iUniverseReviews of iuniverse.com

After about five months, I had to finally cancel my order to iUniverse a couple of days ago. Before submitting my manuscript, they were very nice but as soon as signing the contract and submitting the manuscript, my coordinator hardly answered my emails/ voice messages. They are not organized and don't not care about you. The coordinator even avoid letting me know about the order, so that I had to call the customer service several times complaining about the situation. Unfortunately the employees are most often unavailable and nobody is responsible over there for your requests. As my final attempts, I tried to contact the manager of my coordinator but unfortunately nobody was available as usual to handle the problem. After cancellation, I finally got an email from them about the cancellation fee. "It is ridiculous". I will never recommend you iuniverse because of their bad customer service and wasting time .

I published my manuscript with Iuniverse. .....never again! After I paid $3600.00 and once they had money I was tossed from one so called “editor “ to another. There was no continuation of connection with same person. Each step of the way I had to explain over and over, same questions with no answers.....they only wanted more money. Phone calls rarely returned, people that I was dealing with....gone. I think some of the editors were 6th grade students! Lee DeRoche Author of Many Shades of Blue

It started off well. I'm a struggling student who wanted to self publish for free. They kept telling me my content was amazing! and that it could take me somewhere. So, I agreed to the marketing services Rey Tome offered. He convinced me it would be great. it is said in the agreement only if I sign anything I will not get a refund. So, I took time to think about such things. After awhile I signed about 3 forms and did not sign the rest. After I asked for a refund for the content I DID NOT SIGN. They just stopped talking to me. I finally got a hold of someone after months of emails and they said "we can not give refunds after 6 months" Could that be why they are not responding to me? Could they be waiting for the time to come up? I definitely would not recommend this site and do not give them any of your money. My experience as of now is horrible. Amazon has a place called Kindle Publishing that I heard is good for the wallet and environment. It's also FREE and has more creative options. (iUniverse only has Hardcover and Glossy cover - for those who prefer matte, amazon has it). Try starting there. I wish I had.

I have been with them for two years now. At first it all went well. They seem to care about you as a person until you pay them to publish your book. My book had been edited to the bone as I was first with a traditional publisher. A friend of mine purchased the book and informed me that there were two chapter 19's. When I brought it to their attention, at first they wanted me to pay to have it re formatted. I objected and made them aware the book was in a perfected state when I handed it over. Then my mama passed away and left me some money. I decided to spend 5 grand of it on marketing my book. I was told the marketing package would include social media. I forked over the 5 grand and then come to find out it was one measly little picture, tiny at that, in a Publishers Weekly magazine. When I called to complain and said I was lied to, that they told me it would feature Instagram and Facebook, they said no it was just the PW marketing package. Why would I pay 5 thousand dollars to market the book if it didn't involve social media at all!?!?! When I asked for my money back they guaranteed me that it would get more impressions than just that and I trusted them. They still won't give my money back. Now, a year later and absolutely nothing to show for the 5 grand I forked over to them, I am asking for a refund as I need that money back now, since it did me no good whatsoever and they won't budge. They have taken over 7 thousand dollars of mine in total and I have nothing to show for it. Then come to find out I only get 10% of my sales. My book has only made around $200 and I have only received $5 or so of it. It is ludicrous. I will be pulling both novels from them as soon as Monday comes around again and I can speak with someone, hopefully it is someone in America, but that has been non existent as of late. Do not publish with them. It is a waste of money and they only want that, money. They could care less about you as a person or an author.

I have published six books with iUniverse, the last two this year. I’m sorry to say that the caring, supportive, compassionate service I initially received has been replaced by the feeling that I’m a pocket to be picked. I paid for an extra service and when I gave feedback for corrections, I was told it wasn’t that sort of thing, it was a one-off. Like a lottery, I could take what had been created or do it myself. That hadn’t been made clear up front, and so it was quite disappointing. I also couldn’t believe that my little, 276-pqge novella was going to be priced at $21.99. I had to work hard to get the page count adjusted so it could be $13.99, which I still think is too much. I’m looking elsewhere for my next publishing needs.

Do not deal with this company, is a scam and fraud. I signed a contract with the understanding that could do that job. My book is 1066 pages with pictures. After over month I was told I need to make into book volume or reduce the no. of pages. I presented several options, did not care. The book as is writing was not possible to split in two. Prior to sign the contract Mr. L.L. did not see any problems to produce the book as it is. Well, his team found that could not produce the 1066 pages only 950, after 900 at the needs to be 750. Its clear that they want to produce two books. So I requested a refund, but the contract does not allow full refund, its minus 10%. To make the story short, are refusing the refund the 10% equal to $269. I dedicated many hours, phone calls, emails no vail. I question the qualification Mr. L.L. and the team assigned to this project. On a personal note: I signed the contract with 10% none refundable fee, lesson learned. Turbo CP

I self-published with iUniverse way back in the pre-Kindle days of 2004 and again in 2006. At the time, I would have rated my experience higher. I thought it went smoothly. In the interim, my suspicion is that iUniverse moved their entire operation out of the United States and changed their business model. A few years after publishing, I began receiving almost weekly calls from my "book consultant" asking me to take advantage of some promotional package which always required me, the author, to buy more copies of my book. The pitches for these promotional packages became increasing unbelievable. Many years after I'd published, after I'd stopped promoting, and when I knew no copies were being sold, I'd be told that my book was garnering significant movie interest when there was no way anyone even knew it existed. Several years ago, I received a notice from iUniverse that one of my books had been added to Kindle. When I bought the book myself, I found it was so poorly formatted that I contacted iUniverse, told them to remove it, and then created my own Kindle version through KDP. Since then, I've discovered that they somehow changed my book information on Amazon so they don't appear under my pen name. When I called to correct this, my book consultant couldn't help. FINALLY, when I tried to UNPUBLISH my books, I was told that I have to print out, sign (not digitally), and return a cancellation agreement to them after which it will be 30 days before they can remove my books from their system. When I've used services like Lulu.com in the past, I have total control of that book's availability. I understand that perhaps the ISBNs make my iUniverse titles more ubiquitous but 30 days? My suspicion is that iUniverse is no longer (if it ever was) a self-publishing engine for authors but instead a sort of single-level marketing scam. Authors pay to publish their book and then a "consultant" (likely working on commission) harasses that author to buy promotional packages or more copies until that author is tapped out. They clearly don't care about the publishing side of their business anymore with the poor Kindle versions and inaccurate author information on Amazon. DO NOT USE THEM.

I published here once - will never do it again. In fact, I'm going to unpublish my book here and start over. I'm normally a positive guy, but the way I was barraged with nickel and dime phone calls, not to mention having to pay 90% of the cost to get copies of my own book. I could go on, but I won't. Instead, I've already taken it somewhere else.