Batman vs. The Penguin

One of my favorite TV shows as a kid was Batman.  Not today’s Batman with six-pack abs, but Adam West.  My favorite villan in this great TV series was The Penguin (Even though most people only remember Burgess Meredith as Rocky’s trainer, he’ll always be The Penguin to me).

Ah, good over evil.  The classic battle.  The Penguin and his band of evil thugs always got “Powed”, “Bammed” and “Zonked” into oblivion. In today’s world of self-publishing, we have a new Penguin.  This Penguin may or may not have intended to be the villain, but when it bought Author Solutions, it became one.  So, now that we have the villain, we need a caped crusader.  You know, someone who seems outgunned against the evil forces, but somehow finds a way to win and save the world.

Meet Emily Suess, self-publishing’s new Batgirl.  Emily has been blogging about the new Penguin and its new band of thugs at  Author Solutions & iUniverse complaints: The Complete Index .

I interviewed Emily for this post.  Enjoy:

What made you start blogging about Author Solutions?

It all started around June 2011 when I agreed to a random request to review an independent author’s book on my blog.  It went okay, so I wrote more reviews. Turns out five of those books were directly connected to Author Solutions, Inc (ASI), owner of the relatively well-known (though not exactly well-reputed) iUniverse imprint.

What happened next is kind of complicated, but essentially a couple of the authors started treating me like a fangirl, asking me to do some pretty ridiculous favors to help them promote their books, even though I was already giving them free publicity on my blog. It irked me, so I swore at them on my blog and lectured them about professionalism and manners. Then a strange thing happened. Not one of them came back to defend her position or tell me off.

There was some more drama, but eventually I learned that the comments and tweets that had irritated me so much weren’t actually written by the authors. After a little digging, I discovered the unprofessional requests were written by the publicity team at Author Solutions. The employees there were in the habit of ghostwriting blog comments and Tweets for their customers. After a little more digging, I discovered that my ex-husband (we had divorced two years earlier) was working on that shady team at Author Solutions.

So that’s when I started asking questions: What kind of company doesn’t have a problem with an employee using his ex-wife for free publicity without her knowledge? What kind of company risks the reputation of its authors by posting harmful comments and social media content on their behalf? And what kind of company would ever suggest that anything but authenticity and transparency in social media was a good idea?

I knew ASI was shady, and I set out to expose them. I wanted the authors to know that they were paying the company hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars just to ruin their online reputations. My blog seemed like the perfect platform for the cause. My articles on the company are the result of research and interviews with Author Solutions customers.

What are the most common complaints about Author Solutions?

Relentless phone calls and predatory sales tactics absolutely top the list. Employees there don’t just hound current authors, they also harass authors with dormant titles to try and drum up more business. It’s not surprising, really, when you see that 80% of a Marketing Consultant’s jobat Author Solutions is making 50+ outbound sales calls a day.

 After that, it’s a tie between incompetent customer service and a totally borked royalty system. Let’s take the customer service stuff first. Customers who have problems get kicked around from sales rep to sales rep. There are two main reasons for this. First, passing customers around is a nice way to avoid correcting the problem. By the time a writer gets anywhere (if he does, in fact, get anywhere) it’s a safe bet he’s too far along in the process to get any sort of refund. Second, employee dissatisfaction is so high that turnover makes it difficult for customers to talk to the same person twice.

 If an author is persistent enough, ASI will eventually lock her out of her author account and tell her that no one but Eugene Hopkins is allowed to deal with her complaints. If Eugene calls her back, he’ll pretend like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s back to square one, and no doubt exhausted. This is the point where authors usually give up and write a scathing company review at pissedconsumer.com.

 And those royalties? Good lord, what a mess! Even Author Solutions’ own employees (speaking anonymously) confess that the royalty system is utterly broken. However, no one at Author Solutions publicly admits authors are getting cheated out of royalties or makes any attempt to correct the problem. Quarterly reports are not published by the stipulated deadline, and royalty checks are often backdated to cover up the fact that they were not disbursed on time. Both of these things directly violate the terms of the iUniverse contract and, I suspect, the contracts for other Author Solutions imprints.

Of all of the Author Solutions horror stories, is there one that stands out among the rest?

 Yes. Jean Rikhoff, an author in her mid-eighties, was ripped off by iUniverse and has attempted to get Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller to investigate the company. So far, her efforts have been unsuccessful. In an interview I did with Jean, she talked about the numerous phone calls she received from Author Solutions after she purchased her initial publishing package. They gave her the hard sell to buy additional services claiming she’d surely want them because she could be a candidate for Editor’s Choice. All she had to do was pay a little more money. Jean called it a “buttering up for the skinning.” Her Author Solutions sales rep told her the required editing and evaluation would cost about $400. When she got her credit card statement, she saw ASI had billed her $3,794.33. And that’s just the beginning of Jean’s story.

I understand you reached out to Penguin for a comment about why it bought Author Solutions.  What did they say?

 On July 19, I contacted Penguin to see if I could ask them a few questions. Media Relations Manager Erica Glass wrote me back within a few hours saying only, “What questions are you looking to have answered?” I replied with the following:

• Author Solutions has a number of imprints that critics believe are kept in place to limit choice in the market and deceive consumers who “shop around.” Does Penguin take a position on this? 
• Are there plans to consolidate iUniverse, Trafford, WordClay, AuthorHouse, Palibrio, Publish in the USA et al. to a single brand?
• Sources inside Author Solutions explain that the royalty system is a shambles. Reports and payments are habitually late, which breaches the publishing contract. Does Penguin have a plan in place to address this issue, either by upgrading the system that tracks this information or through some other means?
• Author Solutions has been accused by Indiana residents and its own employees of “cramming cubicles” to receive tax cuts from the state on the basis of job creation, only to fire those hires a short time later and rehire in the Philippines. Does Penguin plan to continue with Author Solutions’ outsourcing model?

Erica didn’t respond. After nearly 40 days, I think it’s a pretty safe bet she never will.

Emily / Batgirl, keep up the great work!