Archway PublishingReviews of archwaypublishing.com

In the past, I have had many positive interactions with Archway Publishing, however, my last dealings with a marketing rep was less than stellar. Although I did purchase the service I requested, the rep failed to follow through with a proposal for two additional items. He was almost an hour late for a scheduled phone appointment, which he failed to apologize for. He represented I would not be charged for something in my contract, but then changed his tune saying he needed to generate a proposal outlining the costs, which I never received. I expected much better service from AS.

Having already written a book and had it published through a different publisher, my experience makes me compare the the two publishers. With my first publisher I had one point of contact that was the go between me and all the different processes and phases of publishing my book. With Archway, I had to speak with a different person for each phase or process which got a little confusing. The pictures for my book cover aren't clear like what I actually provided and they are also noticeably darker as well. My cover doesn't look like it was done by a professional graphic artist at all, especially when I provided everything even the layout. I was sold on also adding an audio book and told I could make payments, so I put down a deposit in anticipation of the email that would allow me to begin recording. After a few weeks of not receiving the email, I inquired again only to be told that I had to pay the balance in full before the email would be sent. After the final payment was sent a few days passed and I had to inquire again only to be told they would put the request in for me to receive the email to begin recording. Once I received the email, the email said that my book would be loaded in the coming days for me to begin recording. I am still waiting on the email saying that my book has been loaded so I can begin recording. My book was published and available for sale in July but the website that comes with the publishing package I chose wasn't given to me to sign off on until I inquired about it several times. It was just given to me to sign off on in September and I'm still waiting on my website to be published. During the conversation about me adding an audiobook to my offerings, it was suggested that I take my ebook from $3.99 to $5.99 so I agreed. My ebook is still at $3.99. I was also told that there would be a blog added to my website. When going over my website for mistakes I didn't see one, so I inquired about it and was told in order to add one there would be an additional cost to do so.

The book is "Life Within a Big Box," by Megan O'Hara, copyright 2020. As a reader of a book published through Archway, I definitely wouldn't recommend writers use Archway. There are several obvious errors, such as spelling the same person's name differently. "Carley," and "Carlie," for example. Also, leaving out words in a sentence such as "I went to talk them," needs "to." Such errors are throughout the book.

Your (Author Learning Ctr) has been charging me $9.99 a month for a year for a service I did not authorize! I was doing my year end taxes recently and discovered this fee. I consider this action sneaky and boarding on a scam. I was forced to have Visa put a stop to this fee today.

OK, so let's start with the process. The process is standardized, and you know where you are within it at all times, this is good and bad. The good side is that you know what to expect, the bad news is that Archway is extremely cumbersome when trying to make change. For every change they charge you money - almost nickel and diming you along the way. I found the publishing team to be nice, but did not offer any value to my book. The marketing team is a disaster, and they offered me absolutely no value whatsoever. I should have used my own team, and I could save money, while getting a better result. As part of your package you pay for reviews, from people who are either incompetent or did not read your book. My guess is that these reviewers are non-English speakers who attempt to write a cogent review but cannot. Overall, I will not use them again.

I've been working with Archway for over six months on the publication and marketing of my first novel. My book is now published and available through online sellers but it has been a very hard road to get here. The best way I can describe my overall experience with Archway is that it reminds me of trying to fix my home internet. If I can get ahold of anyone, it's a poor, kind soul half way around the world who desperately wants to make a good impression, but has absolutely no idea how to provide any real help. With Archway, their employees may be local, but the experience is otherwise similar. I have continually been treated kindly by people who seem to to have no idea what they are doing. The repeated low quality, poor communication, and simple mistakes are astounding. They always apologize and try to fix the mistakes, but after a while it gets exhausting and feels like I am doing all of their work for them. I chose Archway because I thought their connection with Simon and Schuster would guarantee a reasonably high level of professional service. I thought they would be able to do things I could not, and do them well. This was not the case. With a little bit more experience, I could have done a much better job of everything I paid Archway thousands of dollars for. I would definitely not recommend them to other authors.

They are very misleading in how they present themselves. While they repeatedly associate themselves with Simon and Shuster, and while they will tell potential clients about being an imprint of Simon and Shuster, with all the implications of being associated with a traditional publisher, they are nothing more than a fancy printshop with services they want you to buy. Being a first time author, I was fooled by their pitch. I will note they didn't bother to check if the book title had been used previously - which I learned later to be true.

My biggest and most significant complaint is that I was unable to “work with one of our designers” as promised in the package I purchased. Having been told by my “concierge” that designers are not “author interfacing”, there was no interaction in order to discuss page design and format (nor cover design) which I am not pleased with at all. I believe that even a brief discussion with a designer would have improved my book with regard to spacing, margins, size of typeface, very basic things which I was unable to visualize and assume are second nature to a designer.