iUniverseReviews of iuniverse.com

Published ChakraKey - A Key for Humanity in 2013. Despite rave reviews, I have not recieved a single penny from IUniverse. Plus they have jacked the cost of my 135 page B & W book up to $27.00 per copy. Excessive cost to discourage sales...

I published a book in 2016 and received about $45 total in royalties for it. I know it has sold much more than that as most of friends and family have purchased it. I was informed in the last 6 months that iUniverse has been collecting my royalties all this time to the tune of thousands of dollars, which I'd have to hire an attorney to sue them for that. More money. So never mind the initial cost of publishing my 700+ page book, but then to have to spend thousands to get my royalties back??? Ridiculous. And to make this right, I have to re-publish, get a new ISBN number and new copyright to be able to speak with anyone in regard to marketing my book further. In closing, I would not recommend this self-publishing company at all.

They charged me $40,000 to redo two of my books n NYT advertising. The WORSE experience ever!! No return of phone calls, poor editing, slow to get things done, delayed book release by six months, n I still haven't seen any ads in NYT!! DO NOT USE THEM!!!

This company is the bottom of the barrel. The finished product looked like a small magazine. They don't offer an suggestions. They have no expertise. You are basically on your own. NO GUIDANCE: It costs you plenty for NO HELP: GO ELSEWHERE This is our 3rd book with them. This last book was much more money for much less help; less guidance and a much worse finished product. very unhappy.

When i disagreed with them on some points they stopped answering e-mail and phone calls. It's been over 2weeks and all calls go unanswered. They took my money and ran. and this was the second book i was going to have with them. The first was A-OK no problems but that was 13 years ago. DO NOT USE BE CAUTOUS.

Great, but you missed a epigraph.

I published my book in 2010 which is still selling 14 years later. I am based in England and can attest to the fact that iUniverse does not look after the interests of international-based authors. It refuses to pay royalties directly to my bank account even though iUniverse now makes it mandatory for all its US based authors to provide bank details to enable the electronic transfer of royalties. Instead, they insist on posting cheques. This is inconvenient because it means that I have to pay a foreign cheque transaction fee. Additionally, the cheque takes a much longer period to clear than would one of local origin. I have not cashed in any cheques since 2017. I decided that short of iUniverse doing the right thing by transferring the money to my bank account, I would allow my royalties to accumulate to what I consider an acceptable amount before putting the foreign cheque into my account. I was informed by iUniverse that they had a procedure which they call a “re-cut”. This is supposed to consolidate a series of royalty payments into one. I did not receive a payment for the first “re-cut”. I requested a second re-cut in 2022 and removed the hold at some point in 2023. This meant that I was expecting payment for all my royalties accumulated since 2017 during the first week of December 2023. But there is a catch iUniverse spring on you after the author removes the “hold”. They claim under a rule of theirs that payment of the sum owed to the author is not guaranteed. In other words it permits them to withhold payment even when the window for payment arrives. The implications are clear: It means that they can keep on deferring paying the author the debt owed him indefinitely. This is an intolerable state of affairs. I have since cancelled my contract with iUniverse, My assessment of the aforementioned is that iUniverse have employed the use of unreasonable terms and procedures which breach my legitimate expectation to acquire royalties due me. The unconscionable state of affairs leaves me with no alternative other than to take all steps available to me securing the debt owed me including initiating civil legal action and filing a criminal complaint against iUniverse and its parent company Author Solutions. Solution: An immediate payment of all my royalty earnings from 2017 to the 2nd Quarter of 2024 i.e. April’s end, followed by an accelerated payment mechanism of royalties in the period after the cancellation of my contract with iUniverse.

If you are an international publisher/author- do not work together with iUniverse. You will not get your money...