Complaint Review: Juniper Publishers

Scam Alert! Juniper Publishers host one of the biggest fraud houses in the world of book and journal publication. I recently had a really bad experience with Juniper Publishers and I wish to share this experience as a negative review so that more and more people can stay away from this publication house. I wasted so much time as well as money behind the scam run by Juniper Publishers.

On 25 July 2017, I was up all night looking for the top publication houses for my book on Thermodynamics. I have completed my PhD in Advanced Thermodynamics and I recently finished writing a book on it. The book covers all scientific aspects of the heat shields that a spacecraft will require while travelling close to the sun. It took me over 2 years to complete all the necessary calculations and compile the complete book. This is when I came across the name Juniper Publishers on the internet.

I usually do not go beyond the first page of Google’s search results to look for all positive and negative reviews on a product. That is what I did while doing a background check for Juniper Publishers. I looked for complaints and negative reviews on the first page of the search results. To my surprise, all I could see it great reviews and excellent customer experience. I was excited about these reviews and so I chose Juniper Publishers to publish my book on Thermodynamics. Back then, who knew that I was slowly falling into the hands of a predatory publisher.

Upon registering for the publication, I received an email from Juniper Publishers almost instantly. It contained the contact details of Ross from their team. The con publishers were smart enough to put the face of a person on their sales pitch so that it turns out to be more believable. The email was immediately followed up by a call from Juniper Publishers. To my surprise, the call came from +57 country phone code. Now that phone code belongs to Columbia. I was a little shocked since Juniper Publishers seem to be registered in America. I still took my chances and had the initial call with Juniper Publishers.

The person on the other end of the line at Juniper Publishers sounded extremely unprofessional and fraudulent. It seemed like he was calling from his home. I believe he was speaking English with a hint of Spanish. I sensed the possibility of Juniper Publishers being predatory publishers due to the unprofessionalism displayed by this caller. Due to the language barrier, I could not have a conversation with this person from them Juniper Publishers team. So, I asked the respective person to inform someone else from Juniper Publishers to contact me back. This was unprofessional and I thought about lodging a complaint against them.

I did not receive a call back from the predatory publishers at Juniper Publishers for over a week now. My suspicion of Juniper Publishers being a group of highly unprofessional predatory publishers grew strong. Finally, after a week I received a call from an American number with an extension +1. The person on the other end of the line introduced himself as Ross. This time, he was speaking fluent English. This brought a sense of relief for a while.

Ross apologized on behalf of Juniper Publishers and said that he could not contact him back since he was on a vacation for a week. After a small casual chat, Ross made me believe that he will successfully publish my book without any complaints. He also explained how the basic publishing mechanism works to avoid fraud. Ross said that Juniper Publishers are extremely professional and they have published books for several popular authors in the past. Now I know that I should not have trusted the words of these con publishers without any proof.

Ross told me that Juniper Publishers would like to send a professional photographer to my place to capture a picture of me. Juniper Publishers wanted to feature my picture on the back cover of the book. While I was truly excited, I was a little sceptical about the whole thing being the case of predatory publishers. No one from the team of Juniper Publishers has still asked for my book yet. They were moving at a rapid pace without considering the book itself in place. I played along the tricks of this scam placed by the con publishers for a while.

Finally, Juniper Publishers asked me for a soft copy of the book. I told them that I do not have a soft copy since most of the calculations are written by hand. Now the group of con publishers was smart enough to not let my business go out of hand. I suspect that these predatory publishers knew that my book was written by hand. Therefore, Juniper Publishers asked me to send them the handwritten copy of the book along with 1500 dollars to publish the initial hard copy. I thought that this was a standard protocol for all popular publishing houses like Juniper Publishers. So, I complied with their request.

Juniper Publishers asked me to send the book via international courier to Columbia! I was shocked again. The international delivery of my heavy notebook cost me 250 dollars! However, it was already a little too late for me to publish the book so I willingly jumped into the predatory publisher scam and sent the money via courier.

I stayed in touch with Ross from Juniper Publishers for a week after that via regular calls and emails. He handled all my complaints professionally. Ross said that typically it may take the book over a week to reach their headquarters. I waited patiently for a week. After this, I tried contacting Juniper Publishers again and was greeted by the friendly message that said that the number does not exist. At this point, I drafted my negative review. Even my emails to Juniper Publishers were now undeliverable.

It has been over one year since that incident with the predatory publisher and still, this episode with Juniper Publishers hurts me a lot. Not only did Juniper Publishers waste my 1750 dollars but also waster a considerable amount of time with it.