Kevin Weiss, President and CEO of Author Solutions Inc., has issued a video statement addressing the responses by RWA, SFWA, MWA, and NINC to ASI’s recent partnerships with commercial publishers in launching pay-to-publish divisions.

I don’t often write posts like this, because it’s really like shooting fish in a barrel. And there are so many red flags here that savvy writers may wonder why I bother. But there are a lot of new writers searching for agents, many of whom are probably new to Writer Beware, and may not yet be clear on what to watch out for.

I wasn’t optimistic that I would ever be writing a post like this, after the class action filed last year against PublishAmerica was dismissed.

However, on January 31, 2013, the Maryland law firm Z Law and the New York law firm Giskan Solotaroff Anderson & Stewart (the same firm that is currently investigating Author Solutions Inc.) filed an amended complaint (the original complaint was filed last November) against Willem Meiners, Larry Clopper, and PublishAmerica LLLC on behalf of Diana Waterman, Jennifer Grant, Danita Clemons, and the class of PA authors in similar situations.

India is a vast book market, and print is still king. So it only makes sense that Penguin (whose parent company, Pearson, acquired self-publishing giant Author Solutions Inc. last year) has just announced the expansion of ASI into India via its new “imprint,” Partridge.

In 2008, following a bitter divorce, Iowan Scott Weier paid one of the Author Solutions Inc. imprints to publish his memoir, Mind, Body, and Soul. Subsequently, Weier’s ex-wife filed suit against Weier and ASI for libel, citing allegations in the memoir that she was a bad mother, had been the victim of molestation, and had a personality disorder

  The average printed book from a print-on-demand self-publishing service sells fewer than 200 copies, mostly to “pocket” markets surrounding the author–friends, family, local retailers who can be persuaded to place an order–and to the author him/herself. POD services’ own statistics support these low sales figures. AuthorHouse’s 2010 online Fact Sheet revealed that it had […]

Every January, I look back over this blog and pick out what I think were the most useful, interesting, and/or important posts of the previous year. Here goes.

Writers & Artists–the Bloomsbury Publishing-owned writers’ handbook that’s the UK equivalent to the USA’s Writers Market–has just launched a free self-publishing provider comparison service.

I had this post ready to go on Friday, but it was pre-empted by news of Ann Crispin’s death. I was considering letting the blog sit silent for a week–but in light of the fools and trolls who are dreaming of Writer Beware’s demise, I’ve decided to carry on as usual. It’s what Ann would have wanted.

Earlier this week, a press release caught my eye: Bestselling Author Jerry Jenkins Announces Innovative Publishing Firm. Since “innovative” in publishing press release-speak often means “charges a whopping fee”, I decided to investigate.