by Sharon Yeates

Created on: October 26, 2009

Publish America advertises itself as a free but legitimate publisher while denying that it is a vanity press, however the manner by which it conducts business contradict its claims of legitimacy. Possessing many traits common to vanity presses, and offering few services common to legimitate publishers, Publish America has brought heartache and pain to many beginning writers.

Legitimate publishers seek quality material and work closely with their clients to produce a final product that will draw readers and other authors to the publisher. They provide quality editing services to their authors as part of the publication process. Publish America claims to provide editing services to their clients, however the final product they provide often reveals serious gramamtical, typographical and content errors. As a test of Publish America's editing skills certain writers deliberately submitted seriously flawed material to Publish America. One author did this by writing just a few pages of book material, and photocopying those pages numerous times. He submitted the copied pages as if they were additional pages to the book. Publish America editors did not catch the copied pages, even though there was no effort to conceal them. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made an effort to write the worst book ever, and submitted their final product to Publish America. They were offered a publishing contract. A common complaint filed by authors who used Publish America is that corrections they made to production proofs were ignored, and that final productions contained substantial errors that Publish America had been asked to correct prior to publication.

Legitimate publishers pay an author for their work, and work with the author to market the final product. Vanity Press publishers often charge authors to publish their creations, and make no effort to assist authors with marketing of their materials. Publish America pressures authors to purchase their own books, usually at outrageous prices for the appropriate genre, and offer little to no assistance in marketing of the final product.

Books published by legitimate publishers can be found on library and bookstore shelves. Clients of Publish America frequently report that they are denied shelf space by bookstores and are told that the stores do not carry vanity press items. Occasionally clients of the company can get a bookstore to agree to special order a copy of their work, but few authors who have used the company are

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>