PublishAmerica

PublishAmerica

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PublishAmerica

PublishAmerica is a Maryland-based print-on-demand book publisher founded in 1999 by Lawrence Alvin "Larry" Clopper III and Willem Meiners. It has been the subject of controversy because it has been accused of being a vanity press or author mill by some writers and authors' advocates,^[1] despite its claims to be a "traditional" advance- and royalty-paying publisher.

History
Criticism

Censorship and Copyright issues
Acceptance of hoax manuscripts
Arbitration

References
External links

History

The current executive director of PublishAmerica is Miranda Prather. In 2004, Prather claimed that 80% of authors who submitted manuscripts to the house were rejected, and that the house had "30 full-time editors" with plans to expand.^[2]

In August 2005, PublishAmerica was sued by Encyclopćdia Britannica for trademark violation over PublishAmerica's PublishBritannica imprint. The matter was settled out of court,^[3] with PublishAmerica agreeing to stop using the "PublishBritannica" name.^[4]

In late September 2005, PublishAmerica announced its books would be returnable by the bookseller if they failed to sell, a standard practice among other commercial publishers. The announcement stated that this applied to "all" of its books, though it noted that there would be "a few exceptions initially" and that the offer would apply to United States booksellers only.^[5] As of October, 2008, any PublishAmerica book ordered through any Barnes & Noble outlet must be paid for in advance. While attempts have been made to physically return PublishAmerica books, to date, no money has been refunded for their purchase.

In October 2008, PublishAmerica announced via email that its books would no longer be available through Amazon due to Amazon's new policy regarding POD books.^[6]

Criticism

Critics charge that PA's contracts and practices prove the company is a vanity press. PA pays a nominal US$1 advance to its authors, provides minimal editing and provides few of the services handled by trade publishing, including retail distribution, marketing and media relations. Disgruntled authors told Publishers Weekly that PA did not pay royalties owed to them, sold books it no longer had any rights to sell, set unreasonably high list prices and lower-than-average discounts for authors to buy their own books and either neglected or failed to place books into bookstores.^[7]

PublishAmerica's Prather dismissed authors' criticisms, saying book prices reflected "what the market would bear" and that "we don't control the bookstores in the country."^[2]^[8]^[9] Other PublishAmerica authors have spoken out in support of the publisher, denying it is a vanity press and highlighting the opportunities it gives to unpublished authors.^[10]

Censorship and Copyright issues

Due to PublishAmerica's heavy censoring of its messageboards, many authors who were initially pleased and posted positive messages about the company are now unable to edit or delete those posts nor post new messages expressing their dissatisfaction with the company and their experiences with personnel. Upon receiving requests to remove messages by multiple authors, account AuthorSupport replied the "messages were now copyrighted by PublishAmerica" and that [the company] "was free to use them" as they preferred. The webpage containing the Terms of Service for the messageboards, which included the alleged assertion of copyright, now redirects to the main PublishAmerica page.^[11]

Acceptance of hoax manuscripts

In an attempt to demonstrate a lack of editorial oversight at PublishAmerica, several authors have written "sting" manuscripts. For instance, in December 2004, PublishAmerica agreed to publish the novel Atlanta Nights, which was later revealed to be a hoax. PublishAmerica also accepted another author's manuscript which featured the same 30 pages repeated ten times.^[12]

Arbitration

In December 2005 PublishAmerica author Philip Dolan, who had spent between US$7,000 and $13,000 promoting his book^[13] only to find that no book stores were able to order copies of it, took PublishAmerica to arbitration for breach of contract. Mr. Dolan also alleged accounting irregularites; despite a clause in his contract allowing him to inspect PublishAmerica's accounts, his accountant was denied access, and Dolan received royalties for fewer copies of his book than he was able to account for having sold himself. He was awarded an unspecified amount in compensation for PublishAmerica's breach of contract, and his contract was rescinded.^[14] Due to this case, newer PublishAmerica contracts now specify any legal dissatisfaction must be handled through the Maryland State Courts. Publish America contracts previously had restricted legal challenges to arbitration only.