Author Solutions Rep: People Complaining About Our Fraudulent “Services” Are “Racketting”

from i-can-count-the-facts-eric-knows-about-a-stump department

Before we get into this unintentionally hilarious answer from an Author Solutions rep (via Nate Hoffelder), we’ll need a bit of background on the company itself.

Author Solutions Inc. is a “self-publishing” company that currently does business with several major publishers, while acting more like a seriously abusive vanity press than a true self-publishing service. Acquired by Pearson in 2012, ASI has assembled a stable of “self-publishing” and print-on-demand services, including Author House, xlibris, iUniverse and Trafford. Other publishers have outsourced self-publishing work to ASI under a variety of names.

Like the other self-publishing divisions of specialized publishers (LifeWay’s Cross Books, Thomas Nelson’s West Bow Press, Harlequin’s Dell’Arte Press [which, unlike other ventures of this sort, produced a furore upon its introduction and had to change its name]Balboa Press of Hay House and Abbott Press of Writer’s Digest), Archway Publishing is outsourced to Author Solutions Inc. [Simon & Schuster] is the biggest fish that ASI has landed so far.

ASI’s main business by far is selling (mostly unnecessary) services to authors. Selling books is almost an accidental by-product.

[I]n 2011, ASI generated about 63% of its revenue from what it calls publishing and marketing services and 37% from distribution services.

For this reason, ASI does not do much recurring business.

Since its launch, ASI has published 170,000 titles by 140,000 authors…

Compare those numbers with Smashwords, a well-respected self-publishing service.

The site, which has published about 127,000 titles by 44,000 authors, is expected to double its revenue this year.

Why doesn’t ASI have this kind of recurring clientele? Because it’s basically a scam. Hopeful authors sign up for expensive services (the average author spends $5,000 and only sells 150 books), only to realize too late that ASI is only interested in selling things to the author, rather than selling books to customers.

Despite the fact that a “starter” package costs around $1,200 to $2,000, ASI doesn’t even provide a copy edition. This is likely due to the fact that more than three-quarters of its workforce is in the Philippines. Not that ASI doesn’t have try make some corrections. It’s just that when it does, it only makes things worse.

Enjoy this citation from a class action lawsuit filed against ASI.

“Author Solutions also fails to care for the works of its authors, committing many glaring publisher errors – errors made by the publisher, not the author. These errors include errors on book covers , in addition to various typographical and formatting errors. In fact, Author Solutions takes advantage of its own errors. Aggressive sales techniques ensure that these errors are only corrected for a fee of several hundred dollars. Although, as a matter of principle, Author Solutions promises to fix editor errors for free, it rarely does.

On the “plus” side, ASI will charge authors a bounty to handle these “impossible” tasks.

But with Archway [outsourced to ASI] authors will be spared the strenuous effort of uploading the e-book to various e-bookstores, hiring their own cover designer and layout expert, and they will also be spared the grueling efforts required to create a POD book via CreateSpace or Lightning source.

For a meager $2,000, Archway will also provide a novelist with services that are far too difficult for authors themselves to do, such as registering copyright and purchasing an ISBN, as well only desperately needed services like registering a LOC control number.

As stated in the lawsuit, ASI is messing around with royalties.

The complaint also alleges that Author Solutions’ royalty practices are either misleading or poorly paid, even some authors listed as bestsellers on Amazon, the complaint says, said they had no reported sales and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to obtain proper commercial accounts.

ASI is also having problems distributing refunds. Shaming ASI tends to publicly shake the refund, but that often means a company representative will show up at the public shaming site to make sad noises about the author’s decision to discuss it publicly. (As if withholding a refund is the path to true kindness…)

Now that you know what ASI does, witness this beauty of a response to an author who declined ASI’s unsolicited sales pitch (d/b/a iUniverse).

An author [“Kevin”] received a marketing letter from iUniverse [You can read the whole thing in its self-promoting glory at this link.] After discovering the company behind the pitch, the author resent the following email.

Ugh, I didn’t realize it was iUniverse by another name. I’ll pass thank you. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about how few authors there are and how you sell for next to nothing in return.

In response to his “Thanks, but I’d rather slit my eyeballs” email, Kevin received this odd defensive jolt from Eric Emlinger, “Publishing Consultant” for Author Solutions.

Hello Kevin,

These horror stories come from websites sued for racketeering, their [sic] basically hiring people to write bad reviews on big companies. I don’t expect you to believe me, all I can tell you are the facts. We’ve been in business for 15 years, have published over 91,000 books, have an A with the Better Business Bureau, are FCC regulated, and our company is part of the Penguin Random House group. Many of my authors have even returned in recent months to publish their second and third books. Hope we hear from you again.

Take a good look at the terminology tossed carelessly into this word salad and ask yourself if this is the kind of person you would trust with a manuscript. For starters, telling someone the “facts” usually means you brought some with you. This answer seems awfully light on those.

With all the (related) background provided above, I can only assume that Techdirt has entered “racketeering” territory, something normally associated with New Jersey sanitation companies and frustrated g-men. ASI does not prosecute anyone, even less for “racketeering”. He may be upset that sites like Ripoff Report and Writer Beware are loaded with bad reviews of his appalling service but, to date, he hasn’t sued anyone or any site for negative reviews. To do so would only make the situation worse.

An “A” with the Better Business Bureau only means ASI dues are paid. Consumers would love to have an independent source for business reputation, but the BBB falls short. As author David Gaughran points out in the comments, the BBB system is so easy to manipulate that a consumer interest group managed to get an “A” rating from the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau for the terrorist organization Hamas. .

As for being regulated by the FCC, I don’t know where Eric is coming from. He presumably means the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)but even so, thousands of companies are “regulated” by the Commission and dozens regularly abuse their customers.

And finally, ASI (iUniverse) may be part of the “Penguin Random House group”, but that indicates nothing more than Emilinger’s willingness to throw names around in order to give his company an air of legitimacy. No surprise there, but the real disappointment is that so many respected publishers have outsourced their self-publishing efforts to borderline scam artists like ASI who outsource their authors’ work to a workforce. cheap labor in the Philippines.

The big publishing houses should know better, but they still treat self-published writers as nothing more than an endless string of bench warmers who should be happy to receive the lowest “service” from the barrel of a company that makes more money by selling for authors than selling stuff from authors. The equation is completely upside down, but it easily reinforces publishers’ view that authors need their more … than they or they need authors. And as long as they are of this opinion, ASI will continue to drag the reputation of publishing houses through the mud.

Filed under: accusations, self-publishing
Companies: authoring solutions