PublishAmerica is an Oyster
April 16th, 2008 admin
PublishAmerica is like an oyster. An oyster is stuck to a rock in the sea therefore highly restricted in reproductive options.
How will this wonderful and delicious aphrodisiac bring itself to my table on a half shell with lemon and horseradish in ever replenishing supply? The oyster puts out an enormous amount of egg and sperm into the water, so thick as to cloud the aquiline surroundings, floating on whatever currents exist they go, with a chance meeting in reproduction being very slim. So many potential oysters become food for something bigger like a baby sea bass.
PublishAmerica eats the creative potential of many authors, and like the baby sea bass PublishAmerica is relatively new in publishing, and infantile as a child doing something bad. They do very bad things, are caught and bully with a lawyer.
Like oyster sex PublishAmerica does not even bother to read the books that come in as evidenced by Atlanta Nights, purposefully the world’s worst book, and written by a committee of authors in order to sting PublishAmerica after PublishAmerica insulted Science Fiction writers. PublishAmerica signed the book which had chapters repeated and a horror of a style.
And like an oyster, PublishAmerica filters the waters with psychology. An oyster filters the waters for nutrition, and PublishAmerica filters the water for frustrated authors that are possibly first time authors, and relieves them of their hard work only to shove it back down their throats, as PublishAmerica’s customers are mostly their authors themselves. Playing on the basic human desire to have a voice and to leave a record, it filters those of us, like myself, that are convinced that we need to not wait to bring our voice to the public, and have searched for either an agent or traditional book publisher with no success. We falsely believe that PublishAmerica will bring our voice out, but they won’t. They will just sell overpriced books to us, not to Barnes and Noble as the PublishAmerica book is not corporeal in their stores.
Such legwork they do, I’m telling you, they are non-ambulatory unlike a traditional publisher. PublishAmerica has no return policy, integral in the chain bookstores method of doing business so before you go signing a contract with PublishAmerica, try to find a PublishAmerica title in a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. The legwork on your book they will do is electronic, releasing it to only websites that sell books. Then they print them on demand.
PublishAmerica is a publishing company that brags of its 26,000 authors. One female oyster can release one million eggs over a lifespan. I liken PublishAmerica to the oyster since PublishAmerica reproduces money by releasing tens of thousands of authors who will turn around to buy their own books. They also have no interest in their spawn, PublishAmerica and the oyster.
Has a PublishAmerica author become a successful oyster? PublishAmerica is merely an interesting twist on the vanity publishing idea, and I got sucked into it and no, to my knowledge no PublishAmerica egg has met a sperm to become a successful oyster. They are merely floating in the water as potential oysters do, waiting to be eaten by something larger like a baby sea bass, or in the case of a PublishAmerica author, a book promotion shark that swims the PublishAmerica new release page waiting for “food,” no ifs, ands or buts.
What is a writer?
What is the profession of a writer? It is to write. To be a businessman can be antithetical to writing, you may say that some writers are very good businesspeople, but I would venture to say that they learned this, so still it’s antithetical to writing to begin with. Let me find my voices first, says the author, and then the business will come to me in some way, as traditionally, if my book is good, I will find an agent. Let me say that agents are not always prone to the pitch, and authors have trouble pitching, as in boiling down a book, filled with tremendous meaning to them, into a pitch. Business is just a learned skill and writing is an inborn talent. I’ve never seen anyone trained to be a writer if there is no inborn gift and need to express and businesspeople are made.
I put this out like an oyster puts out the promise of reproducing itself. I am also driven by instinct like the delicious oyster, don’t eat me, but know that I was made to do battle by instinct. My instinct tells me that a child of mine, a novel, has been sold into prostitution to the pimp, disguised as a “traditional publisher,” this pimp called PublishAmerica. But even a poor pimp PublishAmercia is. They do not advertise their sexual professionals. Well, instinct was not in operation when I did sign a PublishAmerica contract.
At this point the situation is clear. PublishAmerica cannot do justice and defrauds the literary author. PublishAmerica does great and incalculable damage to a writer’s career.
Warning!
I want to warn those who are so enamored with their writing, like I was and am, that PublishAmerica is not where you should go. Please hold out!
PublishAmerica should have a disclaimer. PublishAmerica should tell us that if we want a traditional career in writing, in literature, that we should stay away. They do bandy the “traditional publisher” appellation in describing their business. They are a traditional publisher like my Rabbi is Catholic. PublishAmerica is a Vanity Press, and no amount of careful wording, verbal subterfuge or empty claims should gloss over this.
The literary press will not take a PublishAmerica book seriously, as they are uninterested in a vanity pressing. It takes a prerequisite interest in the book supplied by a traditional publishing. I’m sorry to say that my first novel may come to light after my second novel gets a REAL publisher.
Editing
PublishAmerica should also tell us that their editing is a sham. PublishAmerica does not understand editing in literature, maybe in grandma’s memoirs, old soldier’s war stories, cookbooks and Republican family values tomes. PublishAmerica sent their first “edit” back to me with all of the “buts” with comma. The second edit came back with the word “District” spelled “Disrtict” in total. All of us know that “but: requires comma only at times. Besides royalties that are too low to make sense, sham editing is a very consistent item in the complaints of the PublishAmerica author. It is basically a lie that they have editing.
Book Shelves
PublishAmerica should also tell you that they would not get your books onto the shelves of the bookstores, those mainstream ones that we often visit. PublishAmerica tells you otherwise. Earlier I said, go find a PublishAmerica book on the shelves of a main bookstore chain. This is the crux of PublishAmerica identification. A true traditional publisher is present on these bookstore’s shelves and PublishAmerica is not.
PublishAmerica did announce that Amazon.com will not carry their books unless Amazon, who is now seeking to become a vanity press themselves (maybe), prints them in-house. PublishAmerica sent out an email blitz to get their 26,000 authors to protest. I sent Amazon a “right on, don’t even carry my book.” I don’t want you to buy my novel.
Has the traditional publisher, Random House, sent out emails announcing to their authors “March Madness! Take an extra 10% off of your books you order in the month of March?” Random House is in the business of selling books to booksellers not authors.
But, PublishAmerica is a democracy of a sort. It allows an author, like myself, to “bypass” the normal channels to relieve us of our need. Most people who write a book have to write a book. So, as a first time author (it’s an affliction) polishes the last of his pitch, then he finds that there are too many books out there (PublishAmerica is mostly pollution) and things may have changed in the book world.
SuperAgent
I had an agent, a very nice man named Peter Miller, tell me that he read 100 books a week. I, like an idiot, didn’t ask him to detail it out. How do you read 100 books a week? Please tell me, I want to be able to do this too! I have to imagine it to get a sense of it now. If Mr. Miller reads 100 books a week, how does he read them? One answer is that he has a scaffold over his neck and shoulders, like a harmonica holder Bob Dylan used, but our Mr. Miller has a book there at all times, he is reading constantly and having someone lead him around to toilet, cleanse, eat spoon fed or by feeding tube, out for a Sunday drive in the county while turning the pages for him.
I take Mr. Miller at his word so he must not really read a book, to the contrary, and to the detriment of the reading population, he’s looking for hooks at certain places. I conclude from this one scenario that our very nice man is dividing the book into an alien form, and seeking certain actions in certain places. He could be reading in Golden Mean and looking for climax two-thirds through the book. In any case, my novel is written in a musical form since I am a composer by trade. I couldn’t help but make a form like my piece, “The Transformations of Young Werther,” a form that uses a transformational process on a number of different motives.
Two Brothers and Genre Writing
All through the Internet I found strange groups of people who read only one kind of fiction. People wrote or read genre fiction, and made big sites. Impressive, and they pose themselves as experts and talking heads as I am now doing. Some of them were taking shots at PublishAmerica. I spoke—they eventually yelled. We did agree that PublishAmerica was a predatory reptile (a alligator seems a more apt description of something chewing through all flesh indiscriminately), deceiving authors into handing over the goods for PublishAmerica’s benefit, but I found that when it got deep, genre writers tended to be shallow, and they yelled at my prose and one fool said it was unreadable. Can you comprehend me now? Genre fiction reading ruins the child of our reading if we don’t read new kinds of writing. And boy, there are two brothers with a site for mystery writing that epitomized shallow reading and mental atrophy. If we don’t seek new types of reading we will become fused like those brothers. I ended up being insulted and yelled at, but I realize the source and forgive those still growing towards oysterdom. But, we can agree on PublishAmerica and therefore I love mystery writers and their goofy spokesmen. Murder She Wrote! I am happy to see Dick Van Dyke from time to time.
The Annual PublishAmerica Book Burning
The Annual PublishAmerica Book Burning will take place. I am searching for PA authors whose books will be available for the torch by their own hands. Let’s set a match to what we were deceived into thinking was our chance to birth a successful child. We mated with a genetically damaged spouse.