Complaint Review: Translucent Publishing

Translucent Publishing is just another pay for play editorial magazine company out of the windy city. Their MO is the same as ten other companies doing the same thing (a lot of which are based in Chicago). From what I can tell they are nothing more than a call center / salesroom with the background noise to prove it. Other interviews Ive conducted didnt have hooting and hollering in the background.

Their sales team call you up pretending that their editor wants to write an article on your company. Along with an interview with you (CEO/President, which they do so as to avoid marketing/PR who know better than get involved). At the end of it all (sometimes one sometimes two calls - seemingly just to waste your time) all that they want your vendor/subcontractor list ...this is solely for the purposes of selling advertisements to them.

Their sales staff will then proceed to call and harrass your vendors and try and take them for as much money as they can with total disregard to your relationship with them which like mine could of been cultivated over a long period's of time.

The magazine circulation and readership numbers seem very fake to me and indeed the staff get very confused when pressed for actual numbers, I suspect they are mostly made up of purchased emails/addresses/names from data providers (I dont know anyone that subscribes or had even heard of them before i started getting their calls) anyway they then claim these are their subscribers even though they cant tell you where they are or how many there are, so even if someone buys an advertisement they wont get any value from it, they may as well burn their money.

As for the articles (if you even get one - I was told it had to sell at least one ad to even appear in the magazine - if it didnt I was politely told I could purchase one myself!) are terrible (take a look at their digital magazines www.translucentpublishing.com and tell me that it doesnt look like they are written by an intern or something - the magazines also look terrible, maybe interns designed them too).

Working with this organization is seriously detrimental to your company and the relationships you have built up with your vendors. STAY AWAY AND AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE. Stick to the industry magazines that you know.

I will now sit back and wait for the next round of calls from them and their ilk.