In a previous post, the umbrella companies of major publishing houses were listed. Merging has also occurred in the self-publishing market. Although many of the subsidy publishers are listed independently—especially in ads on other Web pages—many are the subheads to a larger company. This has changed some of the features the bought-out companies originally had.
A large Umbrella in this new scheme of things is Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI), which is owned by Bertram Capital. ASI has become the world leader in the fastest-growing segment of publishing. ASI brands include iUniverse (acquired by ASI in October, 2008), AuthorHouse, Wordclay, Trafford Publishing (acquired by ASI in April 2009), Xlibris (acquired by ASI in January 2009), Palibrio (for Spanish language books), Inkubook as well as AuthorHive (for marketing).
ASI also has partnered with several trad publishers who are creating their own self-publish imprints. Those are Thomas Nelson (WestBow Press), Harlequin (DellArte Press), Hay House (Balboa Press).
All this seems to fit a recent quote from a Wall Street Journal article about Internet mega-sites: "Over the long haul, competition has been the exception, monopoly the rule." Although the article focuses on Google and Facebook, it also applies to the publishing industry.
The new ASI conglomerate has standardized contracts and created several changes in author services and rights. For instance, some of the distribution perks (to Amazon and Ingrams) have been curtailed unless a stiff fee is paid. More importantly, at Xlibris, iUniverse and Authorhouse, the publisher owns the authors' files after creation, even though the author paid to have them created (this includes payment for editing service as well as formatting). If authors upload their own cover art—it's all owned by the publisher; the author has to pay another fee to get back these files. Hence, if authors decide to take their books elsewhere to republish, or if they didn't sign-up for ebook production and want to do that themselves, these files, now owned by the company, are off limits to them without paying a fee; if authors don't like the costs, it a different cost of new cover and often re-editing.
The Writers weekly Web site, which is associated with the DIY publisher Booklocker, has run a pod price comparison.. Here are pointed out the many author rights circumvented or lost in the new contracts that come from the ASI buyout. Books and Tales also has a page for a quick comparison of high-visibility POD companies.
Mark Levine, who wrote a book on self publishing lists many of the POD publishers, but he doesn't give information—encouraging you to buy his book for answers. :-\
Many sites listed in the search engines haven’t been recently updated and don’t have information on the mergers, buyouts, etc., and how those have affected the services. None of the DIY pulisher sites GITP visited had information about who owned the files. This prominent monopoly trend shows how this DIY segment of the publishing industry is growing, changing and becoming as hard to negotiate as trad publishing.
This really only addresses the type of self-publishing where the writer doesn't want to do any formatting or editing. I've done two novels through CreateSpace, paid nothing for the privilege, provided my own cover and edited and formatted manuscript, and all rights are mine.
ReplyDeleteI think we will see a division in coming months between truly self-published books and books done by vanity presses like ASI. They really are two different things, and a writer must take a good hard look at their own business model before deciding to pay a pile of money to someone for services they can perform themselves with a little learning curve and experimentation.
Very true, John.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately many authors haven't the time or knowledge to really DIY their books and will get lured by promises from ASI printers and ilk.