Publishing Research Group

PVish · Dec 23, 2014

I received the following email from Publishing Research Group and am trying to figure out why they want info from me:

Dear author,

Our organization, Publishing Research Group (PRG), will be conducting another online survey on publishing; we are inviting you to be part of it.

You will be receiving a request from us to answer a series of question regarding your book publishing experiences. Your honest participation is of utmost importance in order for us to gauge the state of the industry based on the responses of experienced authors, identify relevant issues and concerns, as well as highlight the positive factors that may prove helpful to the authors and others in the publishing industry. As a respondent, you will be provided with the full statistical result once the report is finalized.

The survey will only take less than 4 minutes to complete. Also, all of your personal information will be kept strictly confidential.

You may also learn more about the purpose of the survey, its terms and conditions, and privacy policy here.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
Clara Harris
Administrator, Publishing Research Group

Aside from "Clara Harris," no one is identified on the website:

We are a group of professionals in various parts of the publishing industries that discovered we all had the same frustration. We were all curious about the very many issues regarding the people we are supposedly serving, but most of what we wanted to know either didn’t exist anywhere, or was horribly expensive to acquire.

The "About Us" page is even vaguer. I get the impression that they want to harvest information from the under-published.

So, what do they want to know and why do they want to know it? Are they scammers, phishers, or just spammers? Too many red flags are flapping to make me think they have a noble purpose.

Filigree · Dec 23, 2014

Smells like some phishing attempts I saw last year. The noblest of those was a vanity pub trying to get more names to cold-call.

ETA: likely scam. I Googled their name, plus 'scam', and found this and other instances :
http://endlessknots.netage.com/endlessknots/2013/05/have-any-other-authors-received-this-email.html

Unimportant · Dec 23, 2014

Weird.

My spidey-sense says ESL:

Featured on this site are small group of professionals from various sectors of the publishing industry. We are all tired about some information that is not easily being available to us...As this is a sideline, we don’t plan to correspond through the many valid conversations and debates about our industries....

My spidey-sense says Authors Who Couldn't Get An Agent/Trade Press Contract:

The process of publishing has changed with the advent of the internet and technology. New types of publishers consequently emerged, namely self-publishers and e-book publishers, eventually eclipsing traditional publishers as more authors self-publish and more readers shift to electronic format.

My spidey-sense says Authors Who Got Scammed And Don't Know The Difference Between Self Publishing And Vanity Publishing:

Authors were invited through email to participate in a 14-question survey administered on-line, about their experience with self-publishing and with self-publisher author services firms....There were eight firms measured for client satisfaction: Accurance, AuthorHouse, CreateSpace, iUniverse, Lulu, PublishAmerica, Trafford, and Xlibris.

And I may well be wrong here, but unlike all the other presses I've never heard of Accurance, so my spidey sense says Accurance Schill:

Accurance and CreateSpace shared the highest average satisfaction scores….

CaoPaux · Dec 23, 2014

Yeah ... commercial publishers serve readers. If this isn't a come-on for a vanity op, I'll eat my hat.

Filigree · Dec 23, 2014

Apparently in the link I provided, one person filled out the survey until the spot where the 'Publishing Group' asked for phone numbers and other sensitive data.

Unimportant · Dec 23, 2014

Filigree said:
Apparently in the link I provided, one person filled out the survey until the spot where the 'Publishing Group' asked for phone numbers and other sensitive data.

Ah. Yeah, that explains a lot.

Apropos of nothing, as of this moment your post count stands at 11,111. I don't know why that made me smile, but it did!

victoriastrauss · Dec 24, 2014

I got several inquiries about this group last January, when they sent out another survey. The results of that survey can be found here.

Apart from the fact that it's not very professionally written and provides no access to the raw data, the fact that Accurance places so highly in the results, and Author Solutions (Accurance's competitor) places so badly (something that's emphasized both in the survey and the press release about the survey) makes me more than a little suspicious that this "research group" is affiliated with Accurance--whose self-publishing arm, Publish Wholesale, proudly displays PRG's award ribbon. Not to mention that despite PRG's claim to survey the whole of the publishing industry, the only survey they've done so far is on self-publishing.

There's also their bogus address: #16 Lakeview Drive, New River, M.M. Even assuming that "M.M." is a typo for "N.M.", there doesn't appear to be a town in New Mexico named New River.

- Victoria

Richard White · Dec 24, 2014

victoriastrauss said:
There's also their bogus address: #16 Lakeview Drive, New River, M.M. Even assuming that "M.M." is a typo for "N.M.", there doesn't appear to be a town in New Mexico named New River.

- Victoria

I found a Red River, NM and a New River, AZ, but that's about the only places I've found that might match that address. Especially since they don't list a zip code.

CaoPaux · Dec 9, 2016

Now, here's a funny thing ...

The author of articles citing PRG's "survey" (here and here) is/was a freelancer for Asia-Americas Business Processes, Inc., whose address at the time was #16 3rd Floor, Fortune Annex Bldg, Lakeview Drive, Bagong Ilog, Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines 1603.

Bagong Ilog = New River.

Elsewhere, AABPI states it's a partner of International Content Management, Inc., which is one of Fitch's companies. And William Earle is a V.P. (He's also a director at Accurance.)

Bizarre. :hat:

Publishing Research Group

PVish

Cat hair collector

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing

Unimportant

No COVID yet. Still masking.

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing

Unimportant

No COVID yet. Still masking.

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess

Richard White

Stealthy Plot Bunny Peddler

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless