My name is Kimberly MacEachern and I live in Nova Scotia Canada. I am writing to you today because I have a story I think you may be interested in. I am a new author and like hundreds before me I made the mistake of signing a contact with a company called Publish America in Maryland Baltimore. I think this story would have great interest to you because of how Publish America works. They send out contracts that are complete lies, they don’t mean anything and now they are not even paying their authors the royalties owed to them. I am writing not only for myself, but also for all the other authors who have been fooled by this scam. Even though money is owed to us we are willing to let that go if we could just get the rights back to our own books. Could somebody help us to get our rights back from Publish America and worn other authors out there the scam that is Publish America.
This is my story, and many other people have a very similar story.
1. Yes there are many discrepancies between the Publish America web site advertising and the actual contract.
2. Breaches of contract.
A. My official book date release was supposed to be August 22 2009, and was not made somewhat available until the end of September, and even now it is still not available where it should be (i.e. Amazon.com, chapters.com).
B. Was told that if I bought a certain amount of copies of my book then I would get the royalties from that sale. I wasn’t given any.
C. Publish America in their contract stated that they would issue a press release-that was never done.
D. I was also told that my book would be available for my local book store to order and as of today my local book store am still unable to order copies.
E. was also told that I would receive 8 % in royalties in February and August of each year for copies sold. I have receipts from family and friends who bought the book through the Publish America website, yet I just received a statement informing me that I have sold 0 copies of my book.
3. No my book did not make it to Barnes & Noble book stores.
4. No the shoddy editing was not accepted. I paid $50.00 to fix the errors that they made and the book still is full of them.
5. The overall presentation of my book wasn’t too bad, but I was asked what I would like to see the cover look like after I told them they gave me something totally different then what I wanted.
6. Yes customer / author services are extremely unsatisfactorily. I am still waiting almost a year for answers to questions.
7. My book is very over priced.
8. My book is very under marketed.
9/10. My royalties also have been extremely unreported. I know for a fact that my book has sold at least 50 copies to family and friends through there website, yet Publish America states that 0 copies have been sold.
11. Sales statistic’s on my book are not accessible to me, because the whole sellers of Baker & Taylor along with Ingram still don’t have copies of the book and there for are not being sold. All the books that were purchased by family and friends were done so through Publish America’s website.
12. As far as I know my book is not for sale or advertised under a different name.
13. The only e-mail’s I ever receive from Publish America are one’s in which they are trying to sell me copies of my own book. And yes I feel very pressured to by copies. If I buy (X) amount of copies then that same amount would be donated to my local schools, library’s, and book stores. The latest deal was they would send a copy to Stephen King.
14. Yes I was asked to provide Publish America with a list of people to announce the release of my book to, but they didn’t follow through and nobody received a single e-mail.
15. I am right now trying to break my contract with Publish America and to get my rights back.
16. I have not found the publishing credit’s to be attributed to anyone besides Publish America.
All I want is for my contract to be null and void and to get the rights back for my book along with monies owed to me. I just want to start over, am open to suggestion’s and or advice anyone might be able to give me.
My pen name is Kimberly MacEachern. My e-mail is kimmymac@seaside.ns.ca, and the name of the book that I had published with Publish America is a children’s fantasy book called
Tales from Areallia: The Keeper’s.
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