AuthorHouse Blog

The wild wild west of self-publishing has a new marshall in town: AuthorHouse and iUniverse.

According to Publishers Weekly, there are an estimated 86,000 self-publishing companies in the United States. With over 200,000 new titles per year flooding the book market, primarily because of self-publishing, consolidation of the space is a good thing for everyone.

As I travel around the country talking to aspiring and published authors, I hear horror stories about various publisher dealings. One guy self-published with a company, paid his fees, and never saw a galley: the business went bankrupt before they could finish his book. Another author published with a company, the company closed its doors, and now he can’t even get his files from the publisher to keep it active at Lightning Source. Another company in Indiana sold an “authorfest” book show to their authors at Franklin College, only to have four people show up (three of them were authors that paid to exhibit).

AuthorHouse has been the 500 lb. gorilla in the self-publishing space for several years now. With nearly 30,000 active titles in Amazon, their closest competitor has been iUniverse with just over 17,000 active titles. Everyone else is a distant third in size, which doesn’t mean they can’t help you get published, they just don’t have the experience and breadth of services that an AuthorHouse or iUniverse has.

I’ve had a few people comment that AuthorHouse and iUniverse merged to run everybody out of business. Not necessarily. I think both parties felt that the industry can benefit from having an undisputed market leader in a space that has less than stellar reviews over the last 10 years. Lifting the visibility, reputation, quality, distribution, and overall perception of self-publishing will help everyone, including their competitors.

To take AuthorHouse’s position as a market leader a step further, they launched WordClay.com quietly a few months ago. True “self-publishing” has really taken hold at Lulu.com and AuthorHouse wants to extend into that online “do-it-yourself” space. Thousands of free accounts are started on Lulu.com each week with a small percentage of those actually finishing their book’s design, layout, and cover design. People find out that laying out a book isn’t as easy as they thought. Lulu.com is a pure online play, meaning all their services are available online with no or little offline support.

In comes AuthorHouse with a headquarters in Bloomington, Indiana with nearly 180 employees that are eagerly waiting for someone to raise a white flag in WordClay.com to help them finish their book. Need your manuscript edited? How about a fancier cover design? Or maybe you need some illustrations for your children’s book? AuthorHouse/iUniverse can help you fill in the gaps of your “do-it-yourself” publishing experience.

Keep an eye on the self-publishing industry in the coming months and years. As the smaller shops either close their doors or align themselves with printers, we’ll look back at the moves AuthorHouse has made in the last 6 months as a good thing for the entire industry: most importantly the authors themselves.

I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Manitou Springs, Colorado at the “AuthorHouse Author Fest of the Rockies” writers conference hosted at the historic Cliff House. For a second-year conference, the volunteers from the Manitou Springs Public Library did an exceptional job.

One of the highlights of the trip was introducing and meeting author Joanne Greenberg. She’s most known for her 1970’s novel “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” which was adapted to a film and a play. Her husband Albert joined her for the weekend and I had the pleasure of sitting across from them both at dinner with the conference organizers. She might be 75 years-old, but she has the mind and wit of a 30 year-old. I found out that she liked jokes, even off-colored ones, so we shared a few of our favorites.

I met so many authors, all at various stages in their writing. Roz Monette has written a few young adult fiction books and we had a good time chatting during breakfast. I sat in a marketing session by Ken Guentert, a Manitou Springs publishing expert that helps authors through the process of being published. Blogging expert Michelle Vandepas hosted a session on blogging (as much as she can cover in :45 minutes anyway).

My session on the “Economics of Publishing: Show Me the Money” was well attended in the “tent” outside the Cliff House. It was an eye-opening experience for a few of the attendees, a few of which were already traditionally published and seen self-publishing through AuthorHouse as a great avenue for them to consider. One attendee asked at the end if I could do another session on Saturday about Internet marketing. Voila, I hosted a session on Saturday afternoon called “Internet Marketing 101” inside the big top again.

At the end of the conference, organizers hosted an author book signing party, complete with live music, drinks, and cookies. By my guestimate, there were at least 50 authors selling, signing, and pitching their books to attendees and locals. I know the Black Cat Bookstore did well, they were just about out of books by the end of the conference.

Overall, I give the conference a 9 out of 10. If you live in the Colorado Springs or Denver area and you want to further your writing either professionally or personally, put this conference on your schedule for next October, 2008.

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