Authors' Allegation: Nothing Patriotic About Publish America I

by Steven Zeitchik, PW NewsLine -- Publishers Weekly, 11/17/2004

Publish America sounds vaguely like the name of some book-industry superhero, but it's hardly saving the day according to a number of the authors who are complaining vocally about it.

A not-exactly-widely-known Maryland house, Publish America has been courting authors to sign with it and has been seeking a higher profile through such means as half-page display ads in the NYTBR. But authors are now making sweeping charges against the house. Allegations run the complaints gamut, but basically boil down to this: the company presents itself as a traditional house but acts like a vanity one, and not a very upstanding one at that.

According to the allegations, Publish America sells books to which it no longer holds the rights, offers authors only a 30% discount, doesn't pay royalties it owes, engages in slipshod editing and copyediting, sets unreasonable list prices and doesn't pay marketing costs despite promises to the contrary. While it doesn't charge for printing the books, it does require a list of friends and family from the author and then proceeds to market to them heavily. This on top of claims of non-responsiveness.

It might be an understatement worthy of a comic-book that the authors, about a dozen of whom have contacted PW, aren't happy.

The enterprise, say authors, is in many ways worse than a vanity publisher because of how the house positions itself. "If they would just say buy your books up front and pay X amount and we'll give you X, Y and Z, then that would be one thing," said one author, Kate St.Amour, who wrote a spiritual thriller called Bare Bones. "But they don't tell you those things when you sign up with them."

Led by two authors named Dee Power and Rebecca Easton, the group is planning a media campaign. A note with more than 100 email addresses of aggrieved authors was recently sent to the press, and one says that the Maryland attorney general and other legal authorities have been contacted, though to little avail. The group is contemplating a class-action suit seeking rights-reversion and royalties.

Of course fly-by-night vanity operations are a well-known force in POD houses, but, if true, the size and scale of the complaints, and the retailing of its mission as large-scale traditional entity, makes it something of a different case.

So what exactly is Publish America?

If nothing else, it's a difficult operation to pin down. The company's site lists a number of books as well as their publicity hits, some of those hits very small. (eg: "Fallon Lak sent a copy of Torn Apart to Laura Bush and received a nice thank you note and an autographed picture in return.")

Its list includes a mix of highly commercial as well as some older celebrities (Jamie Farr) and genre fiction, calling itself in marketing materials, a "traditional publishing house." But the company also claims 10,000 authors and emphasizes author services as much as readers. Indeed, the TBR ad featured a select group of authors, presumably singled out for marketing, but comments like We "bring[s] the authors' dream to reality" seems more designed to recruit authors than readers.) Publish America did not return a call for comment by press time.

For their part, the authors say the goal is aimed at much at future avoidance as present restitution. "We hope to spare other people, perhaps thousands, the frustration and problems we've had with this deceptive company," said Power's official missive. More tomorrow.