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This company publishes anything that comes in, and as its original name indicates, it reaches out to a market of unpublished writers.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

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