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Authorhouse

Posted:    

fraud

Complaint Rating:  90 % with 157 votes
90% 157
4.5
Contact information:
authorhouse
1663 liberty drive, suite 200 /47403
Bloomington, Indiana
United States
Phone: 1-888-728-8647
I'm writing this not only for myself, but for the thousand of published authors who have been fraudulently delt with but 1st books, now Authorhouse. There is no doubt in my mind that this company has been pocketing royalties that rightly belong to only god knows how many authors published by them.

I have one question. I only ask you as the reader to use your own logic. What are the chances of any product, whether it's good or bad. A product that's being advertised on at least fifteen, probably more like thirty web sites. Web sites in the United States and in the UK, of never being purchased by anyone, at least once??? If you take a few minutes and check out a number of web sites on AOL and Yahoo. You will find some very interesting reading.
Complaint comments Comments (79) Complaint country United States Complaint category Products & Services

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D  14th of Nov, 2008 by    +1 Votes
Knowing that books in distribution have a bar code and an ISBN, I think it's a stretch to say a publishing company is witholding royalties from authors. Publishing companies only track sales of your book when they are sold through the publisher. If your book sells at another retailer such as Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com, those sales are tracked by the distributor such as Ingram or Baker & Taylor. When a book sells, the bar code and ISBN are the tracking pieces of the sale. Your publisher would have no idea how many books you've sold through other retailers until the distributor posted your sales activity to the publisher, which with AuthorHouse is every quarter. If you are upset about retail sales royalties, you shouldn't be upset with AuthorHouse. Check with your distributor. It sounds like that's where you need to start, as a publisher only pays royalties based on the sales numbers they receive from distributors.
D  23rd of Nov, 2008 by    +1 Votes
If the book was written anything like this review, then I absolutely believe that no one bought the book.
D  5th of Apr, 2009 by    -1 Votes
4-5-2009 I furthrer disagree with your comment because I know that AuthorHouse is full of bad and that's why they were sued in a libel courts last year and maybe soon with the help of the attorney general's office they will be sued for stealing from their own authors. I wait for that!!!
A  6th of Apr, 2009 by    +1 Votes
4--06-09 Only hope that the attorney general does a good investigation on AuthorHouse because publishers like this shouldn't be in business!!!
A  6th of Apr, 2009 by    0 Votes
I just was told today that I'd only be receiving $1.00 and something off of each book. I paid 2300.00 for services and I'm only getting 1.00 somethign from each book?
A  6th of Apr, 2009 by    0 Votes
To clc from no paid royalties. I agree with you I received 3-4 royalties from Authorhouse each one was 2.75-3.44 that company is fraud. I only wish the attorney general does a full investigation and then the authors should receive compensation from that!
N  6th of Jun, 2009 by    0 Votes
I have shown on my statements with AuthorHouse from other vendors and got my royalties. I am sorry to hear that. Yet, if you independently publish, how would you keep up with your royalties from other bookstores, distributors, and most of us go by their records to get paid.

Royalties are what you choose as an author, 5-20%, I have contest this in the past...since we pay them a fee up front for our books to be published, then only get one of these options as royalties. This is why you have to cut the middle person out and learn to do it yourself or keep paying self-publishing costs or find a traditional publisher (very difficult these days).

Keep up with it,
Adrienna
www.adriennaturner.webs.com
www.dreams4more.com
A  9th of Jun, 2009 by    0 Votes
I have a manuscript I am currently 3/4 finished with. It is a romance/suspense novel. I am a first time writer. I mistakenly got in contact with Authorhouse and a guy named Kristopher Kmitta about my book. Now, I get constant phone calls and emails from him wanting to publish my book. I read this and know now that I wouldn't let them do it. I need advice. I want someone reputable to review my manuscript, who would anyone suggest that isn't a rip off or will charge them an arm and a leg for just reading over it?
N  17th of Jun, 2009 by    0 Votes
cLc,

Why would you be upset with AuthorHouse about your royalty rate? YOU were the one who chose your royalty rate, not AuthorHouse. They are one of the few self-publishers that actually give you the freedom to set your own price. It's tough to blame someone else for your own negligence!
D  18th of Jun, 2009 by    0 Votes
No paid royalties to clc you don't even know what my situation is with AuthorHouse so maybe my future business with them is no concern to you. And again one day that company is going to pay for all the wrong doings it has done to the many authors it has and that will be a blessing in the sky!!!
N  10th of Jul, 2009 by    +1 Votes
Before Author House merged with iUniverse I chose iUniverse, not knowing this was going to be the future of this company. I regret choosing iUniverse now, as I've had problems with them and fear that if they do ever get a book done I won't get paid from sales, as others are complaining about. The number of times this company has contradicted itself and changed personnel it has just not gone well and I'd never use them again or recommend them. Also, their editing was amateur, definitely not worth what I paid for it. I could've done it myself better but thought by paying them I was saving myself time. Wrong! Redoing their job was very time consuming. It has made me suspicious of the entire self publishing industry.
N  17th of Jul, 2009 by    0 Votes
I am so confused now. I want my book published but there is so many negative comments not sure if I should move forward with them.
N  23rd of Jul, 2009 by    0 Votes
Well, My book just went up for sale in May 2009. "Bath time bears have so much fun", and I'm constantly concerned about the royalties situation. I know for a fact I have sold at leats a minimum of 100 copies so I am awaiting my first statement from them. I read somewhere that if you disagree with Authorhouse's account of sales, you call the distributor directly and they will give you an actual number of copies sold, and Authorhouse will mail you the amount they did not pay, But after doing some reading I find they (the distributor) can be to blame too. I guess if I'm taken advantage of my Lawyer will get a call too.
A  24th of Aug, 2009 by    0 Votes
I agree totally.

Author house is a big SCAM! I live in Nashville, TN and decided to take a trip to see if there was an actual building. Like everyone else I fell for the lure of vanity. Hence the word. They were surprised to seem me show up a day earily. I sat in a glass room for two hours before the guy (can't remember his name, sorry) finally showed up. So I asked to see the rest of the offices and get to meet the staff since we were going to working together. He refused not once but three times and kept changing the subject. I'll admit. I ignored the warning signs and plopped down 1, 000 for my first three books of Poetry. Once they got my money, they would never return my many phone calls. Nothing but dead silence for months and I never herd from them again.

As I was driving back to Nashville that day, I had a sinking pit in my stomach and kept hearing the little voice of my vanity saying over and over..."SUCKER."

Please allow me to give my fellow writers some sound advice.

Anything over the internet that requires a payment of some kind, Always type in the words "SCAM" after it. You will be surprised at what slithers out from under that word.

William
Nashville, TN
A  25th of Aug, 2009 by    -3 Votes
I agree with every bad comment that anyone have about authorhouse, that company is a very unprofesional one, I myself have bad experience with that company, and I will never recomend no one to do bussiness with that company.
N  29th of Sep, 2009 by    0 Votes
With so many complaints about Authorhouse, I would like to ask what I feel everyone wants to know; and that is "which self-publishing company is actually worth their weight in salt?" Can anyone recommend one that has actually worked for them? I have heard amazing things about Infinity, and have met one of the authors (a lawyer) who have published through them, and was most content with the outcome. However, they(Infinity) does not publish children's books, under 60 pages at this time, and that is why Authorhouse sounded good. Alas, after these comments they certainly don't anymore. Any suggestions for a company to publish a children's book that has already been illustrated, professionally editted, and formatted?
N  30th of Sep, 2009 by    -1 Votes
People, people, people!!! Like actors and models with talent agencies, writers should never have to PAY one CENT to get their books published! Any legitimate and reputable publishing house will pay YOU and will have you sign a true contract. No real author has to pay anything to get a book published. These vanity publishing houses are a crock and a scam. If your book is really good and first-rate, it will eventually get published by a REAL firm. If not, well . . .
N  30th of Sep, 2009 by    +3 Votes
Tell that to the thousands of authors with great stories and ideas who don't have the "open door" to traditional publishing. I would venture to say that less than 1% of all authors are signed traditionally. This has nothing to do with your writing quality, but rather whether a publisher thinks they can recoup the thousands of dollars they put into mass printing of your book. It's a "risk/reward" issue that unfortunately is the rule in publishing. Unless you have sold thousands of copies of your book, or are a celebrity/politician who can sell books off of your name alone, traditional publishers aren't typically willing to take the risk of an unproven/unknown author. It would be great if a publisher would pay you an advance based on your writing skill, but the publishing world doesn't work that way. With self-publishing, you can build a name for yourself, prove that your book is marketable and in demand while profiting from your sales and bridge the gap that you may face now. This may give you the credibility you need to be signed traditionally. So why not do both? Most self-publishers have an open-ended/non-exclusive agreement so that if you are picked up traditionally, you can take your book with you.

Also, it's important to note that even if you are signed traditionally, you will still be doing the vast majority of your own marketing. There has been a long-standing myth that a publisher will market your book for you. That couldn't be further from the truth. Again, this is due to risk/reward. A traditional publisher has a marketing budget and only spreads that across their best-performing authors, just as you and I would do if we owned our own traditional publishing company.

Many of the larger self-publishers do everything a traditional publisher does. The only difference is that they don't take the rights to your book, don't take 1-2 years to bring your book to market, pay much higher royalties and you maintain creative control of your book.

I hope this helps, as I hate seeing authors sit around for months (or years) waiting to get signed when they'd have a better chance of hitting the lottery. The traditional publishing model is definitely broken and does not bode well for unknown authors.
D  14th of Oct, 2009 by    +1 Votes
Authors pay for different services from vanity publishers. Such as, ISBN numbers, Copyright, to have your book downloaded into book formats, to have the book covers designed, for the electronic software they use for their web pages such as adobe e-book reader, for soft cover book covers, for hard cover book covers, to do the artwork on the book cover, editorial services, and more. All these services cost money and are what authors are actually paying for, not the publishing itself. True enough, vanity publishers will put your book on their webpage and will give you a personal web page to sell your work on or where you can put a link onto Amazon or EBay. These are the things that are included in the packaging plan. You can choose the plans you want. The more you can get the things listed above yourself instead of hiring a vanity staff to do it, the cheaper the plans will be, because you want need them to do those things for you.

Before the vanity publishers set a price, they find out how much a print on Demand Company and/or Distribution Company; which is the same thing, will cost them to send your manuscript in a file to them and have it printed and bind according to the amount of pages in the manuscript. Of course the more copies that are printed at one time of the book, the cheaper the printing of the book will cost. Vanity publishers base your book at selling one at a time and it cost more to print just one book at a time. They know some author just can’t afford to have their works printed in bulks. Then authors have to pay for soft covers or hard covers of their books along with the printing and the bill will go up, and you have to choose one or the other, or else just use electronic book form e-book, then you will not have to pay for book covers to be printed out and the book will be cheaper for the customer and will cut the printing cost out. If the printing company or should I say distribution company charges $7.00 to print out and bind a 200 page manuscript then the publishers are going to set the book at an extra $7.00 so that they and the author can make some money off the book and so the book will be set at a $14.00 price, whereas an electronic or e-book will only be $7.00. So every time a customer purchases the book, they will be paying for the printing and for the fee the vanity publishers charge so that the vanity publishers and author can make some money, but the author will only get royalties off of the $7.00 only which will be about 7% - 25% of the $7.00 every time a customer purchase the book and the other $7.00 goes directly to the print on demand company or distribution company time the customers credit card and/or debit card are authorized. Customers also have to pay the shipping and handling fees too. The print on demand and/or distribution company are the ones who take orders directly from the vanity publishing website and print out the books and send them to your customers, not the vanity publishers. Then the print on demand and/or distribution companies sends vanity publishers statements every 3 to 4 months of how much your book has sold.

Authors can bypass the vanity companies which are the middle man and go straight to the print on demand companies or distribution or printing company of their choice. Either way, print on demand will charge their fees and will set your fee to the other half and your customers will be paying for both fees plus the shipping and handling. Unless the author have five-hundred of the books or more printed in bulks and then the books will be about $3.00 to print in a bulk and you will pay this to the printing company up front. Then you can set your on prices for your books and have the printing company print out whatever you have for the price along with the manuscript which will be printed on the back cover of your book and you can have the books stored in a storage or in the trunk of your car, and charge customer shipping and handling and then ship the books out yourself to your customers. That’s real self-publishing there.

Also authors can pay for advertising and marketing packets from vanity publishers which are separate from the actual publishing process. Advertising and marketing packets have different prices as well, but the more you can do on your own, the cheaper the plans will be for you, because you will not need to purchase all those things from them.

In real self publishing, authors do all of those things for themselves by cutting out the middle man which is the vanity publishers and just go to a print on demand printing company or a printing company and have their books printed out all at one time. Like I said, to have a printing company to print a lot of books for you all at one time is way cheaper than having them print the book out one at a time for customers, which is print on demand. But some authors can’t afford to pay the money upfront to have such a thing done.

Subsidy publishing companies does all these things for you all in one set price for a contract for about five years, but they charge $17, 000.00 - 25, 000.00 in up front fees to do so depending on your manuscript size and so forth. The advertising and marketing is included in the fee and they do everything for you including the copy editing. At that point, they claim for the money that you have paid them, they will have your books put in different newspapers and send them to news stations if your book qualify for it so your can be on the news, talk shows or radio. Also if you provide them with a mailing list of your family, friends and any other people you know and they will send them out flyers, brochures, catalogs of your book and notify them of your book signings and book readings. After the contract is over, you can purchase the agreed print on demand books that they agreed to have printed in the contract at a discount price, if you do not purchase the discounted print on demand book, then they destroy the idea of printing any more of your books, because the contract will have ended. They use a print on demand printing company and Distribution Company too.

This is where vanity publishers comes in at, because a lot of people cannot afford $25, 000.00 and so authors only pay for the services that they need and weed out those that they can do for themselves including advertising and marketing. But subsidy companies don’t play that. It’s the whole fee that is due for all the service they believe you need. For what subsidy publishers can do for you, you can get done at a vanity publisher for cheaper and only pick out the services that you need.

Read up on POD printing or print on demand printing companies.

Traditional publishing companies may or may not give authors money upfront. Some authors receive zero money upfront and these are real publishers, some authors receive only $250.00 – to $500.00 and just maybe $1000.00 or $2, 000.00, if you think I am joking look in the Writers Market and see what publishers are offering. Advances are a lot less than vanity publishers and they can range from 7% royalties for the first 5 thousand copies sold, 10% royalties for the next 10 thousand copies sold and 12% there on after while the book is selling. But if the traditional publishers gave you money up front an advance, you want see a dime of those earned royalties until your book has paid back the money that they gave you upfront. When that little $250.00 – $2, 500.00 is paid back with your royalties; your percentage when customers have purchased your book, then publishers will start sending you a quarterly statement of every 3 to 4 months whenever their statement system generates on. Plus they keep the rights to your books for a duration of time.

Literary Agent talk money to traditional publishers, they are your lawyers and can get you starting out at least $45, 000.00 for your first book. But it’s like this, unless you get a legitimate Literary Agent to represent you, to me self-publishing is a better choice for un-published, unknown and new authors, even vanity publishing is a better choice for such authors. For the rich, subsidy publishing is the choice; because they want have to lift a finger after they have written their books. So if authors have tried several times to get their books published by traditional publishers and have tried to get a legitimate literary agent and fail, go for it. Only 1% authors achieve that traditional publishing success. I just wouldn’t keep waste my time with traditional publishers nor legitimate literary agents. Because they make up all kinds of excuses as to why they can’t publish your work and literary agents make up all kinds of reasons why they can’t represent you and a lot of the time, it’s because they are bombarded with other works. I have read a lot of traditional published books and vanity, subsidy and self-published books by authors and they are all the same. There are bad books by traditional published author and good books by traditional published authors and the same with vanity, subsidy and self-published authors. If it’s a good story, then don’t keep begging traditional publishers and literary agents, the story needs to be read and enjoyed, so publish it. Focus on getting people hooked on your works, so you can build your audience. You know what this means; the money will follow
N  14th of Oct, 2009 by    +1 Votes
Anybody who published through a vanity publisher, I recommend to not depend on vanity publishers to sell your work, because that is not what they are about. They are about providing services to you that helps you get the book finished, because vanity publishers know that self-publishing alone can be absorbent and exhausting for authors. Vanity publishers provides a link from their webpage directly to the print on demand and/or distribution company so those printing companies can print your book out and then ship it directly to your customers. Vanity publishing companies are also nice enough to provide a page in which authors who use their services books will also be available on their webpage and people can buy the book there too, it’s only for authors’ convenience and some even give their authors a personal webpage where they can put a link to bookstores so that customers can purchase there books.

Authors should build a nice webpage and get a domain name, and put your website into the search engines and also pay per click options. Because this is really the way that it should be done when authors go through a vanity, subsidy and when people self-publish their books.

Authors can also use paypal.com and after three months you apply for a debit card, your customer don’t need an account to use Paypal credit card system on your website and you can even log on to paypal.com and charge peoples credit and debit cards yourself. This way customers can buy the book directly from you. You can use print on demand too, or you can have books printed out and stocked in the trunk of your car and ship them directly to your customers. If you use e-books, customers can purchase directly from your webpage and you keep all the earnings. Authors can give there readers choices on their web pages as to what bookstores they want to purchase their books from, by putting more than one bookstore link on their webpage. Be that as it may, Authors should have their books listed in as many online bookstores as possible. Because online bookstores focus on selling book. It's as simple as that.

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AuthorHouse Logo AuthorHouse
Customer Care Service
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington
Indiana
United States - 47403
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