AuthorHouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AuthorHouse, formerly known as 1stBooks, is a print on demand publisher claiming to provide aspiring authors self-publishing services, generally considered a vanity press.
According to its own promotional materials [1], 1stBooks was founded in Bloomington, Indiana in January 1997 by an aspiring author who had received more than 100 rejection letters from publishers; its first e-book appeared in June. In January 1999 it started using POD to produce paper books; by December 2001 it had printed 350,000 books and by January 2004 2 million from 18,500 authors (i. e. less than 110 copies per author). In March 2004 the company changed its name to AuthorHouse. It opened an office in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom in May 2004.
For additional fees, AuthorHouse offers allowing bookstores to return excess inventory (thus making them teoretically more willing to stock the title), "individualized book promotions" [2], copy editing, priority handling, and illustration.
Some prominent individuals have published through AuthorHouse, including Senator Richard Lugar, comedienne Rita Rudner and evolutionary psychologist Kevin B. MacDonald.
In August 2006, AuthorHouse was sentenced to pay $240,000 in punitive damage [3] as well as $230,000 in actual damage [4] to romance author Rebecca Brandewyne and her parents for publishing a book by her ex-husband that was libelous of them.
[edit] External links
- http://www.authorhouse.com
- Writer Beware: Print On Demand – a mention of AuthorHouse's low average print run based on later 2004 numbers
