My publisher, AuthorHouse, is what can be considered a vanity publisher. I chose them based on the ability I would have to have decisive input on the design and production of the book. I was able to design the cover, set the interior font, and determine the size of the book. I was also in charge of the editing of the manuscript, which means that I controlled what the final product contained. No one told me to take out or add anything.
This part of the process was absolutely stellar, and I couldn't have been happier.
Then the book came up for sale.
Amazon had the paperback available within two days of the live date. It only took Amazon two days more to start selling the kindle version. The other sites, Books-A-Million, Borders, and Barnes-and-Noble took almost three weeks to make the book available for sale. More than that, those sites needed another submittal of the cover artwork by the publisher before it would appear on their sites.
The book went live in October. In January, I had to contact the publisher and have them resubmit the ebook for sale on the three sites mentioned above. Once the publisher 'resubmitted' it the sites had the ebook for sale within two days. I suspect that the publisher didn't bother to submit it in the first place, but I cannot prove it. A minor hiccup, right? I mean how many ebook sales did I lose from those three months of unavailability?
I also purchased a couple of marketing campaigns from the publisher. I purchased an email campaign and a press release. The email went out to 200,000 people. The press release went out to 528 news and media outlets. How many follow ups did we receive? 0. Say again? ZERO. The publisher does no secondary follow ups on press releases, and does not give me the ability to call the recipients of the press release and follow up. By contrast, I put the exact same press release on Newszap, ( http://fl.newszapforums.com/forum183/103813.html ) I've had 260 hits on that local forum since January. Yet, the same release to 528 outlets got ZERO hits. I find it more likely that this release never left the AuthorHouse development desk.
Moving on, we come to royalties.
Quarter 4 ran from October when the book went live to January first. I had to call and nag them to research my ebook sales. Now, I know for a fact that three people purchased the kindle version of my book. Not only did I receive royalties for TWO total ebook sales, but they chose to amend my royalty price agreement from receiving $4 a sale to $2.90 per sale.
Fast forward to late January to find that a major purchase posted to the AuthorHouse site for my book, in which a Canadian book dealer purchased 150 copies of my book. This is in quarter 1, which ended April 1st. Now it's June, and guess how many books I got paid for: Not 150! ONE. When I call to find out how I got gypped this time, they tell me that the purchaser's credit card never went through. I don't know how that's my problem, but lucky me! I get to reap the benefits of the publisher's poor business practices.
I have filed two complaints with the Indiana Better Business Bureau, which have received an answer which picked apart the complaint and answered whatever the publisher wished to answer.
I do not regret self publishing. I am proud of the finished product. I only wish that AuthorHouse cared about more than leeching money from the authors that they publish. Their whole business is geared toward taking money from the writers instead of making good on purchased services and helping the writer succeed.
This is a large pill for me to swallow, but I hope that writers like me can learn from my experiences.
This is a revelation to me Rick. I had a completely different opinion of your status as an author. As I had seldom seen you since your book was published, I assumed you were a "successful" author and running in a higher more exclusive group. I must say I was a bit envious and regretted that, but now I am feeling your pain at being cheated so badly.
ReplyDeleteI hope you can find a better outlet for your new book and subsequent efforts.