Follow them as they pursue the kidnappers into the depths of the Earth, battle ancient creatures and assassins as they attempt to rescue the two girls and restore Lucifer to his throne. Watch as the battle is joined, the conflict between good and evil rising up as it has so many times before. Then cry with the victors as the price of peace is once again paid.
Alas, here is a tale that is sad to tell... this book was actually the first one that I wrote, many years ago. In my inexperience, I chose to go with what I was told was a 'traditional' publisher, but later found out to my dismay that I should have done more research online as to the character and practices of the company.
My manuscript was indeed made available online on Amazon.com as well as other booksellers, but at a drastically inflated price that I swore I would not promote the book at all. Imagine paying $19.99 plus shipping for a 212 page softcover book... well, I couldn't! So I waged war to get my rights returned to me, was promptly banned from the message boards for daring to question their practices, and have been summarily turned down year after year in my request to cancel my contract. But the good news is there is less than two years left on it before it expires and all rights return to me! Yay me!
Please research PublishAmerica thoroughly... and I believe that you will see the logic that with that many complaints, if even half of them are legit, then it is not a company that you want to do business with. Let me just put out my experiences with them and you can judge from that.
No editing of my manuscript at all... it was printed just as I sent it to them. Considering that it was the VERY FIRST BOOK that I wrote, with no formal training, I was so pleased to learn that I evidently was the best author in the WORLD as I know even Stephen King and Mercedes Lackey have to rewrite their manuscripts a bit... but not I! Strike number one...
The price, as I said, was $19.95 USD then. A quick check of their website now shows it as being priced at $24.95!!!!! Just for fun, I took The Dragonbone Sword and worked it up at Lulu.com to see how it would compare. Check it out... The Dragonbone Sword is 347 pages, 6x9 format, with fully printed HARDCOVER priced at (wait for it....) $25.19 cents, shipping brings it to just under $30.00. The Battle Between is over a hundred pages less (212) and softcover, $24.95 and $3.99 shipping for a total of $28.94.
Availability was a massive problem for me. When I first received my finished product, I still had stars in my eyes at least for a bit... I went to a local Hastings bookstore and spoke to the Manager who was very pleased to set it up for me to do a booksigning there. She promptly ordered 30 books (PublishAmerica denied this, but I actually stood there while she inputted it in the computer.) We had a month before the signing was scheduled, plenty of time since this was a Print-on-demand book outsourced for printing to LightningSource. Two week later, we received five, yes FIVE books, so she reordered them. ( I once again was standing by her.) Two weeks later, a day before the scheduled book signing, they received FIVE more books... needless to say, we put the books on the shelf and canceled the signing. Another local bookstore ordered in one for someone who requested it, and three months later had still not recieved it. PublishAmerica staunchly says that it never happened... but I was there and know it did.
Just one Google on them, is all I ask, before you even contemplate it... instead, I heartily recommend Lulu.com.
