PublishAmerica

PublishAmerica is a Maryland-based print-on-demand book publisher founded in 1999 by Lawrence Alvin "Larry" Clopper III and Willem Meiners (born Amsterdam 6 January 1949). Some writers and authors' advocates have accused the company of being a vanity press while representing itself as a "traditional publisher".

PublishAtlantica was an imprint of PublishAmerica. PublishAtlantica claimed to be headquartered in the UK in Milton Keynes. It was formerly PublishBritannica before a lawsuit from Encyclopædia Britannica. PublishIcelandica was another imprint of PublishAmerica. According to a letter from PublishAmerica in 2006, neither imprint is active.

History

As of 2004, the current executive director of PublishAmerica was Miranda N. Prather. In 2004, Prather stated that 80% of authors who submitted manuscripts to the house were rejected, and that the house had "30 full-time editors" with plans to expand. She also refused to identify the CEO of PublishAmerica. In 2005, the company had 70 full-time employees of various functions.

In 2004, PublishAmerica published small runs of over 4,800 titles (compared to Random House's 3,500 titles). In 2005, the company had approximately 11,000 authors under contract.

In June 2005, PublishAmerica identified Willem Meiners as "PublishAmerica CEO" and Clopper as "company president".

In August 2005, PublishAmerica was sued by Encyclopædia Britannica for trademark violation over PublishAmerica's PublishBritannica imprint. The matter was settled out of court, with PublishAmerica agreeing to stop using the "PublishBritannica" name. However, PublishAmerica continued to use the website address on letterhead as late as 2008.

In late September 2005, PublishAmerica announced its books would be returnable by the bookseller if they failed to sell, a standard practice among other commercial publishers. The announcement stated that this applied to "all" of its books, though it noted that there would be "a few exceptions initially" and that the offer would apply to United States booksellers only. PA's site now says that "many of our books are returnable."