Having a look around their website, it seems to be aimed at helping authors self-publish on Amazon.
The home page offers two paths: a "Join the Writer's Academy" link and a "Publish with Us" link.
The Writer's Academy is a $2000, 14-week set of sessions with live call-in Q&As that, according to the curriculum, takes the writer through the process from planning content, to personal branding, to cover design, to book launch.
The "Publish with Us" page provides little information. It shows a graphic with several steps in the process, several of which note things like "Work with your author coach," "Work with your marketing strategist," etc.
On several pages of the website, you can download the free booklet "Getting Started for Authors Blueprint." This book is indeed free, and provides link to about 90 minutes worth of videos on each topic. The bulk of the booklet is about the writing process, with very little about marketing and promotion (mostly about building your platform), and nothing at all about the publication process. There are a couple typos in the book, and questionable/non-professional-sounding word choice.
Folks, my radar is pinging on this for all the wrong reasons:
1. A pricey curriculum. I have absolutely no objection to authors spending money to educate themselves in this business, particularly if they are going to invest in self-publishing. However, the website seems just a bit too leading toward using PYP as the publisher.
2. A publisher that, based on their curriculum and statements in the Author Testimonies, gets people published through Amazon, which authors don't need an outfit like this for.
3. A publisher that puts all marketing, promotion, and publicity on the author. If PYP were billed upfront as an education service for self-publishing authors, I would be more favorable toward it.
4. A website aimed at authors rather than readers (it's not easy to find the link to the author bookstore, and their bookstore doesn't have links to the ebooks, which are easily found on Amazon). Some of the titles in their bookstore are listed as published by Purpose Driven Publishing, so apparently PYP might be a re-named existing publisher (no link here on AW for Purpose Drive Publishing).
5. A free author guide that covers things most aspiring writers already know, and little information on the things they might be willing to pay a professional to do for them.
6. Misleading information on the website and resources documents that makes publishing seem like a hopeless complicated situation. "We know that you are going to come across services that will charge you $500 to publish your book or $50,000 to publish your book" [True, but these are for vanity and subsidy presses, not self-publishing or trade publishing]. Or "On one website you’ll see to expect to pay $5 for a book cover and on another website you’ll see $5,000.These ranges can be utterly overwhelming and stop a new author dead in their tracks from proceeding forward." [Copied and pasted from their booklet; typos in the original]
7. A "Book Cost Blueprint" that seems somewhat comprehensive (cover design, editing, marketing, etc.), but that presents ranges of costs for each service, with a "Recommended" cost, complete with a link to service providers PYP would be happy to connect you to (rather than giving you tips on how to shop for a good one yourself). Total "Ideal" costs: $13,700, not including the $1997 Writer's Academy.
8. Most of the titles on the bookstore page are authored by the PYP principal.
