slaneporter.com

Adding to the white noise.

Re: Publish America

I have no personal experience with this self-publishing company, however I do know a few people who have used their services. The overall opinion I’ve gathered is the writer has learned some sort of negative lesson from using Publish America’s services and went to a different company for their second novel.

I’m adding noise to the growing dissension of authors hoping the search engines pick up my entry as one more article begging writers to stay the hell away from this company.

For this entry, I’m specifically referring to their current scam going on right now.

Here’s what’s happening:

1. A customer/author of Publish America pays 99$ (or 119$) to have their novel submitted to Amazon Studios (a new contest started in November, 2010)
2. Publish America uploads their novel to the Amazon Studio’s website. (studios.amazon.com)

Here are the issues I have with this arrangement:

• It is FREE to enter the contest at Amazon Studios, so why is Publish America charging authors to do this?
• Amazon Studios is a SCREENPLAY contest and wants nothing to do with novels. They are two totally different types of media.
• No one is converting or will convert your novel into a screenplay for the measly payment of 99$. It takes months (for experts) and a lot of money to adapt a novel. Publish America doesn’t have enough monkeys behind the mirror to handle the projects they’ve charged an author to convert a novel on their behalf (if that is indeed what they may have promised to authors).
• If Publish America has misrepresented themselves to the authors, that is illegal behavior.
• At this point, Publish America refuses to reimburse writers who have realized they were scammed.

I urge any writer connected to this issue to write Paypal (the company authorizing the charges for these services) and recommend Paypal freeze Publish America’s paypal account until Publish America refunds the writers who want their money back, or until it’s determined what Publish America is doing is not breaking the Paypal terms of service. Somehow, I think scamming authors might upset Paypal, but you never know. Paypal isn’t a golden child either.

Or better yet, organize and start a class action law suit. You deserve better and you shouldn’t allow yourself to be abused in this manner. Don’t take a “non-refund” as the final word. Writers, especially new ones are easy targets. Once you’ve learned a lesson from this, please let it be your last and remember the age old motto: If it seems too good to be true ___________ fill in the blank.

If you are a customer of Publish America and you would like to follow this scam from its discovery to its current state of affairs, here are a couple links to get you started.

Recent media uncovering this scam can be found here:

One of the first announcements of the scam:
http://theauditorz.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/scams-and-flams/

Recent update on the scam:
http://theauditorz.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/the-revenge-of-scams-and-flams/

Great places to report fraud:

BBB
RipOffReport.Com
Internet Crime Complaint Center
The Consumerist

URLS of the products in question:

http://www.publishamerica.net/product37377.html
http://www.publishamerica.net/product37376.html