From today’s Shelf Awareness:
Law Firm ‘Investigating’ Author Solutions
Giskan Solotaroff Anderson & Stewart, a New York City law firm that boasts of having “consistently delivered big results for our clients and, in our class actions, for consumers and small businesses injured by deceptive and unlawful conduct,” is, it said, “investigating the practices” of Author Solutions and its subsidiaries AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford, Xlibris, Inkubook and Wordclay. The firm said, “Authors using Author Solutions have complained of deceptive practices, including enticing authors to purchase promotional services that are not provided or are worthless, failing to pay royalties, and spamming authors and publishing blogs/sites with promotional material.”
The firm is asking writers who have published with Author Solutions and “have been the victim of deceptive practices” to contact it.
As self-publishing has boomed and resulted in some tremendous bestsellers, last July, Penguin bought Author Solutions. In November, Author Solutions and Simon & Schuster launched a joint venture, Archway Publishing, focused on self-publishers. In 2011, Author Solutions had sales of $100 million and has, since its founding in 2007, helped some 150,000 authors publish, market and distribute books. It and its subsidiaries offer a range of packages for authors, a few of which have prices in the five figures.
* Except for this: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – writing can be an art and a passion, but publishing is a business, and once you decide to enter that business, you should do all possible research and due diligence to make sure you know what you’re getting into.