PublishAmerica has bragged this year that they have published 50,000 titles and they have also bragged they have published 40,000 titles. There is a 10,000 book discrepancy but who is counting? I am!
Publish America has, for sale, 17,897 titles but here is another discrepancy. Many of their books are listed in more than one category. For example a book. "50 Eggcellent Egg Free..." is listed in the cookbook category and the non fiction category. So they really don't have 17,897 titles for sale but some lesser number. Probably less than 15,000.
Accepting PublishAmerica's lower count of 40,000 books published then what happened to the 23,103 books that are no longer for sale. They signed a lot of authors to a lifetime contract and then began signing authors to a 7 year contract. Seven years ago is 2004. Are we to believe that 23,103 contracts expired between their 1999 start-up and 2004? I don't think that is possible? Are we to believe they returned publishing rights including contract expirations for 23,103 titles? I don't think that is possible.
What is left? Well, PublishAmerica may have inflated their numbers. If we accept their count of 50,000 books published, then there are 33,103 books gone from their inventory. That is even harder to believe.
The numbers lead a reasonable person to believe that PublishAmerica has not published 50,000 books nor 40,000 books, although, PublishAmerica brags on their website that as of the summer of 2009 they had already published 40,000 books! Are they being truthful? Their numbers don't add up.
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