Ask them if any of the five books are physically available on the shelf. Not if they can order them, but if there is an actual copy of the book in the store at that minute. PA does indeed "make books available" to bookstores, but this is only through a special order by the bookstore. This is very different than arranging with the bookstores to stock them on shelves.

2. Ask them if they have ANY PublishAmerica books on the shelf. They should be able to search by publisher and find if they have any in stock. If there are no PA books on the shelves, your book has no chance of being there, either.

3. If you haven't done so already, tell the person who you are, that you have written a book, and you are considering having PublishAmerica print it. Ask to see the manager, if you aren't speaking to him or her already.

4. Ask the manager if the store stocks books published by PA. Ask him or her why not.

5. Ask the manager what promotional materials the store has received from PA.

6. Ask the manager if the store receives a catalog of titles from PA.

7. Ask the manager if the store has ever stocked PA titles, and ask him or her how that went and why they stopped carrying them, if it hasn't been made clear already.

8. Chances are by now that the manager will have told you that the store might stock your book by consignment in the "local authors" section. Ask the manager to describe this process in detail. This is very likely your only chance of getting your book in this store, or any store, for that matter.

9. Ask yourself how many times you have purchased a book from the "local authors" section if you didn't know the author or the book wasn't specific to your area and you had an interest.

10. Ask the manager if the store allows book signings. Ask if, when the book comes out, the store would be willing to buy and make available for you copies to have on hand for the book signing. Ask the manager why not, if you haven't been told already.

This experiment should give you a pretty clear idea of what to expect if your book were to be published by PublishAmerica, or by any number of similar publish-on-demand, vanity, and subsidy publishers. Some things are clear from the experiment, but some things might not be clear until after the contract is signed and the book is published:

A. PublishAmerica books are nearly impossible to find in stores, as the stores will not stock them due to PA's unfavorable return policy (among other reasons).

B. PublishAmerica books are nearly impossible to find online unless you are looking for a title specifically.

C. The only marketing done by PublishAmerica is back to YOU; you will have to buy copies of your own book in order to activate special offers and to "have books on hand" so you can arrange your own book signings and sales through consignment with no help from PA. PA does almost nothing of substance to sell your book to readers, and any such efforts are only in response to you buying a certain number of your own book to be included in the marketing efforts. PA is notorious for its "Buy 19 of your own books and we'll include your book in [book event/promotion aimed at a celebrity/discounted price]" email offers that are sent only to the authors. These offers are nearly always useless as far as marketing your book goes.

D. PA charges its fees after the fact through its inflated book prices.

E. The author support department is slow to respond to issues raised by the author, if they respond at all. The responses are often curt, and are sometimes outright insulting to you, their moneymaker.

F. The PA contract is stacked very much in favor of PA. PA is given the ability to terminate the contract, you are not. The contract allows PA to do literally nothing ("X will be done at Publisher's sole discretion") regarding the marketing and publicity of your book. Many of the contracts renew automatically after 7 years unless the author requests in writing that the contract not be renewed.

G. Under the current contracts, PA does not pay you royalties until $50 have accrued. Considering that books bought by the author are exempt from royalties and, at 8% of a $24.95 book, a book must sell 25 copies to people other than the author to get even one royalty check. Statistics show that books printed on demand (as PA does) sell well fewer than 100 copies total, and most of these are to the author. There are scores of PA authors who will never see a single royalty check, except possibly at the end of the 7 years, when the author will be rewarded with less the $50 for their efforts and 7 years of their life.