Words of Advice on Publish America...

Last night I happened upon a recent message sent to my MySpace account.

It was from a fellow independant author, who is contemplating going with Publish America, as I did for The Unearthing, asking for a little advice.

----------------- Original Message -----------------

From: Ratsy and Kitten

Date: 4/14/2007 6:19:00 PM

Hi, I see that youre a PublishAmerica author. I saw some of your posts to another blog or something and then ran across you here so I thought I would ask you about PA. Would you if you could do it over again go with PA?

I currently have their contract in my hands for a childrens book.

After seeing some things about PA I am holding on to it while I think about signing it.

Do you think they are as bad as people are saying? I mean I hear bad stuff about Ford and Chevy all the time but I would buy their trucks so I am trying to make sense about whether a new un published author should take a deal with PA.

If you have some time to reply with your opinion I would appreciate it.

James Roudon. "Ratsy and Kitten"

----------------- My Reply -----------------

From: Kspace

Date: Apr 28, 2007 6:10 PM

Basically, Publish America has a bad rep, because of mistakes that were made during its first couple of years of inception. I wouldn't have gone with them THEN, but they are a different company NOW.

That, being said, there are certain things you have to consider before publishing with PA.

The onus will be all on you to market your novel. When I went with PA, I had anticipated remaining at my former employer's and being able to use my annual stock dividend cheque at the end of the year of publication of my book to launch as agressive a marketing campaign as I could.

PA won't do much to market your novel, although it will be placed with every major online book retailer around the world; that's a big part of the battle solved right there, but you'll be hard pressed to get any books into a major retail chain store.

I've sold, to date, four copies of my novel. This is not the fault of PA; I knew going in that I'd have to do the lion's share of the marketing...one of the reasons I went with them instead of going the full self-published route is that they picked up the tab for the printing of my book--an expense I would not have been able to afford.

When I lost my job at my former employer I also lost my stock options; I therefore was never able to mount my marketing campaign.

You need to have between five and ten grand to mount a successful marketing for a book. We're fighting an uphill battle because of the company's rep and because we're "nobody" authors. But money goes a long way to solving that problem if you can get the right advice.

The trouble is, without money, you'd have to spend about eight to ten hours a day going from site to site, board to board, chat room to chat room, community to community to market your novel...a commitment I could not live up to, but if you can then yes, you can be successful doing that.

Stephen Oliverez is an author (not with PA) who did just that and he's sold several thousand copies of his first novel. He's listed in my friends, so check him out and get some advice from him as well...tell him I say "hi".

Getting back to my weblog, the best advice I can offer is there, in the archives; most of the entries are about my quest to publish "The Artifact" (re-christened "The Unearthing" after I signed on with PA) and what I've learned along the way.

Thanks for thinking of me on your advice with PA.

Best of luck to you; let me know what happens!