AuthorHouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AuthorHouse, formerly known as 1stBooks, is a print on demand publisher that provides aspiring authors self-publishing services, generally considered a vanity press.[citation needed]
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. By December 2004 they had printed more than 3 million books. In September 2005, AuthorHouse won the Silver Award in Business excellence from BKD[2]. In December of 2005, AuthorHouse was nominated by the Indiana Chamber for the Small Business of the Year Award[3].
For additional fees, AuthorHouse offers allowing bookstores to return excess inventory (thus making them theoretically more willing to stock the title), "individualized book promotions" [4], copy editing, priority handling, and custom illustrations.
Some prominent individuals have published through AuthorHouse, including Senator Richard Lugar, comedian Rita Rudner, award-winning Canadian humorist Gordon Kirkland, and evolutionary psychologist Kevin B. MacDonald.
In August 2006, AuthorHouse was sentenced to pay $240,000 in punitive damage [5] as well as $230,000 in actual damage [6] to romance author Rebecca Brandewyne and her parents for publishing a book by her ex-husband that was libelous of them.
