Several readers—including Wheatmark client Yasmin John-Thorpe—sent me the link to this article last week.
As I said in the subject line of this email, there are only two words to describe the piece, which is all about Author Solution’s (ASI’s) business practices:
“Horror show.”
It’s a lengthy article, and I recommend reading it in its entirety.
I also recommend forwarding it to any and all of your friends and colleagues—in particular, any one you know who’s contemplating self-publishing.
The only reason ASI is able to so easily prey on authors is a lack of knowledge on the part of the writing public—especially first-time authors.
Unfortunately, some of the US’ top trade publishers are complicit in this “deal with the devil,” including, of course, Penguin/Random House, who bought ASI three years ago.
You can read about the quotas the salespeople at ASI have to hit each month to keep their jobs, and you’ll also discover how many people work on providing royalty payments to ASI’s 180,000 authors:
One.
Yes, that’s right: one person is responsible for managing the royalties for the 225,000 titles published by those 180,000 authors.
(This in a company that has 732 sales reps.)
It’s no wonder that ASI clients complain about missing or incomplete royalty statements!
As a businessperson, I was interested to learn that ASI’s growth has plateaued in the US—right around the time they were purchased by Penguin/Random House.
Having run out of authors to dupe domestically, they’ve set their sites on growing their business abroad, in Spanish-language markets.
Me siento mal por ellos (I feel bad for them!)
Don’t become another Author Solutions victim.
Register for and watch my presentation “The Author’s Guide to Choosing a Publishing Service” here.
And make sure to forward this to your author friends—they’ll thank you for it!
Happy Tuesday,
Grael
Grael Norton
Wheatmark, Inc.
PS: Virtual seating is limited to 75 attendees, so register soon!
