Lulu.com Raleigh, USA. Close My Account After Complaint Without Contacting Me, The Author Raleigh North Carolina

I have been self-publishing with Lulu.com for around 5 years. I am an established author of 30 years standing, with over 60 titles published mainly by mainstream houses.

In October 2106 Lulu.com received a complaint from a woman who said that I had defamed her in several of my books. This is not true, but by the by.

Acting on this complaint, and without checking whether I had defamed anyone or not, Lulu sent me 40 e-mails, each of which stated that I had asked them to retire each book mentioned in the email. I had not. They then wrote to me listing seven books which had been complained about, and followed this up with an e-mail sayng my account had been suspended, and another that it had been close and that retailers had been informed to removed 40 titles over the next 6-8 weeks. This meant that they were removing 33 titles which had not been complained about.

Today, 24 October, they informed me that they are holding on to my royalties, "as happens when criminal activity is suspected". They therefore suspect ME of criminal activity when they have not investigated the contents of the books, effectively finding me guilty without a trial! This also effectively means that any Tom, d**k or Harry can complain about one of their authors, and immediately they will punish the author.

In 30 years of publishing I have never witnessed such unprofessional and unethical conduct.

David, W, United Kingdom