Complaint Review: IUniverse

Reviews of self publishing houses often give iUniverse high ratings. But that was before they were purchased by a holding company. Since then, their services have maddeningly deteriorated. The former reviews do not apply.

In early 2009, iUniverse was purchased by a venture capital firm. The new holding company president immediately ordered iUniverse to move its equipment and people from Lincoln, Nebraska to Bloomington, Indiana. Over half of the highly trained staff refused to relocate. The president and CEO of iUniverse resigned. The new staff seem to be young with no experience in publishing.

Because of the untrained staff, and because of the delays that resulted from the move, books are not being published in the "intended" time of 90 days. There is a tremendous backlog. Mine has been delayed over six months. Further, staff give you different information, cannot tell you when a problem will be resolved, and they make frequent mistakes. Their store software (where you can purchase the books) crashes frequently and contains many bad links. There does not seem to be any way to resolve problems when a staff person gives you poor service.

My book at this point seems to be of professional quality (but oh, the hammering to get it to this point). Will iUniverse have problems with marketing and fulfillment? Almost certainly, as the best predictor of future performance is past.

Jean
Santa Fe, New Mexico
U.S.A.