by Don Davidson

Created on: December 05, 2009

I have had a book "published" by PublishAmerica, and I am dismayed to hear some people speak of them as a legitimate commercial publisher. If you are considering allowing PublishAmerica to publish your book, you need to get the facts first. And you need to do more than simply reading PublishAmerica's web site.

I received an education a few days after I signed a contract with PublishAmerica when, on a whim (prompted by a gnawing suspicion), I entered "PublishAmerica scam" into a leading search engine. I was frankly shocked and nauseated by what I found. Here are some things you need to know about this company if you are thinking about signing a contract with them.

First, and most importantly, PublishAmerica does not market or promote your book to the general public. Notwithstanding what you read on their web site and in their contract, the only real marketing PublishAmerica does is directed toward their own authors, in an effort to get authors to buy and self-promote their own book. In the nearly two years since PublishAmerica published my book, they have sold two copies. Two! The reason they have sold so few is that I refuse to buy my own book, nor will I help PublishAmerica try to take advantage of my friends and family members.

On my web site, christianityforthinkers.com, I have created a page called "The Truth About PublishAmerica," which includes links to emails from PublishAmerica in which they admit that they do not market or promote the books they publish. Their excuse is that the contract does not require them to do so (which is true). The bottom line is that if you publish your book through PublishAmerica, you will have to do all of the marketing and promotion of your book yourself. That will likely be expensive, and you will not sell many copies-in large part because of the price.

So the second thing you need to know is that PublishAmerica will price your book well above market value. My own book is a paperback book of less than 200 pages, with no illustrations or photos. And of course, it's written by an unknown author. What would you expect to pay for that? How about $20? My book is priced at $19.95.

Here are some other things you should know about PublishAmerica: (1) almost no book store will shelve a PublishAmerica book, for a variety of reasons, including PublishAmerica's poor reputation and their book-return policies; (2) PublishAmerica will publish almost anything (they actually offered a contract to publish a book called "Atlanta Nights" that was in fact a hoax-i.e., a book that was poorly written just to see what PublishAmerica would do with it); (3) you cannot trust what you read on PublishAmerica's web site-it contains deceptive and misleading statements, and any negative comments from authors are either not permitted or are immediately deleted; and (4) PublishAmerica's contract lasts for seven long years (with an automatic renewal for seven more years unless you opt out), and they will not agree to cancel the contract once you discover you've made a mistake (believe me, I have tried).

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