Algora Publishing

If you are an author looking to submit your manuscript and you are considering Algora Publishing in New York, you're going to want to read this. Algora Publishing is the outfit that published The Divine Default and this review is my experience working with them. I intend to be as balanced and honest as possible in hopes that future authors can learn from my experience. I used a combination of our past email exchanges as well as my memories of the events and feelings that I felt. I apologize in advance if I have missed any significant details. Feel free to contact me with any questions. The opinions expressed here are my own, and I invite you to consider my experience and draw your own conclusions as to how viable Algora Publishing is for your situation. If you're wondering why I would take the time to share my experience (spoiler alert: it's not good), you'll know the answer soon enough.

** The quotes below are actual quotes from Algora Publishing. **

When I started working with Algora Publishing on turning my manuscript into a book, the process was pretty straightforward. I worked with both Andrea and Martin, and to be fair, everything in the beginning was cordial and professional. Andrea was quite easy to work with and she really did make some solid edits. I still appreciate her efforts.

Needless to say, I was excited to have my first book published. I think where things started to turn poorly was when the editor Martin DeMers got more involved. I found his ideology troubling, his arguments completely one-sided, his attitude combative, and his words acerbic. As you'll find out, he has a particular soft spot for Islam which presents a dilemma.

As you may have guessed, my book is critical of religion. Martin had no trouble with me criticizing Christianity, but anything that was critical of Islam or anything remotely associated with it was off-limits. On 5/25/2012, he took issue with my criticism of Hamas suggesting that "Hamas is not a religious organization but a national liberation movement." To someone like Martin, Hamas is apparently devoid of any influence by Islam. Even remedial sources like Wikipedia identify the influence of Islam on Hamas. I took issue with his sympathy to Islam in May 2013 when he suggested that suicide bombings have in his words "ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with irrational beliefs, but it is a very secular military confrontation." Secular and rational? Only if someone has a preconceived bias about it...

As I look through all of our previous correspondence, I still get angry when he suggests that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 didn't involve any Muslims. He was even kind enough to provide me with a link to AE911Truth.org - an organization whose claims have been refuted time and time again. A conspiracy theory is only believed by those with a preconceived bias towards believing it. I shudder to think what Martin thinks about the moon landing... I digress. The important thing here is that I can identify this as the point in time where I truly did not like Martin any longer. Not only did I feel insulted, but I felt like Martin pushed too much of his ideology onto my manuscript. If you are comfortable with that scenario, more power to you...

Portions of my response are below:

"From our very first email exchange right up through to your last email, I had concerns about your likely bias towards Muslims and Islam. I get the feeling that you are as quick to point out the digressions of Christians as you are to jump to the defense of Islam. [...] To think that Muslims were not involved is simply delusional. Do you know what would make me think otherwise? Actual evidence. I will not give in to conspiracy theories. [...] If you think these pious men harbored no such belief [in Paradise], then we have a significant difference of opinion that cannot be resolved. It is my position that any assertion about invisible realities like Heaven or Paradise is irrational - the particular faith is merely incidental."

As is often the case with Martin, he feels the need to get the last word in - this time offering "evidence" that people in Germany doubted the official explanation. Germany? Really? Never mind Al-Qaeda and bin Laden claiming responsibility or all of the other evidence. Martin believes what he likes and will beat a dead horse repeatedly until you as the author cave. I conceded virtually every request of his during the manuscript process including anything critical of Islam.

When I discussed the ramifications of the movie "Innocence of Muslims" and how the reaction to the film (a low-budget, intentionally anti-Islamic, and generally all-around poor movie) from the Muslim world included violent protests where hundreds were injured, 50 people died, and fatwas (legal Islamic rulings) were issued either calling for harm or the outright death of the producers, Martin dismissed it as a "blame the Muslims game". He then shifted the discussion to the "red-handed lying" of Hillary Clinton and the death of Chris Stephens. Why? I don't know. I don't recall ever mentioning Clinton or Stephens. Instead he assumes that I "probably have in mind the death of the American Ambassador in Libya, Mr. Stephens." As I stated earlier, I found him to be disingenuously one-sided and confrontational. Again - no criticism of Islam or his views on any topic allowed. He gives no inch. In the same email, he further demonstrates his position/opinion with the sad statement "There are no witches, we know, there cannot be; but, unfortunately, there are homosexuals." In contrast, I am supportive of gay rights - a position I can't imagine being warmly received by my publisher. I would never confuse Algora Publishing as a model of tolerance on this topic...

Following this exchange (May/June 2013), Algora suggested that I was "confounding politics with religion" and that the problems with the manuscript were "far more pervasive" than they knew. Funny that it took a year and plenty of back and forth revisions to come to such a conclusion...

With such "pervasive" issues, I suggested that we terminate our agreement and go our separate ways.

When I voiced my concern over the viability of the final product and asked to have our agreement terminated, Martin responded with:

"We are not changing the substance of your message, but, rather, sharpening your focus. That's just normal practice and a normal exercise of our responsibilities. I should mention that there are situations when an editor ends up cutting up to half a book, just to focus on what is essential, stylistically as well as in substance. This is not the case, here. We should just move ahead. There's not much to discuss. I think it's not such a big deal, after all."

The book is now apparently ready for publication. At this point in the process, I resign myself to having completed a bucket list item, even if I wasn't entirely happy with the final product or the final mile of the process. It was done.

If you are considering working with Algora, please don't let the above experience sour you completely. Again, I found Andrea to be pretty solid and I'm sure that there are routinely disagreements between authors and editors. I'm realistic and assume that this is part of the process.

What I think you should focus on if you are an author is the second half to the story and look at the experience in its totality. I'm going to try and cover a lot of ground including marketing, sales, and what can only be described as childish behavior - all of which you should be profoundly concerned with if you plan to work with Algora Publishing.

As an author, I assume that my publisher will let me know when the book has been published. Wrong assumption. Nobody from Algora bothered to drop me an email or any kind of note to say that the book was published. I heard about it from someone else. Seriously. Not a single word from Algora.

OK - so they dropped the ball on communication, but how about their marketing?

According to the Algora website:

"The author and the publisher team up to publish and then promote the book. [..] After the publisher invests time and money, give the initial launch and place advertisements in major publications of the publishing industry, it is the author's turn to play the leading role. We also make efforts, for the most part successfully, to secure good reviews."

Sounds great, right? I can tell you that I am not aware of a single launch effort, advertisement placed, or review secured. Not one. No marketing plan was ever shared with me, nor were any marketing ideas ever suggested. Keep in mind that these are the same people that didn't bother to tell me that the book was even published. What "major publication" did they place an advertisement in? I'd love to know. In fact, I'd love to know exactly what was done.

Today, when you read the section on the Algora website entitled "What Algora Will Do to Promote Your Book", the first two items are things that they actually say they don't do anymore - advertising and reviews. When I signed with them, those weren't written in an exclusionary fashion.

Want to get Algora all fired up? Mention the word "Amazon" to them. Even though they now suggest on their website "For books like yours, B&N.com and Amazon.com are a better bet", they didn't want to work with Amazon and absolutely wouldn't work with them on an e-book. Never mind that the latest Nielsen survey shows that nearly one third of all Americans read primarily on an e-reader. On more than one occasion, Algora Publishing has railed against the effects that Amazon has had on the publishing industry. I suggested that no amount of howling at the moon by them will force Amazon to change its business model and that refusing to work with them alienates customers. All of this fell on deaf ears. I kid you not when I say that Algora is no different than the buggy and whip manufacturers railing against the progress of the automobile thinking that it would somehow stop that industry in its tracks.

Let me use Barnes & Noble to highlight the detailed marketing efforts in place by Algora. On 10/23/2013, I wrote to Algora Publishing notifying them that:

"The link you have on your website for The Divine Default to Barnes & Noble takes me to "Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger and Wyatt's Rebellion" by James D. Taylor. It looks unprofessional to do this, but frankly I don't think it matters much. When I do a search for it on B&N, I can find it, but it's $43.99 for the paperback. Nobody's going to buy it at that price and frankly I don't even know what to say about that."

I received a response the same day stating that the B&N issue had been fixed. More than two (2) years later (2/22/16), I still have to point out to them that while it links to the correct book, the author is still wrong. Now it references a completely different author named Jeanne Haskin and apparently uses snippets from her book (The Push-Pull Dynamic of Science and Evolution) to describe mine. Martin's response to this: "As the saying goes, you are barking up the wrong tree. Why don't you nicely contact B&N (or us) and bring their errors to their attention." He conveniently underlines "their" to indicate the blame is somehow on B&N for putting a different Algora author in there with different snippets from another Algora book. He also fails to take responsibility for twice getting this simple task messed up. Even better, the paperback now sells for $61.24!

His subsequent ad-hominem attacks calling me "unpleasant, disgruntled, and unsuccessful" genuinely make me chuckle. It would be nice if they spent that time and effort checking "their" work or perhaps putting some sort of marketing effort behind actually doing what they say they will. Don't get me wrong. The author has a significant role to play here (I have a website and have marketed on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and other outlets), but I have no evidence to suggest that Algora did anywhere near the number of items on their website that they tell you they will.

Here's the last word on the marketing efforts of Algora Publishing. Either they put forth effort to do what they say they will - in which case their efforts are puerile and unsuccessful at best - or they didn't actually do everything they said they would - in which case they lied and are being disingenuous on their capabilities. In either event, I have found Algora's marketing capabilities to be an abject failure. If you plan to work with them, be prepared to do all of the heavy lifting yourself.

Shortly after the book was published (a detail that seems to infuriate Martin), I uncovered additional errors in the book. The one that bothered me the most was on page 82 in which Algora "modified" my manuscript, but in the process turned what was arguably a pivotal portion of that chapter into a fragment rendering all of the momentum of the chapter ineffectual. That chapter meant a lot to me, and it turns out that it wasn't the only error Algora made when modifying my manuscript. I wrote to them and said

"Section 4a of our agreement states that I have to bear the cost of any corrections after printing has begun, but my concern is that not all of these errors are mine. I can look back at the manuscript and see the full sentences prior to Algora's editing so I would like to know 1) can these be corrected, and 2) who is responsible for correcting it."

For reference, Section 4(a) of my contract states that the "cost of any corrections requested by Author after the book has been sent to the printer is to be incurred by the Author." No cost was ever presented to me.

A week later, Andrea politely responded with

"Unfortunately nothing is quite perfect in the world, but these are not such egregious errors that would require reprinting. It is unfortunate but they are also very obscure glitches. The New York Times also has typos and errors and that does not deter anyone from reading it on a daily basis."

The problem with that analogy is that The New York Times will print again tomorrow. A book doesn't work that way. I do wonder what the response would have been if Algora had been blame-free of the errors...

I received a sales report in the mail after the first year. I didn't receive anything last year and I don't expect to receive anything in the future. The contract with Algora Publishing does not guarantee even a common courtesy notification if sales fall below a certain threshold. Only when I mentioned that I have only had 1 statement ever did Martin email me a statement suggesting that they have always "offered to send a statement by email on request". They have had my email address for years, but couldn't be bothered to even email it. As a technology professional, I can assure you that the technology exists to automate such a process if one were so inclined. It's this kind of attention to detail that I have come to expect out of Algora Publishing. Truth be told - I have reservations about the accuracy of the numbers that Martin sent me. I'd love to have an independent source verify their numbers. Absent that, everything hinges on trust. With the adversarial nature of our current relationship, the childish actions of Martin DeMers (more on this in a moment), and the complete lack of trust that I feel with Algora Publishing, I have resigned myself to never seeing a royalty check again.

I reviewed my contract again after the 2.5 year mark, and Section 3(e) states that the Publisher can terminate the agreement after two years, sell off whatever remaining inventory it has, and the rights will return back to the author without reservation or restriction. I inquired with Algora about exercising this right in January 2016. Even with apparently low sales, Martin was not interested. He asked "and by the way, why would you think that you could be better off by re-publishing the book on your own?" That answer is simple. In addition to the already stated reasons above, I'd like to re-publish to fix the errors if for no other reason than for pride and posterity. The biggest motivator though is that I don't like Martin and do not want to be associated with him any longer. I was honest when I said

"My experience working with you was often filled with combative vitriol. I remember your communicative style to be unsupportive and very acerbic. For all of these reasons and more, I deeply regret not taking the option given to me a few years ago to back out of our agreement."

In the back and forth discussions that ensued, Martin took those words, paraphrased some of them, and published them online in the list of quotes from authors about Algora Publishing. He took a private discussion and made it public in an apparent attempt to embarrass or irritate me - actions that would be considered both childish and immature if done by any publishing professional. Can you really imagine Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Livre, or any other legitimate publishing house doing something like that to one of their authors? Neither can I, which is what prompted me to write this review. If I were an author considering Algora Publishing, this type of mentality and ideology would cause me great concern.

My experience working with Algora Publishing and Martin DeMers in particular was not positive, but once again, in the interest of being fair in my review, I want to reiterate that there were some positive things about the experience. Minus the errors and the ideological dictatorship, much of their editing was good, and in the end, the book was published. To be fair, that is the goal, right? As I look back upon it from the vantage point of reflection, it may not have been exactly the book that I wanted or one in which I am entirely proud of, but it was published. I have to give them credit for that.

Would I work with Algora Publishing again? Nope. Never.

If I could turn back time, would I have taken the opportunity to get out of our agreement when I had the chance? Absolutely.

For me, the negatives of working with Martin DeMers and Algora Publishing far outweigh the positives. Whether it was their non-existent or woefully ineffective marketing efforts, Martin's combative ideology and ad-hominem attacks, or the complete breakdown of trust that I feel, I could not in good conscience recommend Algora Publishing to any potential author.

-- JJ Dyken