by Gianni Truvianni

Created on: December 09, 2008

An article about how iUniverse and many other self publishers like them; use the print on demand system to cheat their authors out of their hard earned royalties.

It all started for me, earlier this year during the first few days of February; not only had it been over half a year since I had finished and edited my first book entitled "New York's Opera Society" but I was even looking for a publisher for it. I, in all frankness knew little if anything about publishing at the time and even now I do not lay claim to being all that informed about it but I decided to go for a self publisher. Why did I decide for self publisher as opposed to a regular? Well, the answer to this question is very simple; I wanted a publisher, that would allow me to keep the rights to my book and also one that would not ask for exclusive rights to publish it, and that way when or if my book sold well I could present it to a regular publisher who would probably be more interested in publishing after seeing how well the book was already selling.

It was only after contacting several publishers that I came to settle on iUniverse, basically because at 599 USD, their price was the lowest, or one the lowest and because I could make the payment in the form of a check. This being important since I neither had nor would have made the payment by credit card via the internet even if I had had one. Everything seemed to be ok with iUnverse; I got a contract through the internet, which I first read then printed, then signed and mailed back to the ones who would be my publisher.

The contract was basically a bad deal. I would only get 20% percent from the sale of each book and not even from the cover price but the price my publisher sold my book at; which in the case of my book is about $8 USD a copy. So basically my cut would be 2 USD per every book of mine that was sold. Regarding "New York's Opera Society", it was eventually decided by iUniverse that it should have the cover price which it does at present of $13.95 a copy. Ok, I admit it, I signed a "lousy deal" but this I blame no one but myself for as no one forced me to put my John Hancock on that piece of paper which I mailed back to iUniverse.

Once the contract was signed I sent it back to iUniverse along with a "banker's check", which basically works like a money order or traveler's check. This meaning that one gives a certain amount of money to a bank and it makes out a check for the amount of money received. For instance if one gives the bank a

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