First Edition Design Publishing Reviews (%countItem)
First Edition Design Publishing Rating
Address: Address on File with BBB, Sarasota, Florida, United States, 34233
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This goes way beyond a negative review, the company is a one woman operation and has stolen all of the royalty money earned from me. One of their addresses is the Sarasota post office and the other is the home of the owner, Deborah G. When pressed for information about the royalty money, she proceeded to respond with a bunch of lies and even personal insults. She probably owes me more than $1,000 for 150+ books sold (verified), and has paid me for about 7 copies. The money due is for sales more than a year ago and the money for any ongoing sales will probably never be paid to me as well. Steer way clear of this of this scam!
has received many sets of royalties from us dating back to 2014 and as recent as February 2020. It has been explained to him by numerous support staff that the reason his royalties are not as plentiful as he thinks is two-fold. One, authors always think they sold more than they actually have, and two, the larger reason for his dismay is the fact that when his second book was published, he sent out a fraudulent marketing piece of mail using our name, which looked like we sent the piece of mail including our return address. This extremely unprofessional piece of mail that he sent out caused much damage - to include many returns of his book. When a return is made from a buyer, that is charged against the author. Therefore, no royalties are due, and the cost of that return is deducted from any royalties due to the author.
To make matters worse, this author was reported to the police as a stalker. He would send emails rambling as if he were drunk at all hours in the middle of the night, and we ignored them at first, however, when they became threatening, we unpublished his two books and closed out his account.
What is funny, he had no problem singing our praises up until his books started getting returned - see below emails from author -
I just completed my second book with First Edition Design and would never look any further for a partner in publishing any future books. Skillful layout, creative art design for the cover, and affordable package prices; they are by far the best buy for any aspiring author. And one specific area of excellence that is amazing, is the way that they work to improve any pictures that are included in your manuscript. I wrote a local history book and have done previous books in that genre with Arcadia Publishing, who is the largest publisher in that field. Arcadia has very strict submission standards for photographs and does absolutely nothing to save the author from having to find replacement photos. In one email about a previous book, they rejected 46 photos that I submitted, which sent me scrambling to find others. First Edition took the 55 photos that I submitted, worked to improve their printable quality where required, and even went the extra step of replacing one or two which could not be saved. They are by far the best, and thank you Debi G. for making this such a pleasant experience. ~
According to Amazon's "Author Central" site that tracks sales for authors, at least 107 copies of my 2019 book on maritime history have been sold. They specify that this number does not include sales to wholesalers and libraries, so the real number is probably much higher. The online catalogues for the two Long Island, NY library systems list 51 copies of the book at member libraries, and not all of the area's libraries are members of that system. Ms. G. has paid me royalties for 17 books! She employs no staff and there were no returns of books because I elected not to pay the $649 fee to establish a system to handle returns. The books were sold as "non-returnable" which meant that major retailers would not purchased them for resale. The alleged fraudulent mailer was a well designed piece that I sent out with her permission to use the Florida return address on the envelopes. I believe her comments were that many of her authors do just that. Her comments about drunken emails and my being reported to the police as a stalker are untrue and libelous, but I have decided not to sue her even though my son is an attorney which would make this an easy task. He and I both have better things to do with our time. What she did state that is true, however, is that I heaped high praise on her for the quality of production that went into publishing two of my books. That is what made it so disappointing when I realized that she was stealing royalty money from me. The fact that she saw fit to reproduce my email points out the fact that I have done previous books with legitimate publishers, so I am somewhat experienced in the entire process and know how the royalty system is supposed to work.
Run. This operation is smoke and mirrors. We raised legitimate concerns (ie they got our author wrong in the submission and didn't use other information as indicated in our official submission form). Rather than helping us fix, VIA EMAIL (not smart because we have proof!!), they bullied us, called us names, and threatened to retaliate against our title if we gave bad feedback. Just as much, they were never able to get our title on amazon appropriately. Again, VIA EMAIL, they claimed they opened tickets with amazon in one email stream, just to tell us that amazon doesn't use tickets in another. I could go on. When we ultimately told them we were pulling our title, they 'fired' us and told us they were dropping us. Dont take my word for any of this check out ALLis watchdog review of this operation. Clearly we aren't the only ones who have had this experience.