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Westbow Press purposely is elusive and vague when trying to find out payments for royalties. They are deceptive in quoting costs which allows them to profit without sharing proceeds. They are tardy in paying royalties and will not address issues unless complaints are directed toward the board of directors and ceo. Their entire process should be audited and they should be required to disclose what was sold, when it was sold and the format that it was sold in. They refuse to do that. They do not disclose any of this up front when soliciting the thousands of dollars they charge to publish a book.
Published Man - do you have any hope of getting your book back from these people? And your money? because they so blatantly did not comply with your requests. From what I see from my internet sources, they are a vanity publishing house that is generally NOT recommended. That being hindsight. I also see that with them and the many names they operate under, there may be some discrepancy as to actually "owns" your book and cover. Out of the kindness of their heart they may pay you an occasional royalty but there is no incentive on their part to try to sell your books, because they have already made their money. Good or excellent quality "coffee table" books would be printed using a high quality and qualified off-set printing process. Your low-end vanity press printer is probably not capable of doing this. If it were me, I would probably fight to get my money back and the ownership rights to the book, the cover, and possession of the digital file. Then start over using a reputable off-set printing company and forget the self-publishing direction all together.
I also had a book published by WestBow. While some of the experience is positive since there are SOME pretty good people who work there, here are the negatives:
1) I narrowed my book publisher potentials down to two. The retail price of the book was a factor in deciding which one to sign up. WestBow's rep. told me a final retail price and at my urging, double checked with his boss. The price they were both sure of was not the price used. Both reps had different stories as to why this happened.
2) My initial marketing manager was probably the most belligerent person I've ever dealt with in a customer/business relationship. If he could have gotten his hands around my throat, he probably would have choked me until I agreed to buy a website from him. Fortunately, I was on the phone many miles away. He made me sound as if I was a complete idiot for not buying a website from him. I found out later that he gets a commission for marketing packages he sells. Their website is definitely not worth the money even if I wanted a website.
3A) Since my book is coffee table picture book with supporting pages of text, the images are vital to any success the book may have. The images were printed on uncoated paper without any real blacks in them. So they look flat and dull as compared to the original and compared to a Blurb copy I did myself. It is not at all the quality people expect in a picture book. So my Blurb book is far superior to WestBow even though Blurb is hardly a top-notch publisher. This may be an inherent problem with POD and not just with WestBow. Nobody should use WestBow if image quality is important. While WestBow touted their color publishing on their website, nobody there mentioned this major problem before I signed up.
3B) I expressed my unhappiness with the book quality so they offered to sell me a 3000-book offset run for $12, 000. That is a little like getting a tiny, burnt-up steak at a steakhouse and having the waiter offer to bring you a much better steak if you'll give them $100 more. Hardly a solution to their quality problem.
4) The back cover text was supposed to be checked by a proofreader. If it was, their proofreader is in the 7th grade and stops by after school to make a little extra money. They used a paragraph twice that was not repeated in the info I gave them. Also, the title of the book was not italicized. These two boo-boos in a very small amount of text must indicate 7th grade (or less) work.
5) I was suckered into spending $500 for the buy-back option so that bookstores could purchase a load of books and sell them back to WestBow if they didn't sell. Unfortunately, bookstores don't seem interested in buying a load of POD books so this was a complete waste of money for me. I can't speak for all other authors but can speak for what I've found out.
6) At the beginning of the process, I sent them a link to my Blurb book to show what I had done with the material on my own. I thought this might help them in some way to design my book. It REALLY helped them it turns out. They copied my book design and might should have sent me a check for my help. I think my design is a pretty decent one even though I have never designed a book before. But they are supposedly the professional book designers and should have at least been able to embellish my design. From the results, I can easily deduct that the designers are entry level designers that might hope to work for Thomas Nelson many years down the road.
From experience, and as a publishing consultant, I can tell you there is almost NEVER a reason to go with a publish-on-demand or vanity publishing company. They either get your money up front with no way of knowing if there is any return on your investment, or they get your money in royalties with no evidence of a return on your investment. You even lose on your royalties by the time bookstores and Amazon like places pound their royalties and commissions out of you. The only people who benefit are the publishing companies and lawyers. Where there is a breach by the publisher, yes you can almost always get out of the contract by taking your complaint public and to the social networks. You are entitled to a financial accountability, the print ready file - unless you signed away your ownership rights, then you own nothing; and the distribution and listings should be yanked from all places claiming commissions and royalties under the name of the publisher.
For the unestablished, and sometimes to an established, author the world of publishing is intimidating, confusing and overwhelming. There are a multitude of different types of publishing houses and sources in which to use. Which is right for you? What happens when you go with a less than honorable vanity or print on demand publisher? What steps are involved in the writing, printing, publishing, distribution and marketing of a book? How does an author proceed safely with their dream? How does an author determine what is the best course of action for their book? As an author, writer and publishing consultant my goal is to help the author determine what their best course of action is and sometimes how to undo a bad choice and how to start over. www.janethorton.net