Any one have any experience, good or bad, with Outskirts Press? I received an e-mail forwarded from a friend offering the Amazon Featured Book of the Week pushed to 20K people by email for $299. When I went to that link I found it was not Amazon but Outskirts Press (tiny, tiny link on the e-mail indicated the source). I joined for free, but that specific service was not available, just a lot of much more expensive, and perhaps less effective marketing tools that I didn't need. Seemed like bait and switch to me. Are they legit?
Well, I should have googled them. Also my friend advised me that they had "published" his first book several years ago for $1K, which is an immediate red flag. They appear to be a vanity press, and I am not interested in their marketing my product. My sense that this marketing ad was a bait and switch is probably correct. In looking at the $1K service they offer to publish a book, and compared it with what I got from CreateSpace, there was no comparison. CS was virtually free, except for a more generic ISBN from Gowker ($100) and LCCN ($25), which I ordered as options. Tech support is readily available from CS and free; OS charges for it. CS Turnaround time is around 24 hours from upload to availability, vs. weeks to months for Outskirts. Kindle transition? Free, easy with technical support on CS, extra charge of $125 from OS. Want to upload a new version to get rid of typos? Just do it on CS, once again on KDP, free and perhaps a few hours of unavailability while processing. I have done it several times, damn those pesky typos! OS may wind up charging that as a new publication (meaning hundreds of bucks). If they mislead the naive author into laying out money for something that is basically free, I certainly don't want to send them my money to market my book.
