implicit art

So I have always wanted to be a writer. When I say always, we’re talking Grade School here. I’m not screwing around. Recently I learned about PublishAmerica, because a fellow participant in the 3-Day Novel Contest had said she’d published her book product of the previous year’s contest through them. Well, well, well, I thought. Let’s see.

It turns out that PublishAmerica is a print-on-demand company. Print-on-demand [POD] is this new technology that makes it cost effective to make exactly as many books as get ordered. Your “inventory” is blank paper, binding materials and a bunch of computer files, ready to go if anyone wants one printed out. Most POD publishing is vanity or subsidized printing. That is, the author pays to put it out. Not so with PublishAmerica. They promise never to charge you a thing, unless you want to buy a big stack of your own books to sell yourself.

Fine.

I sent two novellas I’ve written in to them. I wanted to publish them as one volume called

Fun With Cults: 2 Novellas

. Sound good? I’d buy it. My books were accepted immediately. I mean, right away. I mean, there was no way they could have read them.

So I get a contract and a pushy Acquisitions guy emailing me about joining up. I talk myself into it and think, “Well, if I’ve got hustle, I can make this happen.” I had basically decided to do it when a friend of a friend who happens to be a published writer contacted me and I asked her what she thought about the Publisher. Her view? Don’t do it. Go for the small press, but not POD. She sent me an article from the

The Washington Post

that reported a lot of unhappy writers (and a few happy ones).

Now, the two big concerns are as follows: 1) prestige. The lit world is all about prestige. If I went POD out of the box, would it follow me? 2) If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Though, in the company’s defence, one of the less esoteric objections they have raised about PublishAmerica has been corrected. At one time, their books weren’t returnable. This is sort of weird, but if a book doesn’t sell at a book store, publisher’s will refund them for the trouble of putting it out. I don’t really get it, but when everyone else is doing that, it’s hard for a non-returnable book to compete for shelf space. As of last week, though, these POD books are now returnable.

Frankly, it didn’t seem like PublishAmerica was much of a brand. What would the consumer know if they saw the PublishAmerica name on the spine? It seems like there business model is publish as many books as they can, and hope they sell enough to make money. Why not? The only cost is the production work, right? The inventory takes up no real space. In fact, once they have thousands of books on file, they can just sell them forever. Eventually they might not even need to accept new titles. See, the name sort of gives it away: we aren’t about giving you a particular sort of book – we’re about publishing people who want to get published. Publish, publish, publish – see what sticks.

OK, so it sounds like I’ve made my decision. I guess I have. I don’t think I’ll do it. After all, those novellas really aren’t ready to go, though they are fun. But I have one nagging concern.

What if I’m missing the boat? What if this new kind of printing is the way of the future and I’m scared to get in on the ground floor?