I'm a Little Bit Published!

The concept of being "a little bit published" is a viable option for those of you who have never been published. With the onslaught of electronic publishers, your manuscript can be uploaded and downloaded within a matter of days. Instant money will fill your online mailbox and your career as a writer will be launched. Better still, what if an online "traditional" publisher promised you the opportunity for your manuscript to be turned into a trade sized paperback, which would then be sold in "brick and mortar" bookstores around the world? Not only that, your book would also be available for those people who hung around online a lot and bought from known bookstores like Amazon, B&N, Books A Million, and Powells. And no more waiting for months or years for your book to be edited like with those other publishers; your precious paperback can be available to the waiting public within one month. This isn't some vanity press, which charges thousands of dollars, either. This revolutionary "traditional" publisher, PublishAmerica, is out to alter the entire publishing industry by letting everyone who has ever written a book on virtually any subject, providing it's in English, have their story turned into a real book with pages that are turned and not downloaded. PublishAmerica allows you access to closely monitored public and private messageboards, provides you with a free website that they edit, and, best of all, there is no pricetag to any of these convenient services. In fact, this company will even send you a single dollar bill to show you how much it thinks your book 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 of Congress. Think of it as an insurance policy for your words. Words that may have taken you decades to put together. Words that 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 you provide a list of up to 100 of your families', friends' and associates' names and addresses. Who will be the largest market for your book--those who know you. Who won't? These people...the very folks they're discouraging you from contacting as they write: "please do not include businesses or organizations of any kind, including bookstores, media contacts, or government organizations." Since all PublishAmerica books are either unedited, or, if "edited," simply run through a word processor's spell/grammar check program and not actually read by a professional editor who may offer character changes, chapter revisions, point out inconsistencies, etc., the quality of the tomes are almost consistently amateurish. Books are way overpriced, have low discounts, and are nonreturnable, even if a recent memo claimed that the policy would change if at least 40 titles of each author's book was sold that month. The September 2005 returns policy change was e-mailed to all PublishAmerica authors as a clever way of selling 40 books back to the author. Selling books back 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 a combined total of 0 books in print with publishers other than their own, are revolutionizing the industry which allows any author who's typed up a few thousand words to become a little bit published. The concept of being a little bit published means that you receive two free copies of your printed work. It also means that your book won't be available in libraries due to the fact that your book won't have a CIP [Cataloging-in-Publication Data] number necessary to include it in high school, university, or public libraries. And if you think your book will be appearing in bookstores nationwide, you are strongly disillusioned. Maybe one or two copies in a local shop--but unlikely your book will stray into stores in other states, counties or cities. The PublishAmerica scam is similar to a Category 5 hurricane still 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 to reviewers, booksignings, attempts to get other PublishAmerica authors to review it, and a frantic quest to have everyone you've ever met in your entire life to buy, buy, buy your book. But, the gust of your book's impending arrival diminishes into dead air. Only your bank account, time, and pride have been shamefully damaged. Reality intrudes in the form of your royalty check, usually little more than that $1 they sent you. The money wrongfully travels from the author to PublishAmerica you learn. That paltry royalty check, which not every author bothers to cash, in turn makes the scam artists still more money. After being embarrassed out of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars buying his/her own book, the scammed author slinks away, maybe never to write again, embarrassed and ashamed. Most attempts to get the book's rights back result in a harsh missive from the nameless "Author Support Team" reminding you that Publish America owns that title. If you read that contract, or had a lawyer look at it, maybe that seven-year term didn't seem so harsh. Delusional thoughts have been known to befall writers desperate to be published - even if it was only a little bit...