Thanks for giving me a chance to explain what really happened here...
Hello everyone. I am sorry that I was not notified of this thread. (Well, at least I didn’t check my g-mail account - sorry!)
I serve Cook Communication Inc. as publisher, and I feel this writer has badly misrepresented us.
For example, don’t you find it strange that he omitted the fact that our “fee” is only 10% of profit on Lulu.com? That is 10% of profit, not price, so our “take" on one book would be 50 cents if lulu gave us a profit of $5.00 on one sale. Nor did he mention that the few dollars he paid me for books were direct reimbursements, dollar for dollar, for my cost to have lulu print and mail copies to him. All of this is documented. He knows this, but elected not to share it with you.
I will try to explain as best I can in this forum.
Author-me.com helps new writers publish their first articles, stories, or books, and every one of the thousands of writers we've served are grateful for the help. This writer, who agreed to have us publish a book he authored on Lulu, is not grateful. And I think we helped him, because soon after working with us he was able to place his book Miami Heat commercially, which does have higher market potential.
In fact, during the publishing process, he asked us to repeat the prepress process several times for one-word changes in the 408-page text, and, since we do this as a service, for free, I felt upset when he came back earlier this month and asked for still more free changes, and he wanted me to pay for an isbn number, even though he has done next to nothing to promote his book. (As I explained to him, an isbn number gets you into Books in Print, but not into a distributor, and most chain bookstores will only buy through one of the main distributors. Further, it is up to Print on Demand authors to promote their own book. I promised him to do certain promotions, which I did. Instead of promoting his book, he is now attacking me. Go figure!)
Now, he had agreed to publish the book as it was. But recently he said he wanted me to revise it again (for free, of course). As I explained to him, I had to do something to keep him from asking for unlimited free revisions, which are time consuming when you use professional page layout programs, so I posted rates on the page you have cited in this thread which did make us look bad, I suppose. I apologize for that. But please understand that I must do something to prevent my authors from requiring me to do unlimited revisions to their books. (After all, how many authors are allowed to do this after they have agreed to the publishing of their book, even once?) By charging for this service, I can prevent an author from asking for more and more and more. And, if he or she does, I will have some compensation.
It amazes me that someone you help get into print, when they couldn't on their own, is so ungrateful. We do not simply upload a Word file; we do design, indexing, and various prepress and design helps on the manuscripts we receive, and I believe we are justified in keeping 10% of profit. Is that so much, really? Why does he object. I wonder? Any author will tell you that 90% of profit is a really great deal, and he did agree to it.
So far we have never needed to charge for prepress work because everyone else is professional (and grateful) enough to appreciate the free work and advice we give them.
I don't know why there is so much concern over having a contract template here. A contract is an agreement, and we do secure an agreement from the writer before we help them with their manuscript. Since we only have a profit of 10%, there is hardly enough to pay for IP attorneys, etc., and I believe it is not fair to require new writers, who are often poor, to have to pay for such legal fees. Would anyone suggest that we have such a review and charge them $500 so we could pay a bevy of lawyers, and, if so, how would we be helping them?
Gosh, if you guys had any idea how much money and time I have donated to these writers and these websites, since 1999, there would be no question about who is being served, and who is being ungrateful. For many years I was paying $200 per month to EarthLink to run author-me.com. I have never made a profit on my activities. "Pay to play", sir, I am not. I spend several hours every weekend, plus several hours during the week, supporting the websites. I do not make money from it. Just ask my wife, who tolerates all of this!
I hope this will help to clarify the situation. I am certain that this person’s account has seriously misrepresented my help to him, and I hope this will not deter other publishers and websites from helping new writers.
Thank you for your kind understanding.