iUniverseReviews of iuniverse.com

They did a beautiful job on my book, titled "Me and Mr. Bear"! The design is amazing. I didn't like the fact that my friends received their books before me! My friend had to drive over to my house just so I could see my finished product. They let me borrow the book so that I could make a video on tiktok.

The actual product and graphics were great. Editorial Service was excellent. I was expecting more from the marketing package deal. It did include a website where readers can buy online with buttons for Amazon and Iuniverse. For maintenance $129 annually for two years. I guess I expected a little more consulting on marketing not just six emails. Everything was ala carte and expensive. Thousands of dollars just for iuniverse to push your book at the book fair. Everyone gets a cut. Never mind the airfare and hotel. To participate in a podcast. $2000. The six emails marketing package ie. click through on a google graphic $3000. The only staff that called me were salespeople. Customer service was slim. I had to call Author Solutions and Iuniverse. . I have a series to publish and have an account on TikTok Just starting to do lives as @Fortunapage1. I am undecided about where to publish the next book in the Series.

It took two years to publish this book. (#834947). You printed the illustrations too light, even though they were submitted dark. You mixed my illustrations with my coloring pictures, making the coloring book ineffective. You did not print what I approved but changed pages after my approval. Samantha Anderson was often unavailable, and Kelly Martin had to be called to help get the publishing moving.

They did an excellent job with the book cover- but communication had been very poor.

Frustrating not being able to communicate with editors despite editorial services being additional costs. Dealing with customer service people located overseas was challenging at times. It seemed like every step of the process salespeople were contacting me offering a "better version" for an additional cost.

I was very impressed with Mae (who sold me on the company, and has regularly kept in touch.) The editorial department is professional and completely dedicated to producing a saleable end product. However, the marketing/distribution/follow-up is severely lacking. Once they realized they couldn't sell me anything else, nothing got done: I got no response to my queries regarding the promised "Trifecta" book reviews that haven't materialized or the paid-for-website that is nowhere to be found. My assigned "contact" person, disappeared completely after the book went to publishing. Really too bad. As an owner of a company, I voiced the obvious complaint: not one person is assigned to each author for the completion of the project. Every time the book moves to another phase, the previous contacts fade into oblivion. Except for Mae: Mae continues to send me emails weekly asking if I have another book in the works. Or if I'm even thinking of another book, and if so, I should prepay for it now. Come to think of it, maybe I should have given it two stars.

Overall, I would give my working experience with iUniverse three stars. The company is helpful when I call them, but falls short when it comes to answering emails and texts. They are very big on selling me more marketing tools for thousands of dollars when I have already paid thousands to get my book self-published. I really thought they would do more in marketing it. That is disappointing.

While everything was done well, efficiently, and professionally, there are two things I did not like. The first being editing being charged separately. For any future and aspiring authors who may write a lot may be hesitant to publish with iUniverse due the the high cost of editing. If editing needs to be charged separately, at least have a fixed rate so authors who may write half a million words such as myself may not find themselves in a tough financial situation. The second issue is not being told that my card was charged for a payment installment for marketing of the book. I had stated that I couldn't pay one month and that I would be given a month relief to not pay, but the following month, I was charged with no sign that I would be charged. No call, no email, nothing. 1,500 dollars is a significant amount of money to not have anyone say anything to the person paying.