The Authors Guild Breaks Up With Vanity Press Author Solutions
The Authors Guild is turning over a new leaf this week. Along with a new initiative to educate authors on publishing contracts, The Authors Guild also announced a new deal with Open Road Media yesterday to help TAG members get their out-of-print backlist titles into the market.
Today, the Authors Guild and Open Road Integrated Media announced a new partnership for the Authors Guild’s Back in Print program, one of the Guild’s most popular services. Through Open Road, Authors Guild members will be able to distribute print-on-demand, e-book, and audiobook editions of their out-of-print titles. The e-books and audio book options are new to the program.
While that deal doesn’t sound like a new leaf, David Gaughran points out that the partnership with Open Road Media replaces a deal between The Authors Guild and the noted vanity press operator Author Solutions.
Yes, the same company which is owned by Penguin Random House and is the subject of multiple class action lawsuits.
According to David:
The announcement was made yesterday at Book Expo America, but the Authors Guild decided to bury its own lede. No mention is made of Author Solutions, just a brief mention of the subsidiary which the Authors Guild was partnered with: iUniverse. If I hadn’t been waiting for this announcement, I would have missed it.
It’s almost as if the Authors Guild is trying to airbrush its partnership with Author Solutions from the history books. As if it was all just a bad dream.
I will admit, I missed the connection.
The Authors Guild had been partnered with iUniverse since 1999, long before iUniverse had been absorbed into Author Solutions (in 2007). That contract had been renewed (in 2008 and in 2011) even though the quality of the customer service plummeted once Author Solutions bought iUniverse.
David goes into the former partnership in some detail, but now that it is over I care less about the nuances of how authors were cheated than I do about the program being dead.
Yes, The Authors Guild was in bed with Author Solutions, and yes, The Authors Guild was raking in a 10% cut of revenues from that deal, but I’m more interested in the news that the deal is dead.
As anyone who has read this blog for a while can tell you, I like to bash The Authors Guild for acting against the interests of authors. I thought this group was basically a puppet for publishers, and referred to them as such.
But over the past day I have reported on two stories which suggest that The Authors Guild has changed its tune, and that is the far more interesting story.
Something tells me that The Authors Guild is going to be quite the different entity under Roxana Robinson. She was elected president of The Authors Guild in March 2014, and replaced Scott Turow. While Robinson doesn’t like Amazon any more than Turow did, her administration is evidently a lot more pro-author than that of her predecessor. (And yes, I do realize the ridiculousness of that statement.)
Edit: A reader reminds me that The Authors Guild also has a new executive director. Mary Rasenberger replaced Paul Aiken in October 2014. Thanks, Anne!
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