Dear Colleagues and fellow authors,
BEWARE of Trafford Publishing and its new owner, Author Solutions.
Please save yourself and colleagues from making a mistake. With the high need to publish in Academia, particularly books for advancement to full Professor, Publish On Demand services may look attractive, but in many cases they are little more than a scam... Trafford Publishing personifies this situation.... rather than take my word for it as an angry customer who was significantly short-changed on a refund for non-delivered services, check out what others have experienced and reported as follows:
________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Victoria Strauss -- Author Solutions Buys Trafford Publishing
Consolidation continues in the self-publishing sector: the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Author Solutions (which already owns AuthorHouse, iUniverse, and Xlibris) has acquired Trafford Publishing. As with its January 2009 acquisition of Xlibris, terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As with Xlibris and iUniverse prior to their acquisition, Trafford appears to suffer from relatively few consumer issues. Writer Beware has received no substantive complaints about Trafford over the past few years, and there's not much complaint to be found on the Internet either. Not so for AuthorHouse--something that, post-acquisition, seems also to have become true for iUniverse. Which prompts the question: whither Xlibris and Trafford? (a prophetic statement... read on)
In blogging about the Xlibris acquistion, I wrote the following. It's even more true now:
This new merger is not good news for authors in another sense: it reduces the field of choice. As choices decrease, so does the pressure to compete, and decreased competition does not benefit consumers. While Writer Beware doesn't generally recommend the use of POD self-publishing services, except in certain specific circumstances (see our Print on Demand Self-Publishing Services page for a discussion), we feel that writers who do choose to self-publish are best-served by having the widest possible range of options, in a robustly competitive environment.
Share
Posted by Victoria Strauss at 7:57 PM
56 comments:
Anonymous said...
WARNING! WARNING! DO NOT USE TRAFFORD!
Trafford Publishing Complaints
Sort by DestinationSort by Date | Sort by Popularity
|
| |
| |
| |
| Company does not deliver service
Complaint Rating: Trafford was acquired by Author Solutions on April 2009. I signed a contract with Trafford December 2008 and paid for it.
Since March they have my "PRINT READY" book with all the files for the cover and webpage. I have not received the pysical proof until today (July 6) and... |
| | | |
|
|
|
| | | | | | |
| |
| |
| |
| None fulfillment of obligations
Complaint Rating: I simply can not get anyone to respond to my e-mails on a book I am publisihing with the company. The company says my book has already gone on sale, though they are obligated to provide me with a sizeable number of free books for my book launch - they have not and are not responding to e-mails.... |
| | | |
|
|
|
| | | | | | |
|
| |
| |
| |
| yeah trafford sucks
Complaint Rating: I just recently published a book everything went fine then I got to the marketing part my book is on Amazon and Barnes and noble but they promised me and I HAVE IT ON PAPER I SAVED EVERYTHING
That my work will submit and reviewed by magazines and be advertised accordingly
But... |
| | | |
|
|
|
| | | | |
| |
| Posted: 2009-12-17 by |
| JCU | |
| |
| Fraudulent Sales Techniques
Complaint Rating: Trafford has great sales people and terrible ethics. Upon contracting with them for my book of 120 pages, I was quoted an author price of 6.53 and a retail price of 13.74. I have this in writing. My book came to 112 pages - 8 pages less than quoted - and they placed the author price at 10.49... |
| Comments | | | |
| | | | | | |
From the Indiana Better Business Bureau web site:
Business Contact & Profile
Back to Top
Business Management
Back to Top
Mr. Kevin Weiss , CEO and President
Mr. Eugene Hopkins , Client Services Manager
Mr. Bill Becher , Senior Vice President
Customer Complaint History
Back to Top
This reflects national complaint activity.
When considering complaint information, please take into account the business's size and volume of transactions, and understand that the nature of complaints and a firm's responses to them are often more important than the number of complaints.
BBB processed a total of 185 complaint(s) about this business in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period.
These complaints concerned:
From "Editors & Preditors" http://.com/.htm
Author Solutions: Not recommended. A company that owns or operates vanity imprints AuthorHouse, DellArte, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, West Bow, and Xlibris. Here's a company review and here's another.
AuthorHouse (formerly 1st Books): Not recommended. A vanity publisher. A division of Author Solutions.
Please share the above information with as many of your colleagues as possible.
_______________________________________________________________________
Collegially yours,
Richard A. Engdahl, PhD
Associate Professor Emeritus, U. of North Carolina, Wilmington
Contact at:
75 Headland Farm Park
RD4 Whangarei 0174
New Zealand
64 9 436 5520
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity! (except when both apply as in Trafford's case)