Celebrating Independent Authors
A week ago I received an email from Matchstick Literary. (We’d give you the link but we don’t want to send you there.)
Let my observations serve to guide you through the initial things that serve as red flags when searching for a company to publish or market your books.
Here’s how it began: Continue reading “Can Matchstick Literary Pass the Predator Test?”
I wish I had read the reviews before I wasted my money with this company.
I’ve spent $1500 and I still don’t have my book.
I gave this company $5000 and all I got was a single box of books.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard or read something like the statements above, I wouldn’t have to buy lottery tickets anymore. I hear it from the students who attend my self-publishing class; the admins here at IU get emails like this almost every day. It’s frustrating, not only for the writers involved, but for us here at IU because it’s so absolutely avoidable. Continue reading “Want to Get Published? Do Your Homework!”
Well, that didn’t take long. Just three years and change after buying Author Solutions (ASI) from venture capital firm Bertram Capital, Penguin Random House has sold the company to an affiliate of Najafi Companies, another venture capital firm. In 2012, Penguin’s then-owner, Pearson, paid $116 million for Author Solutions, not long before Penguin merged with Random House. Terms of the most recent deal were not disclosed. The sale was finalized December 31st and was announced earlier this week.
I hope we’re all familiar by now with Author Solutions’ schtick: the reassuring websites of its many, many imprints; the claims that you, too, can be a successful author by publishing your book with them; the high initial costs, the constant upselling, the disastrous “editing,” and the boxes and boxes of books in the garage that the hapless author will never be able to unload. Continue reading “Random Penguin Kicks Author Solutions to the Curb”
A couple of years ago, Lin Robinson told us about some shady activity on LinkedIn by one Korede Abayome, who runs Indie Writer Support and ParaDon Publishing , among other things.
According to his bio, Abayome was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and raised in California. He goes by a number of different aliases, including Celina Marka (acquisitions editor for ParaDon), Judd Miller (ParaDon’s webmaster), and Artis Reed (which appears to be a pen name of Abayome’s). He sells publishing services to would-be writers, but his customers say he pockets the payments and never provides the services. One of these iffy services is a $250 “Elite Membership” to Indie Writers Support, which claims it has “raised a few authors to the NY Times best sellers list.” Of course, it doesn’t say which authors it has helped to get on the list. ParaDon also claims to have struck a deal recently with BookBub; as you might have guessed, BookBub says it has never done business with ParaDon. Continue reading “FOULED!: Update on Indie Writer Support”