Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

iUniverse, etc.

Author:Dori Smith
Posted:1/17/2000; 5:49:50 PM
Topic:iUniverse, etc.
Msg #:14550
Prev/Next:14549 / 14551

I got a call from Bill Gladstone, an agent who represents book authors. He's hot to trot on FatBrain and iUniverse. I suggested we work out an easy path for editors to publish to print directly from their Manila sites. He was very excited by this idea. We'll talk again tomorrow.

Just out of curiousity, and based on past experience... did Bill mention that he's a part owner of iUniverse?

He had a habit in the past of raving about toExcel (which was bought by iUniverse) to computer book authors, talking about how wonderful print-on-demand would be and trying to get them to sign up, while neglecting to mention that he was a part owner. As a book agent, it seemed to me (and others) that there was a distinct conflict of interest there.

[Disclosure: I used to be a client of Waterside (Bill's agency) and left after they got me no work. I moved to Studio B (the competition) and am now busy as a full time author. I also had a couple of bad experiences with Bill personally and with Waterside in general at their conference last year.]

It's interesting to me how originally print-on-demand was expected to be huge in the computer book biz, until the authors read the fine print and all ran like hell in the opposite direction. Now, they're taking a completely different angle to try to make it succeed--I'm curious to see if it flies any better than the last.

Dori

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