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The company being discussed here is a fraud, I'm not sure what the Wiki rules are for discussing fraudulent companies, however the previous efforts to delete this entry seems to have been over-ruled. Xlibris is not a legitimate company, I'm not sure if we want Wikipedia carrying such articles as if they're legitimate. [[User:SoftwareThing|SoftwareThing]] ([[User talk:SoftwareThing|talk]]) 01:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
The company being discussed here is a fraud, I'm not sure what the Wiki rules are for discussing fraudulent companies, however the previous efforts to delete this entry seems to have been over-ruled. Xlibris is not a legitimate company, I'm not sure if we want Wikipedia carrying such articles as if they're legitimate. [[User:SoftwareThing|SoftwareThing]] ([[User talk:SoftwareThing|talk]]) 01:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

== Yes: Xlibris is a predatory vanity press ==

I get these requests a few a month: this is typical.

: Debra D.

: Hi!

: I read your review on Xlibris (Probably a little too late), I am a first time writer and I just published my first book with them. They keep throwing new expensive packages at me that I just can't afford and the guy replies, "Nobody will buy your book" and now I'm freaking out. I rlly want my book to become successful and publish more books. Do you have any advice for me?

My reply:

:It saddens me that you were "taken" by a predatory press. :-( I detest people who take advantage of ignorance, as ignorance is the default human condition: everyone is born that way. If you are "kicking yourself" because you got scammed, it is of course not in the least bit your fault: the predators are to blame.

:I am not qualified to give what is considered expert advice, nor am I a lawyer. Below are my opinions only, nor are my opinions worth anything.

:This might sting a bit.

:First, what literary rights did you surrender to Xlibris? You might have signed away your right to sell the manuscript to a legitimate publisher, and/or the right for you to self-publish. If so, you must surrender the manuscript, or sue the predatory business: and that will cost vastly more than the book is worth. Xlibris does not give a crap about your manuscript, nor your book, nor if the manuscript is good or utter garbage: they are in business to squeeze every penny out of you that they can. They might also own the "cover," and you might not be allowed to use it.

:Second, is your manuscript good enough for readers to read? Almost all "first books" are not worthy of publishing, let alone reading. This is the ugly and hard truth. Many (perhaps most) successful writers (called "authors" at that point) have first books that did not sell because the manuscripts were not good enough.

:A worthy manuscript means that you wrote the first draft, then did significant editing of the unnecessary sentences and paragraphs, then wrote a second draft, then once again edited out everything that did not belong, then did a "copy edit" (writers need to know what that is), and you did a "line edit." Your goal as a writer is to *ONLY* include in your manuscript what is required to move the story along its "arc."

:If your manuscript has been polished to the best of your ability, you will probably wish to have a trade agent represent your manuscript to publishers. Visit Manuscript Wish List https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/ and use the menu option "FIND AGENTS + EDITORS" and search for agents who are "open to queries" based on your manuscript's genre(s). If the agent's brief biography appears to be a good match for your manuscript, you will wish to obey the agent's instructions regarding queries EXACTLY.

:There is an art to writing query letters: there are inexpensive books on how to write a proper query letter. You could query perhaps 5 agents at a time, and while you wait for a reply you an write your next manuscript. Agents who do not reply are silently telling you they are not interested in representing your manuscript: do not take it personally.

:If you decide to self-publish instead of trade publish (that is: representation by an agent), you must always keep in mind the number one rule for writers: WRITERS ARE PAID; WRITERS DO NOT PAY.

:A good book has a life-time income of about US$3,600 and that is over the time span of eight years.

:The predatory vanity presses, such as Xlibris; Author Solutions; LitFire Publishing; Amelia Book Company; Amelia Publishing; GoToPublish; Legaia Books; Stratton Press; ReadersMagnet; Toplink Publishing; Book-Art Press Solutions; Window Press Club; Westwood Books Publishing (formerly Greenberry Publishing); Authors Press, Book Vine Press; BookVenture Publishing; Okir Publishing; ADbook Press; Coffee Press; Zeta Publishing; Everlastale Publishing; Legaia Books; Ascribed LLC; Outstrip LLC; AuthorCentrix (formerly BookBlastPro); AuthorLair; Black Lacquer Press & Marketing; Book Agency Plus; Book Trail Agency; Book Magnets; Book Reads Publishing; Book Vine Press; Westwood Books; Publishing / Authors Press; BookWhip / Carter Press; Capstone Media Services / Stampa / Stampa Global; Global Summit House; Goldman Agency; Maple Leaf Publishing; Matchstick Literary; Outstrip LLC; Ascribed LLC; PageTurner Press and Media; Paramount Books Media; Sherlock Press; Stonewall Press; Uirtus Solutions; URLink Print and Media; The Writer Central / IdeoPage Press Solutions; AND MANY MORE are predatory vanity presses. THEY DO NOT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR BOOK, and they charge their victims more than their victim's books are worth.

:Predatory vanity presses like Xlibris will not produce for you a book that is even adequate, let alone good; they also will not promote your book; nor do most of them print on good paper, nor with an adequate bind. nor with proper formatting, not proper editing.

:A Trade Publisher does that for you, and they PAY YOU up front an "advance." Trade publishers will know within a hundred dollars or so how much your book is worth. Legitimate literary agents generally take 15% of your pay from the publisher for the hard work, and AGENT ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY! If your book earns its advance, you will then get a royalty for every book that sells after that.

:If a literary agent does not reply to you, the answer is "No." That does *NOT* mean that she disliked your book; agents decide to not represent a book for many reasons---- and you want an agent that is passionate about your manuscript and work hard to find a trade publisher.

:One option for self-publishing is Smashwords: that is only in ebook format, and you will wish to read the free document on how to format your manuscript properly. You will also wish to have a cover, and there are legitimate cover artists that will work with you to achieve the cover you like; the cost is anywhere from around $50 to $100. If you do a "Google search" for book cover artists, make sure you find one who will give you as many changes as you want for the same fee (no additional fee, I mean).

:I used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to self-published. That means I did *ALL* of the work, and I made a good book with good paper and good binding. It took much effort and time, but I had complete control of what the book looks likes, the format, the font and the font size, and the cover (which I created). I have sold about 500 copies, which is more than most self-published books sell, because I am a damn fine writer. No: really :-) If you think KDP might work for you (print and ebook), be sure to *NOT* use KDP Select: you will be restricted in the markets you are allowed to sell your books to.

:If you want to see a sample of KDP, you can look for DESERT SOLILOQUY (my memoir).

[[User:Desertphile|Desertphile]] ([[User talk:Desertphile|talk]]) 02:18, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Revision as of 02:18, 10 April 2020


Is It a Vanity Press?

Xlibris has been identified by some fairly serious sources as a vanity press. (For just one example, see [1]) Since Wikipedia is devoted to balanced presentation, I think that information should be included. I added it once already, but it was removed without comment. Is there a good argument against including it? Artemis-Arethusa 16:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have no citations or proof of you're quite frankly rediculous claim so if you piut it back without any evidence then i will be forced to recommend u to the moderatiors for temporarily block u from editting wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smith_Jones (talk • contribs).
I've reverted this user's removal of the vanity press information and added the source given by Artemis-Arethusa which does not exist according to Smith_Jones. AvB ÷ talk 17:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"You have no citations or proof of you're quite frankly rediculous [sic] claim...." The claim is 100% correct and factual: Xlibris is a predatory vanity press and one of at least twenty other cloned predatory business that "Author Solutions LLC" spawned. I have the court documents to support this fact. Please see the blog WRITER BEWARE. Also consider reading http://www.theindependentpublishingmagazine.com/2015/01/author-solutions-writers-beware.html among many hundreds of articles about the abusive businesses. Desertphile (talk) 03:07, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is a vanity publishing company, google or bing vanity press & it will most definately pop-up — Preceding unsigned comment added by EgyptKEW9 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Xlibris is not only a vanity press, but a predatory vanity press. Their "parent company" was also a predatory vanity press which was sued out of business by their victims. Please check the WRITER BEWARE blog regarding Xlibris. Desertphile (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion tag removed Feb 25, 2007

Xlibris is a top POD publisher. I removed the tag and added two independent sources, bringing up the total to three. If anyone still doubts it deserves an article in Wikipedia, please read (and insert sources from) the following comment by User:Ben W Bell on the Nov 2006 AfD page:

  • Strong Keep actually seems quite notable. The fact that is listed that Piers Anthony is going to republish one of his most famous series with them should help assert notability. I also retrieved this article from www.printondemand.com, a very common and highly used resource for those who do POD. A Google News Search turns up many stories where they are at least mentioned in passing, including mentions in the New York Daily News, The Sunday Times, a more exacting one in Mail Tribune to mention a few. Seems highly notable and popular in the POD arena. The article should be reworked slightly to be less advertisementy, but the company deserves an article.

AvB ÷ talk 10:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Content removal

I've removed:

According to Xlibris's own figures, the average book printed by Xlibris sells only 150 copies, out of which 100 are sold to the authors themselves (meaning they have to pay twice for publication), while the remaining 50 copies are the only ones sold directly to the book-buying public.

I was concerned for two reasons: a) according to xLibris, they don't require you to purchase any copies of your book., and while multiple copies of the book are provided in some of the packages (which you pay for), most are a lot less than that number; and b) the source provided for this information, Aren’t the various publishing services like Author House and Xlibris just printing services? is written by and published on a competitor's website, and is used to who how their publishing services are cheaper than xLibris'. Thus it is clearly not a reliable source. - Bilby (talk) 15:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for pronunciation

I believe the inclusion of a pronunciation snippit could be considered appropriate here, takers? Thank you! :-) 12.129.115.14 (talk) 17:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary? Testimonials?

I separated out the various "So-and-so has said this about XLibris" into a separate section. The fact that the testimonial section is larger than any other part of this... -Fuzzy (talk) 15:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cyberbot II has detected links on Xlibris which have been added to the blacklist, either globally or locally. Links tend to be blacklisted because they have a history of being spammed or are highly inappropriate for Wikipedia. The addition will be logged at one of these locations: local or global If you believe the specific link should be exempt from the blacklist, you may request that it is white-listed. Alternatively, you may request that the link is removed from or altered on the blacklist locally or globally. When requesting whitelisting, be sure to supply the link to be whitelisted and wrap the link in nowiki tags. Please do not remove the tag until the issue is resolved. You may set the invisible parameter to "true" whilst requests to white-list are being processed. Should you require any help with this process, please ask at the help desk.

Below is a list of links that were found on the main page:

  • http://www.xlibris.com
    Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist
  • http://www.xlibris.com/
    Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist
  • http://www.xlibris.com/faq.aspx
    Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist

If you would like me to provide more information on the talk page, contact User:Cyberpower678 and ask him to program me with more info.

From your friendly hard working bot.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:29, 14 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

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Fraudulent Companies -- Wikipedia Delete

The company being discussed here is a fraud, I'm not sure what the Wiki rules are for discussing fraudulent companies, however the previous efforts to delete this entry seems to have been over-ruled. Xlibris is not a legitimate company, I'm not sure if we want Wikipedia carrying such articles as if they're legitimate. SoftwareThing (talk) 01:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes: Xlibris is a predatory vanity press

I get these requests a few a month: this is typical.

Debra D.
Hi!
I read your review on Xlibris (Probably a little too late), I am a first time writer and I just published my first book with them. They keep throwing new expensive packages at me that I just can't afford and the guy replies, "Nobody will buy your book" and now I'm freaking out. I rlly want my book to become successful and publish more books. Do you have any advice for me?

My reply:

It saddens me that you were "taken" by a predatory press. :-( I detest people who take advantage of ignorance, as ignorance is the default human condition: everyone is born that way. If you are "kicking yourself" because you got scammed, it is of course not in the least bit your fault: the predators are to blame.
I am not qualified to give what is considered expert advice, nor am I a lawyer. Below are my opinions only, nor are my opinions worth anything.
This might sting a bit.
First, what literary rights did you surrender to Xlibris? You might have signed away your right to sell the manuscript to a legitimate publisher, and/or the right for you to self-publish. If so, you must surrender the manuscript, or sue the predatory business: and that will cost vastly more than the book is worth. Xlibris does not give a crap about your manuscript, nor your book, nor if the manuscript is good or utter garbage: they are in business to squeeze every penny out of you that they can. They might also own the "cover," and you might not be allowed to use it.
Second, is your manuscript good enough for readers to read? Almost all "first books" are not worthy of publishing, let alone reading. This is the ugly and hard truth. Many (perhaps most) successful writers (called "authors" at that point) have first books that did not sell because the manuscripts were not good enough.
A worthy manuscript means that you wrote the first draft, then did significant editing of the unnecessary sentences and paragraphs, then wrote a second draft, then once again edited out everything that did not belong, then did a "copy edit" (writers need to know what that is), and you did a "line edit." Your goal as a writer is to *ONLY* include in your manuscript what is required to move the story along its "arc."
If your manuscript has been polished to the best of your ability, you will probably wish to have a trade agent represent your manuscript to publishers. Visit Manuscript Wish List https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/ and use the menu option "FIND AGENTS + EDITORS" and search for agents who are "open to queries" based on your manuscript's genre(s). If the agent's brief biography appears to be a good match for your manuscript, you will wish to obey the agent's instructions regarding queries EXACTLY.
There is an art to writing query letters: there are inexpensive books on how to write a proper query letter. You could query perhaps 5 agents at a time, and while you wait for a reply you an write your next manuscript. Agents who do not reply are silently telling you they are not interested in representing your manuscript: do not take it personally.
If you decide to self-publish instead of trade publish (that is: representation by an agent), you must always keep in mind the number one rule for writers: WRITERS ARE PAID; WRITERS DO NOT PAY.
A good book has a life-time income of about US$3,600 and that is over the time span of eight years.
The predatory vanity presses, such as Xlibris; Author Solutions; LitFire Publishing; Amelia Book Company; Amelia Publishing; GoToPublish; Legaia Books; Stratton Press; ReadersMagnet; Toplink Publishing; Book-Art Press Solutions; Window Press Club; Westwood Books Publishing (formerly Greenberry Publishing); Authors Press, Book Vine Press; BookVenture Publishing; Okir Publishing; ADbook Press; Coffee Press; Zeta Publishing; Everlastale Publishing; Legaia Books; Ascribed LLC; Outstrip LLC; AuthorCentrix (formerly BookBlastPro); AuthorLair; Black Lacquer Press & Marketing; Book Agency Plus; Book Trail Agency; Book Magnets; Book Reads Publishing; Book Vine Press; Westwood Books; Publishing / Authors Press; BookWhip / Carter Press; Capstone Media Services / Stampa / Stampa Global; Global Summit House; Goldman Agency; Maple Leaf Publishing; Matchstick Literary; Outstrip LLC; Ascribed LLC; PageTurner Press and Media; Paramount Books Media; Sherlock Press; Stonewall Press; Uirtus Solutions; URLink Print and Media; The Writer Central / IdeoPage Press Solutions; AND MANY MORE are predatory vanity presses. THEY DO NOT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR BOOK, and they charge their victims more than their victim's books are worth.
Predatory vanity presses like Xlibris will not produce for you a book that is even adequate, let alone good; they also will not promote your book; nor do most of them print on good paper, nor with an adequate bind. nor with proper formatting, not proper editing.
A Trade Publisher does that for you, and they PAY YOU up front an "advance." Trade publishers will know within a hundred dollars or so how much your book is worth. Legitimate literary agents generally take 15% of your pay from the publisher for the hard work, and AGENT ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY! If your book earns its advance, you will then get a royalty for every book that sells after that.
If a literary agent does not reply to you, the answer is "No." That does *NOT* mean that she disliked your book; agents decide to not represent a book for many reasons---- and you want an agent that is passionate about your manuscript and work hard to find a trade publisher.
One option for self-publishing is Smashwords: that is only in ebook format, and you will wish to read the free document on how to format your manuscript properly. You will also wish to have a cover, and there are legitimate cover artists that will work with you to achieve the cover you like; the cost is anywhere from around $50 to $100. If you do a "Google search" for book cover artists, make sure you find one who will give you as many changes as you want for the same fee (no additional fee, I mean).
I used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to self-published. That means I did *ALL* of the work, and I made a good book with good paper and good binding. It took much effort and time, but I had complete control of what the book looks likes, the format, the font and the font size, and the cover (which I created). I have sold about 500 copies, which is more than most self-published books sell, because I am a damn fine writer. No: really :-) If you think KDP might work for you (print and ebook), be sure to *NOT* use KDP Select: you will be restricted in the markets you are allowed to sell your books to.
If you want to see a sample of KDP, you can look for DESERT SOLILOQUY (my memoir).

Desertphile (talk) 02:18, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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