I too have been a victim of PublishAmerica's scam and I live in Northern Ireland. About five years ago I submitted a book I called, "From the shadows". They contacted me and said they wanted to publish it but I would have to change the title. They 'allowed' me to call it "Ma's Secret : From the Shadows'! They sent it back for me to complete edits - most of them punctuation errors - however, when I checked out the punctuation it was fine. As I have 'A' Level English -I knew my punctuation was correct. In the meantime, I had completed a book of poems called, '70 over 40 @ 50'. Again they wanted to publish it. However, during this time I became very ill and asked them to put things on hold. I heard no more from them until about 3 wks ago when this 'person' from publishamerica contacted me and said she was publishing my poems. Now, having already been told by PA that they wouldn't publish the poems until the novel was released, I was a bit surprised. I told her that the poems were only sent in draft form and they still needed a lot of work. She informed me basically that that was too bad and they were being published, as is. Eventually after a LOT of arguing I got her to agree to an extended deadline. When I sent back the final version, via e-mail, I stated that I was surprised that they had changed their minds and were in fact publishing the poems before the novel. I heard nothing for a while and then she came back and said they were publishing the novel, too. Again, I strenuously objected on the grounds that it was only sent in draft and still needed a lot of work. Finally, she agreed and gave me a deadline and then grudglingly extended it because the book actually had no ending in the version she had! During the heated e-mail exchange I informed her that I felt if I sent her the Northern Ireland Telephone Book with my name as the author, PA would publish it! She informed me that it was my responsibility to ensure that the book was ready for publication and that publisamerica DO NOT employ Editors! So therefore the book had not been read by them, at all! Unbelievable. On Monday, 5th July I returned the final version. Tuesday, 6th, she sent it back in PDF format, ready to roll and stating that I needed to make any final changes. So I read through it and discovered that the changes I had previously made to this final version and re-emailed on 5th July with 246 pages, had disappeared. So I spent 2 days working on it - right up until 5.30am on Thursday morn. I re-emailed it to her and she kicked off again. Claiming it wasn't the same version. There had been 246 pages in the one I sent on 5th July and only 240 pages in this final version. I tried to explain that firstly, some of the text needed to be changed because of the escalation in violence in Northern Ireland, over the recent months and since the book discussed some of the religous conflict here and terrorism I felt it necessary to delete what I now considered to be inappropriate data. I also explained that off the 246 pages, 4 of them were blank and i had removed them so only two pages of writing had been deleted. However, she has insisted that it will be published informing me last night that that. I informed her that I had contacted a proper publishing house and that as yet hadn't heard from them. She countered with the fact that I had a contract with PA and they would enforce it against me and the new publisher. I told her that if she can find a court in the world who would deem my behaviour unreasonable when all I was trying to do was to (a) Tone down the violence; and, (b) produce a quality product - something which I realised would be somewhat of an alien concept for PA. I told her to bring the court action. She also stated that they would be watching to see if any part of the book was published by another publisher and then they would sue both the new publisher and myself. So I told her bring it on. Its my book I can do what I like with it. Furthermore, if I change the title and my name how would they even find it? As far as I was concerned PA couldn't find the street they lived on! She then e-mailed me last night and stated that the book is being published ie: the 246 version with the 4 blank pages - and that is her final word on. I went back to her and wrote a 2-page long e-mail telling her that if they go ahead then as fast as they are advertising it I will un-advertise it! That is exactly what I intend to do. Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
MC
