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Jan. 27, 2005 I am so happy, Mr. Stox, that PublishAmerica (“PA and MTV”, 1-26) has provided the means for such a meaningful event to happen for you. The pride you feel from publishing your work is apparent although I do worry about sticky pages in that wonderful book as you tremble in excitement. I admit to having no knowledge of PA other than what I’ve read on U-K. I’ve never had the slightest urge or need to be published and, other than letters to my local newspaper, have never submitted writing to any but a few blog sites, such as U-K. Although I lack that desire, I certainly recognize it in PA “authors” such as yourself, Ms. Lloyd, and a few others on the site. I applaud each of you for fulfilling your dreams and know that you must be excited with the impending royalties your work will earn. With your article, I now understand a bit more about PA and am even more certain of its appropriate place in the publishing industry than when I wrote before. For anyone with a desire to see his words printed on paper and professionally bound in standard book format, PA is an excellent resource. If you want to sell those books, especially over the Internet, PA provides the basic tools/links to do that. If you don’t own a copy of Adobe and therefore need someone to perform the simple task of converting your file to PDF, PA can help. PA seems to be very price appropriate for the services they provide. While I agree with you that PA is “all about the author and the book,” such that if the author is satisfied, that’s all that matters, I wonder if other authors, those without your strength of character, have a misguided belief that it is about more than that. I suspect that a number of PA authors attribute some level of validation of their work to PA’s acceptance for publishing – kinda like the way gays claim they want the equal right to marry but it’s obvious their need is validation of their chosen lifestyle. I would be surprised if PA implied any such status in their marketing or contract. I expect that any client who believes being published by PA is anything other than a business transaction without regard for the actual content, suffers from self-delusion in other facets of their life as well. If your personal ego is so wrapped up in your writing project, such that you seek your words professionally bound for personal validation, while PA may give you that sensation in your delusional state, the bottom of a bird’s cage provides equal validation for your pages. If you believe PA increases your chances of selling your book anymore than the effect of those few basic tools/links provided, you will probably be disappointed. Nowhere in your description of the PA process do I hear mention of any review by PA as to your book’s worthiness for print or likelihood of sales. You describe no editing or artwork contributed by them, they seem to just provide basic instructions of the tasks you need to accomplish. As you say, they are just the “mechanical means” to get your work published, I only wonder how long until similar capability is available via vending machine at the WalMart? As a child, I always wanted to be a baseball player. I played Little League several years but it was obvious early that I had only average talent. Suppose I went down to Yankee Stadium during the off-season and bribed the gatekeeper to let me run the bases. I would be so excited, it would be a wonderful moment for me. But it wouldn’t make me a baseball player – heck, it doesn’t even mean I was a Minor League player. And if I went around claiming to be a baseball player, based on that silly jaunt, it would be an insult to all those professional athletes who practiced so hard, and had all that incredible talent, and who paid their dues for years, to become ball players. And an insult to all those who were not in the Big Leagues yet, but were taking the recommended path of hard work, practice, and dues paying in Little Leagues, College, and Minor Leagues around the country. PublishAmerica authors are simply jogging around the basepath of the publishing industry during off season. Yes, in their midst may actually be one worthy of the Writing Big Leagues, but in all likelihood, there’s not. However, PublishAmerica does makes a lot of people happy, such as Mr. Stox. As long as they do not sell there services as anything more than a publisher-for-hire – even within the confines of their low price business model – they are providing a much needed therapeutic service to the esteem challenged in the community. Perhaps Hollywood will bring us “American Idol for Writers” to allow no name, no talents to forego all preparatory work and become instant best-sellers by a vote of the Great Unwashed staring at their TVs. There would be a good chance that winner would be a PA author. ------------ About the author: Ron Lewis is a software salesman extraordinaire, albeit habitually unemployed, with no significant accomplishments at age 47 other than two wonderfully talented children who take after their mother. All his friends note his keen insight, bad eyesight, doggedly jaded disposition, and rugged bad looks. A third person seems to recall that he talks too much. Email: grnacres@direcway.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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