Outskirts Press, Inc. Fraudulent Practices Parker, Colorado

Response to Consumers: The author made an offer to have the book removed and agreed to pay the fees for another book to be published. However, Outskirts press failed to provide quality customer service and author satisfaction. Once again the issue is removing the old book from distribution.

Response to Consumers: Outskirts Press avoided the issue at hand. This is about the publisher not the retailer. Each time contacts were made the real issue was evaded. The author simply asked for the book to be removed from distribution for editing purposes. Instead, Outskirts rebuttals in an attempt to hustle consumers, address royalties. The royalties the author received for the book was less than a sum total of $50.00. The author makes minimal profits because the books are marked up way beyond market value. Unfortunately, the author settled with Outskirts because the message in the book was most important. The author only wanted to rewrite the book in a marketable fashion.

What could have been so hard about an Outskirts representative simply saying, I will contact the distributor and try to get the book removed from distribution. If you prefer to contact the distributor, here is the contact information. Even if the distributor was unable to remove the book from distribution at least an attempt was made.

Response to Consumers: Outskirts Press has a business agreement with Amazon or a 3rd party liaison and should have disclosed the appropriate contact information if there was a real concern for the welfare of their customer. Clearly, the issue at hand is not royalties. The issue is removing the book from distribution. Certainly, in good customer service efforts, the appropriate steps of management should have been to maintain a customer or potential new customers by providing good customer service. Simply address the issue: removing the book from distribution, provide the steps for the customer to remove the book from distribution, and / or provide your point of contacts information. Instead of good customer service, the customer was left searching for a needle in a haystack. Today, its this authors unique problem. Tomorrow, it could be your problem. A complaint is merely an opportunity to correct a problem or at least try. By the way, anyone seeking to self-publish a book, you can publish direct through Amazon who has great customer service.

Response to Consumers: Once again, a public display of poor customer service. Why should the author/customer consider purchasing the remaining copies of the book in Amazons stock? Did the customer purchase the publishing package from Amazon, Ingram, or from Outskirts Press? This is an extremely poor attempt to distract attention from the party that should have provided better customer service. Amazon or Ingram is not at fault here. Barnes & Nobles and Borders also have the book on their site. One call or appropriate process initiated to the distributor could have eliminated this whole mess of confusion when the answer is as simple as providing a phone number, address, or email. The author only asked for contact information and would have personally made the calls since Outskirts obviously did not have the time to satisfy their customer. However, they obviously have time to avoid the issue and make a public display of their so-called 99% author satisfaction.

Response to Consumers: Sorry: apologetic, regretful, or remorseful. Pure slant. Every company, including one of the worlds greatest retail stores, Nordstroms, has had some unhappy customers. The reason why the same customers return to Nordstroms is because of the customer service and quality. Many of Nordstroms customers would rather pay a higher price than to experience poor customer service and low quality. Although sales are important, royalties was not the authors concern as the sales were already dedicated to a non-profit organization that provides community service outreach. The primary concern was removing the book from distribution for editing and re-publishing the book with the same publisher: Outskirts. Outskirts was made aware of the intent of the customer and the customer even offered to pay in advance to prove pure intentions. Any company who is only concerned with your money and not really providing author satisfaction will only post the good testimonials. A concerned or apologetic company such as Amazon and Ingram provides solutions which they did. The author is a consumer who only wanted assistance not an argument. It took longer for the publishing company to write a poor rebuttal. It would have only taken a few moments to send an email or call with contact information. To other publishing companies and consumers reading this message, a complaint is merely an attempt to resolve an issue.

Ms. Jones contacted us about revising her book in August 2011 and completed her order for said revision on August 13, 2011.  She was notified at that time that only minor changes can be made in the revision process as any changes that increase or reduce the final page count by more than 7 pages require that the author obtains a new ISBN (a Bowker requirement, not ours), which would require a new publishing package.  Ms. Jones submitted a completely re-written file and due to the significant changes and page count increase, we advised her that she would need to purchase a new package with a new ISBN.  We credited back her revision order on September 1, 2011 and notified her that she could use that credit towards her new package if she wanted.

Rather than ordering a new package, Ms. Jones elected to terminate her title altogether in December 2011.  In an email to her on December 1, our Manager of Author Support told her: At your request, we have officially discontinued your title at the publication and distribution level and have terminated your publishing contract. This means that no additional new copies will be printed by Outskirts Press. Keep in  mind you may continue to see your book listed at retail outlets for a period of time as those organizations run through any inventory they may have purchased in advance of your termination.  Retailers have the right to list and sell books they already have in stock. We have no control over the business practices of other companies. Perhaps Ms. Jones should consider registering a "Rip Off Report" about Amazon rather than Outskirts Press. After all, that's where her issue lies.

Ms. Jones' concern about royalties is based upon an Amazon employee's general use of the term "a lot" which is hardly evidence of fraudulent payments.  The Amazon customer service agent probably assumes Amazon orders "a lot" of every book; and in reality probably didn't check Ms. Jone's volume one way or the other. Ms. Jones received exactly the proper amount of royalty payment for precisely the number of wholesale books that were sold.

Ms. Jones should consider buying the remaining copy in Amazon's stock if she remains concerned about the book's availability.  Since Amazon already ordered that book from Ingram (and since Ms. Jones already received her royalty payment for it), Amazon has every right to sell it. Ms. Jones could purchase it herself to put this matter behind her.

Outskirts Press has a 99% author satisfaction rate, and while we're sorry Ms. Jones had this experience with our company,  that doesn't mean other authors will. In fact, the vast majority of our authors love working with us, as demonstrated by the many testimonials they take the time to submit here: http://selfpublishingauthor.wordpress.com/