Bill M.
unable to leave negative stars
Sadly, I can't give this place negative stars, so I have to give it one star even though I have absolutely nothing positive to say about my interactions with this company. They have repeatedly sent unsolicited emails to our business address asking for or referring to a person who does not work here and, as far as we're concerned, does not exist (here). I took the time to politely call them, explain the situation, and ask to have our email address removed from their mailing list. Instead, we received even more emails from them. That doesn't inspire much confidence in a company, especially when they apparently can't verify who they're contacting or honor a simple request to stop contacting a business. Whatever method they're using to build their mailing lists, it certainly doesn't appear to involve much verification. I especially love this part... "Hi XXXXX, I noticed you dropped by David McKay Publications recently asking about publishing options." Sure...(sic) But hey, I guess any advertising...even negative advertising...is still advertising, right? I'll add one final point: I'm an author myself, writing under my own name, with a book that's getting very close to going to print. Based solely on my experience with their unsolicited marketing and their failure to honor my request to stop contacting us, this is not a company I would consider doing business with. Edit: 9-24-26 Since there is not an option to reply to them. Evidently, (based on their own reply) anyone can go to their site address and enter an email address into their site and they send out emails to that address. It would seem that this is done without verifying the address, also, I did say what email address and name they were sending the emails to, not sure why they would act as though it wasn't said. (2 people were in the office with me when i called and one smarty pants mechanic decided to attempt humor while i was on the phone with the gentleman) The only information I did not give them during the phone call when asked was "my" name, I stated simply that I was the general manager and that's all they needed to know. 9/25/2026 Guys, please stop with the excuses. I said it on the phone call. I told The Guy the email address and the name but even if we forget that for a moment, I’ve also responded to your email the original email you have everything you need to know. I understand you wanna make yourself look good for this review but it’s not about who looks good and who doesn’t, it’s just about simple facts. This is not on me my friend, and I would like to make a suggestion and I don’t even mean this in a bad way but if your system is set up so that anybody can go to your site, put any name in there and put any email address in there and you do not send out a verification to that email address, (and yes, I did go and look for one just to be certain) then your system needs to be changed. You guys have a good day. o/ Final edit: 10-01-26 They evidently never received the email I sent them by clicking the reply button as google sent me the following message... " Address not found Your message wasn't delivered to nick.trenton (at) davidmckaybookconsultation.com because the domain davidmckaybookconsultation.com couldn't be found. Check for typos or unnecessary spaces and try again" This confirms my statement that I had also emailed them, but, it also shows that they never got the reply due to an issue with the domain or the email's return address configuration. I only added this note to be fair about the issue. o/
Response from David McKay PublicationsSep 23, 2026
Dear Bill, Thank you for updating your review. We noticed your edit on September 24, 2026, and appreciate the opportunity to address your points directly so we can resolve this matter once and for all. To be completely clear on our outreach: over 40,000 authors have opted in to receive communication from David McKay Publications because they actively want updates on our publishing pathways and sponsorship cohorts. Every single record in our database exists because someone manually entered that email address into an opt-in form on our website. We do not harvest, purchase, or randomly auto-generate contact lists. If an email address associated with your business is receiving our messages, it is solely because an individual entered that specific address on our site. During your call, our team requested the exact email address receiving the messages specifically so we could locate, suppress, and permanently purge it from our system. While we respect your decision as General Manager to withhold personal details, our system contains tens of thousands of opt-in records—without knowing the specific email address being targeted, our technical team had no identifier to query or remove. Even in your updated review, you have still not provided the email address in question. We want to lay this concern to rest for you immediately. Since Trustpilot serves as a secure platform, please share the specific email address here in a direct message or reply on Trustpilot so our compliance team can manually purge it from our database immediately and ensure you receive no further communications. We wish you the very best with the upcoming launch of your book. Warm regards, David McKay Publications Support Team