If you are an independent author and considering self-publishing do not use Outskirts Press, Inc. They appear to be a great publishing company from the cover but inside there are fraudulent practices. I was victim of the fraudulent practices and thought I should write to warn others.
I published a book with Outskirts Press in 2009. At the time, I did not have the book properly edited and the book was published with grammatical errors. When my life slowed down some, I decided to edit the book and republish. I contacted Outskirts Press early 2011 and explained my situation and told her that I wanted to re-publish the book. The author representative told me to pay $25.00 storage fee which was past due, $174.00. I sent the revised book to the author representative as requested and paid all of the required fees. The author representative turned the book over to another account representative who then told me that since the book was "completely different" that they would have to charge me for a completely different publishing package. I agreed to pay for the additional publishing package but asked if they could remove the existing book. This is where the problem begins. The book was not completely different. The book was grammatically correct.
Trying to get the book that was grammatically incorrect removed from distribution was like having a wisdom tooth pulled. Outskirts Press told me that they terminated the contract and refunded the $174.00. The contract termination took place as well as the refund. However, when I contacted the Vice President of the company to further my existing request of removing the book from distribution, I was told to contact Amazon??? When I asked for the contact number from their client, Amazon... I have yet to receive a response. I sent two emails requesting this information. Consequently, I filed a Better Business Bureau report in which they responded with everything except that they will not give me the contact number for Amazon.
On my own research, I finally contacted Amazon who told me they are only responsible for the author availability on the web site. However, if I want to have the book removed, I will need to contact the distributor for Outskirts Press. The Vice President and the representatives of Outskirts failed to tell me about the distributor. Secondly, Amazon also told me that according to their site, there is 1 book in stock. I told her there has been one book in stock for 6 months. The Amazon representative explained that the reason the book shows 1 book in stock is because Amazon purchased a lot of copies. My question is why did I only receive $27.00 in royalties since the book was published. If that many copies were sold to Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Nobles, where are the royalties?
I am writing this story for two reason: 1.) To alert upcoming authors of this fraudulent company hoping they never have this experience. There are many author reputable self-publishing companies that is honest and that have integrity. 2.) I am hoping that an attorney will read this post and will help me with getting the book removed from distribution. If there was indeed thousands of copies sold to Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Nobles, I would like my rightful share of royalties. Please help this disgruntled author.
0 comments