Publish America

My complaint is about my book I signed with Publish America in 2010 and never received a dime. I purchased my own book and paid money to them to put my book in the bookstore, library and other option. I emailed them to cancel my contract with them and they asked me to pay them $299.00 to cancel my contract. I want out of this contract. Why should I pay them?

I received my royalty statement from this publishing company in February for my second novel, A Silent Killer Within'. PublishAmerica claims the mentioned novel did not sell one copy at all during the six month royalty period, in which is an outright lie and completely contrary to the evidence I have dated from Amazon.com illustrating the dates the book was sold, shipped and delivered and also more importantly, who the book was sold and shipped to. I have the actual statement of sales receipt. The person purchased a copy of both my novels A Silent Killer Within and Sworn Not to Betray. This company has been ripping its authors off, lying about sales of authors' books, and royalties earned for years and they are constantly getting away with it.

PublishAmerica is breaching their end of the contracts and being allowed to get away with it. It's truly absurd that they are being allowed to get away with and it absolutely seems that nothing is being done about it. They are playing with people's lives and dreams with no conscience. There is no telling how many novels my first novel Sworn not to Betray nationally and abroad that I haven't been given credit for and they keep sending me royalty statements claiming I haven't reached the required $49.00 amount in order for me to begin receiving royalties I've earned in the fifteen months for Sworn Not to Betray.

No one forced us to sign the contracts, which is true. But most who signed these contracts were under the faith and belief that we were going to be working with a very upstanding moral and professional publisher. August will be the third royalty period of the six months for Sworn Not to Betray, I promise they'll send me another statement claiming I haven't reached the amount required to begin receiving royalties. I hope someone out there in our great United States will be watching! Thank you sincerely!

They keep sending me emails to purchase my own book at a reduced price. They send me emails saying they are going to market my book, but that I have to pay a fee for them to do it and the fee is not cheap. I have requested that their legal department contact me about a possible plagiarism of my book, but they only email me back and say I should go to the "author support" link on the web site. I filled out that form, but so far, no response.

My book was just "published" in March, so I have no sales except what I have purchased for family and friends. After reading all the complaints, I probably won't have any book sales, and I certainly won't have any royalty checks. I want to get out of the 10-year contract they subjected me to, before things get any worse. I am willing to join in with a lawsuit, as this company needs to be shut down. It is misrepresenting the authors and breaching the contracts.

I've read the contract over and over. Not once did PA pay me any royalties. They claim that they will never ask authors to purchase their own work. They always send you, sent me offers to buy my books at a discount. The books "sell" for $24. A 75 page story for that much? No wonder they did not sell.

I had to purchase a few, 10, just so I could give them to relatives and I did sell on my own 4 of them. They never sent my stories to any promoter. They claim to have sent a copy to "The Oprah Winfrey Show". Never was one sent. Read the numerous complaints from other authors. They all say exactly the same thing. The pitch from PA is the same for everyone.

Publish America sent me an e-mail stating that none of my books have sold. Not one. They offered to "sell" me the rights to my book back to me for $148.00. That is outrageous. In the contract, I retain the "rights" to my books. Not PA. The contract is full of contradictions and falsehoods. Publish America has lied, deceived me and other authors. All I ask is that they cancel both contracts that they hold over me for my two stories. I will never use PA again. I will continue to alert everyone to their scam.

They use deception to trick folks into signing with them, then do absolutely nothing but pressure the author to buy large quantities of books. In two years, I've sold three books that qualify for royalties, which they didn't bother to send me. Every other sale of my book has been to myself, and those are not subject to royalties. If I had known, they didn't read any submissions before accepting them. I would never have signed with them, but they assured me they did indeed read before acceptance or rejection. There is absolutely no satisfaction, or sense of accomplishment, knowing they accepted my book, because they accept anything, no matter how bad it is (see "Atlanta Nights" by Travis Tea. Say that name fast, as there is a hidden meaning in it).

They also took money from me to drop the price of my book, then didn't drop the price of my book. They sure kept my money, though. When I complained, they suggested I pay more money to go hardcover to make the book's pricing more attractive. I worked for two years on my book, and I'm very proud of it, but I'd rather not sell any more copies for the next five years (the length of time until the contract expires), than to give them one more penny. I would love to have an attorney contact me about my complaint, but I am a self-employed contractor, and money is not raining down on me at the moment. Bills come first, correcting a brainless move like signing with Publish America comes second. I'm really just glad to be able to vent.

I wouldn't even give them one star. Prior to signing the contract, I had access by phone to representatives (sales consultants). After that, I was referred to the author help line, which is an answering machine telling they will return my call in 24 hours. That did not happen. They might email you after several days, if not weeks later on off hours, and then claim they tried. I was actually told they do not have phones in their offices, so they can't call clients. I was told they would bring the book to brick and mortar stores prior, after they said that I have to go into each store and sell it to the manager. I was told they would do press releases, web sites, etc. But they have done nothing. They have even written me a reply email, after 6 attempts over 3 weeks to speak to someone, calling me whinny. They said that if I complained again, they would not tolerate it. Stay away from this scam company. Do your research and get a reputable, honest company. They have 153 BBB complaints. That says a lot about Publish America.

Publish America has constantly denied my request to see my sales reports and refused to correct the errors.

I have been told that it would cost me $200 to cancel my contract and I have proof of sales and no royalty checks to show for it. They want me to buy my own books and won't put them in stores, plus, they wont let me change the agreement, so the books are returnable.

I have had a lawyer request to see the books and he was told that they refused to answer.

Publish America is in breach of contract with the author. The problem that I am having is that the book sales statement came out back on 31 Aug 11 and right to this day, I have got nothing but the run around about my book sales statement and royalties check. I have contacted Publish America on numerous occasions but have not been getting a direct answer. I now feel like the contract between (myself) and Publish America has been breached on their end. They think that this is a joke and the reason why I said that is because I have the emails to prove it. I have my copy of the binding contract between us. I also have the $1 advanced check due to me under publishing contract for what you don't know about your man and me. They have been very rude to me and I am outraged.

I am a contracted author with PA and am very disgusted with them. On the front-end they don't edit manuscripts. They virtually accept any set of writings whether the subject is of interest and/or it's written well. Their philosophy is, if one throws enough manure on the wall, one's bound to stick, if you get the analogy. They claim to treat their authors with respect, but they don't. Everything they do is a smokescreen and it's only used to put money in their pockets. I spent 30-years in computer systems design, Their website is bogus. Most of its features are flashing lights with no substance. They don't post S+H rates for authors to review before placing an order.

The author finds that out after they make a book sales incentive (? ) purchase at a supposedly low cost via an E-Mail received. When the invoice process is activated it includes the S+H cost after the credit card has been recorded. The book and S+H costs highly inflates the book cost average which makes it difficult for the unknown author to sell at a reasonable retail price. Authors should not be the primary customers either. PA doesn't put a date on their invoices either. They offer book line changes periodically but do not specify how many lines can be changed. They are very rigid as to changes made and when offered, it comes at a price too. Everything they offer via daily E-Mails sent comes at a price to the author. Lately they send on average 3 E-Mails a day. Who knows what they mention really takes place?

They claimed in an email to me that I had no sales for the period of August 2010 until January 2011. I did have sales as people I know bought the book plus there's a 5-star review of a reader who bought my book from January 2011. Ingram says that they can't give me information regarding any sales data and that Publish America would be the ones to do that for me. But Publish America in the past would not give me figures. I know I had some sales during the six month period. As to how much, I don't know. But I want my money that I made. I would like to go after them in a lawsuit. Can you help me?

Hi my name is Raymond and I'm a victim of Publish America. First, they never pay me any royalties or send me any statement for royalties. Second, they asked me to change the title of my book to Rise of the Humanoid but the problem they never change the title on my contract it's still called The Unknown and it's been over one year now. I feel abused and cheated because they done this after I signed the contract. I hope you can help?

They do not want to take responsibility for errors and corrections that are publisher's fault. I suffered loss of publications and charge of over $1000 for books not salable.

In 2008, I signed a contract with Publish America to publish my first book. I read the contract from the first page to the last and completely understood the content within. What the contract promised and what Publish America provided were two completely different things. Promises of placing my book and making my book available in book stores across the nation never happened. Upon further investigation and many phone calls, I was told by the bookstores that my book would never ever be displayed in any of their stores because it was a POD (print on demand) book. If it did not sell at their store then Publish America would not take the book back under any return policy.

Over a two year period, I purchased hundreds of my book from Publish America through many offers made available to me. From the very beginning, I found that the price of my book set by Publish America was way over priced by the normal market pricing standards. In the last two years, I have received offers from PA telling me that if I am buying 5 copies of my book that they would send two to five copies for review to celebrities such as Oprah, Larry King, Stephen King, New York Times best seller list, movie studios for possible movie contracts and many, many other people. As exciting as this may have sounded in reality I knew that this would not happen.

In my contract, it told that Royalties would be paid twice a year to the author and the amount would be according to the number of books sold. As of today I have not received one penny for any books that have been sold. When I sent an email to them asking why I had not been paid royalties for the books that had been sold they told me that none of my books have sold in these royalty periods. I knew this not to be true because friends and relatives had purchased books through special orders through book stores. I even received an offer from PA early on that if I bought 10 or more copies of my book that I would receive royalties on this purchase. I bought 20 copies through that offer.

I received no royalties for these books either. When I asked PA about this and also told them about the orders from friends and family they came up with a story about an independent company who is supposed to collect the royalty payments for the sales of books sold and distribute these royalty payments to the authors but that they (PA) were involved in a class action lawsuit with the independent company and others on this matter and that once they heard anything they would contact me. I have heard nothing yet and really don't expect to hear anything.

I am a disabled veteran who lives on a fixed income and I am tired of getting no answers and being taken advantage of by a company whose track record is anything but honest. I sure that I am just one of hundreds or maybe thousands that have but taken by Publish America. Oh, by the way I see from the message boards on line that being let out of my contract with PA is virtually impossible.

On October 10, 2008, with reasons to believe that I was losing my eight-year battle with breast cancer, I foolishly signed on to an 8% (only) royalty contract with Publish America for a book that I was penning as a written legacy for my four sons. It was titled, Land of Our Fathers: An Odyssey of Hope. To date, I have received from the publishing house $1.00 as advance payment, and $3.14 in royalty payments, for a grand total of $4.14 even though the book seemed to have been doing very well at home and abroad, and have been translated into different foreign languages. I have previous Internet printouts where there were at least ten sellers on this Amazon site alone, and printouts of bookstores in India, the UK, Italy (translated) that had the book in stock.

Publish America, LLC purports to be a "Free" publishing house-- free indeed. This publisher practices the rankest form of deceptive trade practices, using unfair contracts as umbrellas to shield itself from the law. Although the contract does stipulate that the author will only be paid royalty on full priced books, the publisher mendaciously made no mention that at least 95% of the time, 95% of books would be sold at a discount, hence, not giving an author a fighting chance in sharing any gainful profit from the book sales.

Moreover, they craftily failed to mention in the contract that "galley" copies would be published and sold at a discount before the final copy of the book was released. The galley copy is the author's exact book without the decorative cover. Had I known about the galley copy, I would not have rallied every family member, friend, or co-worker that I know to buy the first printing of the book for which I would have received no compensation.

Also, Publish American claimed that they had expert editors to proofread the books--the only reason why I elected to use their services in the first place. However, in my case, I had to proofread the entire work by myself, and when I was a little late in December 2008 to submit the final copy because of poor health, the "editor" threatened to print the book in its then grievously faulty condition without any further editing. His contract was the banner he waved over my head. Sick as I was, I had many oversights, and the book was published with more than forty-two errors. Embarrassed by that unprofessional representation of me, I pled for a reprint. They eventually agreed, and 12 additional corrections were submitted by me. Still, the book continues to be sold with many more grammatical and typographical errors therein.

Under the pressure of meeting the deadline for the final manuscript submission, and the fear of being sued for breach of contract, I left my teaching job to pursue my final dream--becoming an author. Now, not only am I unemployed, broke, depressed, and living only on child support, I have a finished manuscript of Book 2, and a Book 3 in the making, which I am afraid to submit to any other publisher. I can't help but lament over the grave injustice Publish America has meted out to me.

Publish America is the biggest scam in the publishing industry! This Publish on demand (POD) company has been misleading authors for years. They claim to be traditional publishers, which is a total LIE. This company has made bundles of money off new gullible authors by publishing their books and selling them back at discounted rates to the authors. They do no conduct any promotions or distributions, even if the authors facilitate it. The alleged promotions are paid for by the authors when they buy their own books. No one will actually ever know if these promotions have actually taken place. PA's representatives are only addressed by first name or anonymously as "Publish America support". It takes miracle for them to get back to you with the simplest question. Most book stores will not carry Publish America books, because they equate PA to any other self-publishing house or worse. It also takes over two months to receive a book after you order it from Publish America.

Their royalty statements are vague and inaccurate. You will never know how many books your book has sold, unless you hire a private investigator. They can basically do whatever they want. This is an unethical and integrity free company. You are better off being unpublished than being stuck with this alleged publisher. Review the innumerable complaints against this company on the internet. It is truly a publishing mill that will publish anything they receive. They actually have an electronic editor that will keep your book filled with mistakes. You better hire an editor before you approve your final transcript assuming that you will decide to go with this scandalous company. Ironically, their representatives are taught to defend their scams, and they pretend to have pride and ethics. Publish America is truly the biggest scam in publishing history! It's so big that many other scam artists have started their own POD publishing houses. Beware! Research this publisher before you submit your transcript.

I kept buying copies of my book and they never promoted it. The whole thing is a lie. Most of the companies have to go through their corporate offices before they display any books, whether it is Borders or Walmart, etc. but PA makes promises that if you buy enough of your book they will match it and send it to your local store to be displayed (that's a big lie). I got international distributors interested in buying and distributing the book, Publish America blew them off and never contacted them. I never knew who I was dealing with at PA, because they only contact me by email and the representatives are always either anonymous or on first name basis, and you can never reach them again. The book would've sold a lot of copies with the Distributor I found, but PA was not interested in promoting the book, but they were only interested in selling it to me at a discounted price. They wouldn't even send copies to book reviewers that were willing to review my book. I am amazed that this company is still in business. This is one of the biggest scams in the industry. With every complaint, they have learned to cover themselves better. They have no editors, my book was never edited and was filled with mistakes. That was a humiliating and stressful experience, especially when I found out that they published anything that was scribbled on a piece of paper.

December of 2007 I signed a seven year contract with Publish America. I have made a total of about $16.00 since that time. They did not do what was promised. My book has not been stocked on bookshelves. They say they will be. I do believe however, my book sold more than what is reported. There were also errors in my book, they refused to correct. There is no known phone number to call and ask questions, only a number to place orders. If an author wants to make any money, which won't be much, he or she has to buy their own books.

PA is not a traditional publisher, only an author mill, for unsuspecting authors, and the misrepresentation is abominable. I had high hopes and dreams for my book, and all that is now down the drain. My book should not have cost ME money to market and sell it, as PA claims to be a royalty paying publisher that incurs the costs of publication. That is not true..they are a print on demand entity and have paid me nearly zero in almost two years.

They have NOT marketed my book and have done nothing to help it sell. I did my part locally, but it was all I could do, and that cost me money. I have even purchased my own copies, so I could just sell them outright, but having little money, I was unable to buy many for myself to have on-hand.

If you email with questions, like my last one, where I asked why I did not receive a royalty check, during the last session, which I should have received by Sept 2, 2009, they never emailed back. It has been a detriment to me physically, emotionally and financially. This put alot of stress on me, and now I am on meds for anxiety.

I am thinking of some sort of litigation to get some relief, and to help stop them from continuing to hurt other authors in the future. Publish America should be truly ashamed for what they do to authors, its reprehensible.

When I emailed Publish America I received the standard 'we keep true and accurate records' However their true and accurate records fail to show two different addresses over a 100 miles apart. Nor the Sr. on my book. Never received that royalty money either.

I have asked them to send copies of these suppose payments, but they have ignored my request.

I have been tracking the movement of my books on the internet and have found an increasing amount of copies that are now being sold - however Publish america shows me with no sales- so how can there be so many books out there? I have contacted numerous sellers of my book and they do indeed have these copies in stock. I have also found out that recently my work has still been sold at a united kingdom printing company. I have contacted them and they refuse to email me back. I have asked while under contract for prof of sales and these so called returns but they refused to reply.

Amazon co, uk and usa all have a total of 25 copies of my work still for sale. yet I have not received payment for any of these copies. Just recently amazon started reselling my book and had it as being in stock and ready to ship. Yet this book is OUT OF PRINT AND Publish America and Ingrams distrubution show me as no books sold. I can prove that they are not paying for books sold. I would love a lawyer who would help me take them to court.

The books are overpriced. "Emotions" is being sold for $24.95 and "Love's" is being sold for $29.95 on PublishAmerica website. PA was giving authors additional promotional discounts anywhere from 40%-65%, free shipping, and double orders (buy one get one free) but now they have stopped those promotional discounts and only giving the authors 20%-30%. This amount is still ridiculous especially when the books are overpriced. PA states that they will pay royalties but no royalties can be paid if buyers won't purchase books because of this overpricing thus hindering authors from making any money off their novels. I am a single mother of three children and trying to purchase books to sale on my own is very expensive and oftentimes impossible. I have a book signing on June 6th and will have to cancel because I can't afford to the unrealistic amount of money for my novels.

I received my royalties check today, and it has a significantly lower listing of books sold than I know for a fact I've sold. Having traced a way to track my sales through Ingram's Wholesalers, I called a number to see how many books I had sold last year. It was much higher than PA claims on my royalties statement. I am also looking into paying for a service to track my sales across the board.

I know PA has ripped me off. They just didn't know I had already tracked my sales numbers. And this is all in addition to not editing my book per my requests, never ever giving me the opportunity to talk to a real person, not helping one bit with the promotion or bookstore placement of my book. They are a scam! Plain and simple! I just wanted to let other unsuspecting authors know, before they make the same mistake.

I worked five years for peanuts! Now, since my book has been tarnished by the likes of Publish America, I stand zero to no chance of getting my book out there for a real chance at success. As well, I have been out for the cost of promo items and had to hassle numerous times--often met with humiliation--with trying to get my books into bookstores. PA hasn't help one bit! Now, they are taking my earnings as their own. They have no rights to what I have earned and sacrificed.

I signed a contract with Publish America a few months ago. I only gave them two chapters. They told me that I owed them the rest by this past October. I didn't give them anything after I read online all the negative stories about them. I want to me let out of the contract, I do not owe them anything.

This has left me severely scared, depressed and will force me to change my personal identity information.

I signed the contract with them only to read countless articles about the faux publishing company. I didn't give them my work yet, as they have given me until Oct.1 to finish it and hand it in. I was told I couldn't get out of their contract unless I paid them $300.00. What can I do to get out of this contract?

When I contacted publishamerica they had said and stated in there contract about a team of editors and format. How they will have me in 42 bookstores database, and christian database bookstores. For me to send in a list for them to contact people when my book is ready for publishing, To send my home town newspaper email so they can contact them also. None of this was done. When I recieved my two copies of the book it had so many errors in the spelling the text wasn't done nor was the format.I had to do it all myself with help of a friend and it took them four attempts to get it right still It was so bad very unprofessional.

Then they tell me they can't make no more changes because the book is in print.They didn't explain that the book was print on demand order. Whereas they gave me the impression that the book would be in bookstores across the country. And being as though I live in a majority french population i can't get them to publish in french unless a foreign publishing co gets in touch with them only. It's a great story but very bad formatting. The name of the book is called THE CYCLE CAN BE BROKEN

It really [upset] me that they told so many lies. it's a book about my dealings with drug addiction one that is needed to be told across the country for all those that believe that there is no end to the cycle od addiction. I put a lot of hard work into this project and had to relive experiences that were pretty rough at times talking about over and over again. and for them to just treat it as un-important is rude and dishonest. I am quite sure that the book would of sold more if they had stocked it in bookstores as they said. My main reason was not to get rich on the book but to get the word out on ways and means of breaking the cycle of addiction. I feel as though they have let me down big-time with false promises.