The Case Against Author Solutions, Part 1: The Numbers
Brilliant investigation into Author Solutions and all the companies it uses to prey on emerging writers.
Originally posted on David Gaughran:
The more you study an operation like Author Solutions, the more it resembles a two-bit internet scam, except on a colossal scale.
Internet scammers work on percentages. They know that only a tiny fraction of people will get hoodwinked so they flood the world’s inboxes with spammy junk.
While reputable self-publishing services can rely on author referrals and word-of-mouth, Author Solutions is forced to take a different approach. According to figures released by Author Solutions itself when it was looking for a buyer in 2012, it spent a whopping $11.9m on customer acquisition in 2011 alone.
This money is spent on:
Paying bloggers, websites, and companies a “bounty” based on how many writers they can deliver to Author Solutions.
Buying a huge presence at writers’ events such as the Toronto Word on the Street Festival the Miami Book Fair International, and the LA Times Festival of…
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