This post has been updated.
PLEASE NOTE:
As a result of this post, I'm getting many emails from authors who believe they are contacting PublishAmerica/America Star Books. Writer Beware is not connected in any way with PublishAmerica or America Star Books (in fact, they sued us, unsuccessfully, for defamation in 2014).
The changeover is acknowledged on America Star's website, on the About Us page:
America Star Books used to be known as PublishAmerica, the no-nonsense, hard driving pioneer that changed the American publishing landscape for good when in 1999 it forced an opening for tens of thousands of American authors to join what was until then an elite status of being published for free.The name change is recent: sometime after January 4, 2014, which is the last date the old PublishAmerica website was archived by the Internet Archive. The America Star Books URL is registered to PublishAmerica's co-founder, Willem Meiners; since I first put this post online, the registration has been anonymized, but here's how it originally looked:
Some of the material from the PA website has been ported over, such as the Facts and Figures page, but overall the new site is much leaner than the former one.
The business model also appears to have changed:
Not only do we continue to publish, for free, tens of thousands of American and Canadian authors, but to that we add a unique mission.A Dutch self-publishing service called Free Musketeers appears to have already entered into an arrangement with America Star to publish English versions of its books. (The link is to the Google translation of the page, which is why the English is a bit wonky.)
It is our mission to translate into English books that Americans have never heard of, from languages that most Americans don't speak. America Star Books gives foreign authors an English voice, and publishes their work in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.
For more information about PublishAmerica, see Writer Beware's Alert.
UPDATE 3/23/16: In May 2014, America Star Books/PublishAmerica sued me for defamation, in part on the basis of this post (the complaint named Writer Beware and two additional WB staff members, but I was the only one who was ever served). After my lawyers submitted interrogatories and discovery requests, ASB contacted us to ask if we'd consider settling. A final settlement was signed in January 2016, in which ASB agreed to stipulate to Dismissal With Prejudice. A full report is here.
UPDATE 8/14/17: Mired in lawsuits, liens, and management shifts, America Star Books now appears to be defunct. See my blog post for a full report.