We received an alarming phone call yesterday from a Crossbooks author, saying he received an email that the publisher was closing their doors and all their moneys would be refunded.
I had to contact a pastor friend whom I knew was in the process of publishing with them to make sure I was hearing the truth. He confirmed that it is, in fact, the truth.
For the last six years, I’ve been struggling with the fact that so many Christian publishers who’ve established self-publishing arms have outsourced every bit of the work to a secular company.
It turns out CrossBooks only outsourced their editorial and typesetting to Author Solutions, but my guess is they had no idea who they were getting themselves yoked with..
In fact, I have to assume B&H Publishing/Lifeway and Thomas Nelson didn’t have all the information about who they were dealing with when they partnered with Author Solutions. I’m quite sure Author Solutions didn’t broadcast to these Christian publishers their true history… the fact that they started as 1st Books, gained such a bad reputation that they rebranded themselves as Author House. The same result in reputation gained momentum until they renamed themselves Author Solutions in 2007 when they bought out one of their largest competitors, iUniverse.
Interesting that Wikepedia shows their history as follows…note that they’ve gone in and edited out that they also partnered with Crossbooks and Writer’s Digest, both of whom have cancelled their agreements with Author Solutions.
“In 2009, Author Solutions, acquired two other top competitors – Xlibris in January [12] and Canadian self-publisher Trafford Publishing in April.[3] Later that year the company partnered with leading Christian publisher Thomas Nelson to launch a first-of-its-kind self-publishing partnership, WestBow Press.[13] Expansion to other segments of authors continued in June 2010 when Author Solutions launched its first Spanish-language imprint – Palibrio.[14] Palibrio was initially offered only to the U.S. Spanish-speaking market, but later was made available to authors in Spain.”
For a more realistic review of Author Solutions, read this blog post detailing their awful history.
Redemption Press began as an outreach to the displaced authors who were left hanging when WinePress abruptly closed their doors in January of 2014. Now, we have another opportunity to help these Crossbooks authors find a new home to keep their message alive.
I’ll be posting more as the details come to light. In the meantime, if you are a Crossbooks author or know someone who is, we are here to help. Click here for more info on how.
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June Martin
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athena
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June Martin
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