Author Solutions

Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup – from Writer Beware

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Writer Beware is a site you should bookmark! Sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., the goal of the site is to shine a bright light on the scams and bad practices that prey on the unwary writer.  Victoria Strauss looks a little deeper into the Author Solutions sale by Penguin and why smart writers might want to avoid them. Originally posted January 15, 2016.

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Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup

As most of you already know, Penguin Random House dumped Author Solutions at the end of 2015, selling it to a private equity firm for an undisclosed amount. (“A Penguin Random House Company” has already vanished from Author Solutions’ logo.)

The sale received quite a bit of media coverage, at least some of which acknowledged AS’s troubled reputation–something else that won’t be new to you if you’re a regular reader of this blog.

One of the areas that I and others have often criticized is AS’s huge range of marketing services, which are aggressively pitched to authors who sign up for publishing packages. Most of these services are dubiously useful (email blasts), jawdroppingly expensive (book signings at book fairs), or both (cinema advertising). Basically, they’re the equivalent of liquor at a restaurant: relatively inexpensive to deliver, but extremely profitable because of the enormous markup at which they can be sold. (AS executives have actually admitted, in depositions related to class action lawsuits brought against AS, that selling books is not one of the goals of AS’s marketing services.)

What’s the actual markup, though? How much difference is there between the price for which AS sells a service, and AS’s cost to deliver it?

Here’s an example. One of my readers drew my attention to this recent ad on Craigslist, in which Author Solutions seeks “freelance coverage writers” to “read self-published books and provide detailed, coherent coverage on the work’s potential for film/television/digital adaptation.”

Read the full post on Writer Beware

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How Jessica Mitford Exposed A $48m Scam From America’s Literary Establishment

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Digital site on 12/16/15.

Jessica Mitford took on the American funeral industry, the California Department of Corrections, and the Ku Klux Klan, but it was her 1970 exposé of The Famous Writers School which led to Time calling her “The Queen of the Muckrakers.” And if a courageous editor hadn’t reversed his decision to kill her story, it might never have happened.

Mitford had been aware of The Famous Writers School’s existence for some time. Anyone who was a frequent reader of newspapers, books or magazines would have seen its ever-present advertisements, inviting aspiring writers to cut out and apply for the free aptitude test. While Mitford was suspicious, she didn’t have anything concrete until her lawyer husband took on a new client.

Bob Treuhaft was approached by a 72-year old widow, living on Social Security, who had cleaned out her bank account to make a down-payment to The Famous Writers School. On the same day Mitford heard the widow’s sorry tale from her husband, she received a book in the mail for review: Writing Rackets by Robert Byrne, which also mentioned the school.

Mitford had lunch with Bill Abrahams not long afterwards – then the West Coast editor of The Atlantic. She shared tales from Byrne’s book on literary frauds and the story of the cheated widow, and Abrahams asked her to write a short piece for The Atlantic covering both.

The following day Abrahams called to say that the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Robert Manning, had decided not to run the piece after all. While Manning agreed that the bold claims made in The Famous Writers School’s advertising were “probably unethical,” he pointed out that The Atlantic had made “many thousands of dollars” from those self-same ads and felt it would be equally unethical to run a piece criticizing the school.

 

Read the full post on Let’s Get Digital.

 

Writer’s Digest Dumps Author Solutions

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Visible site on 6/23/14.

I have some huge news: Writer’s Digest has terminated its partnership with Author Solutions.

Abbott Press – the imprint launched by Writer’s Digest, parent company F+W Media, and white-label vanity press provider Author Solutions – is still operational, but all ties to Writer’s Digest have been cut.

It appears that Abbott Press will now be run directly as yet another Author Solutions brand but Writer’s Digest and F+W Media will have no further connection with it. (If you are unfamiliar with Author Solutions and its awful history, this will bring you up to speed.)

Writer’s Digest and F+W Media refuse to comment, despite being given several opportunities, but I’ve had this news confirmed by multiple sources. As Author Solutions only tends to allow early termination of partnership agreements if the partner signs a series of non-disclosure agreements, a formal announcement or comment is unlikely.

 

Click here to read the full post on Let’s Get Visible.

 

A Victory Against Author Solutions

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Visible site on 2/14/14.

It should be clear to everyone now that Penguin Random House has no intention of cleaning up Author Solutions.

The only development since Penguin purchased the company for $116m back in July 2012 is that Author Solutions has aggressively expanded operations (see here, here, here, here and here).

I’ve been covering the Author Solutions story for a while now – particularly since the Penguin purchase, which was met with disbelief in the author community. It’s a frustrating beat, especially when faced with a wall of silence from the many companies and organizations in traditional publishing who have links to Author Solutions and its subsidiaries.

Documenting the links between Author Solutions and the rest of the publishing world is depressing work. The list reads like a Who’s Who of traditional publishing. Getting them to discuss their links to Author Solutions has been near-impossible, let alone taking any action with regard to those links.

One exception has been The Bookseller.

Click here to read the full post on Let’s Get Visible.