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Author House (formerly 1st Books)
This company publishes anything that comes in, and as
its original name indicates, it reaches out to a market of unpublished writers.
The company garnered a lot of negative material on the web due to their over
dependence on hype when they were 1st Books. But now that they've become
AuthorHouse, they seem more circumspect. In fact, it's almost impossible to find
out anything from their new website. Their contract, however, is explicit: They
offer copyediting services but take no responsibility under contract for the
work that their editors do. Royalties are paid quarterly, but it's impossible to
find out how much these are without calling. Their contract states that prices
and royalties are determined by using their Book Pricing Agreement.
However, although all their agreements are available on their web site, this one
is strangely missing. Given their past, their current contract, and the
purposeful lack of information, I haven't much confidence in AuthorHouse's
integrity.
According to a New York Times article published on
January 28, 2009, Xlibris, along with AuthorHouse, Wordclay, iUniverse, Inkubook, and
Trafford are now all owned and operated by a single company, Author Solutions
Inc. Author Solutions is capitalized by
Bertram Capital Management. They seem intent on buying up as many POD
publishers as they can. They use "economies of scale" to provide self
publishing, which basically means the work is outsourced to the Philippines,
India, and other third world nations.
In
Summary:
On the plus side:
-Non exclusive contract
On the negative side:
-Prices high
-Important information withheld
-Contract disclaims almost all responsibility
-Many complaints appear online
D
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