The thing that irks me about Author’s Solution and the deals they’re striking with publishing houses is how they present their side of the argument. They come in under the whole, “it’s an indie revolution”, giving it a rebellious stripe stolen from punk music and outsider art. And that is just a damned lie.
First off, they aren’t part of some indie underground revolution. Not at all. There already is an underground, indie book publishing industry. It goes from small presses to single one woman/man publishers that crank out zines and chapbooks. It lives in the cracks, and performs the same crazy outsider art feeling that punk rock can give you.
What Author’s Solutions is doing is slimy. They’re not providing a voice to the common unheard writer. That’s LuLu. What they’re doing is monetizing on other people’s hopes and dreams. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be joining up with publishers and giving rejected authors the offer over pay us a grand and we’ll publish you. This is about as slimy and predatory as the crappy loans that got us into the whole economic crash of 2008.
