Author Solutions Reviews

Pros

You gotta be aggressive. Environment is fast paced

Cons

Everything is done on the cheap. It is not a professional office setting and supplies along with things to get your job done are non-existent

Advice to Senior Management

Develop some training programs and develop future leaders. Look longer term rather than for short term gains and be more forgiving with mistakes

Kevin was good, but cheap. Very smart man and extremely driven for success.

Pros

if accounting has figured out your direct deposit information then they pay on time. I can also wear jeans to work.

Cons

Everything. I'm not trying to be melodramatic or anything but everything from the vending machine to the parking lot, to the computer, to your phone, to your responsibilities, to your bosses that watches hulu all day and (I honestly do hate to say this) but a lot of the authors makes the place unbearable.

Personally, I do believe self-publishing is great but with the way we go about it with our team in Cebu and the day-to-day activities at the office and the 'drop everything and focus on this now, no wait nevermind' mentality of the VPs and CEO it is really a shame.

Advice to Senior Management

We know you are trying to just sell the company and do not care about the day-to-day stuff but you can be a little more considerate to the people who have to clean up after Cebu's mistakes. Some of us actually want the company to grow and not just look good on paper. Do you think someone who is considering to buy it isn't at least going to ask some employees what can be improved? They'll probably be scared off after the amount of additional hidden costs they'll need.

 Please consider the fact that most of our day is consumed by entertaining authors by just listening to them talk about how Jesus is going to make their life story into a movie and educating/correcting problems that arise from the sales team promising things that we do not do (having Steven King give a forward to their book about how to get traditionally published was my personal favorite). Most of us 'drones' as we have been called on conference calls that we are not suppose to be on (some of our bosses do not know how to dial into a conference line so we must do it for them...that means that we are still on numbnuts) would be excited and happy to contribute to a business were we can work with authors and help grow the company but whenever we get 5 minutes a month to mention an idea to you we are so burnt out on our 'choirs' that we can't think of anything.

Also, a personal gripe, I've noticed that my boss has taken credit for 4 of the last 5 new product/ideas we have just implemented when I've personally given detailed presentations to management on the same ideas early last year with nothing more than a brush off and a 'we really would not do something like this' response.

Pros

*Vacation time given is nice if you can stomach working there more than six months
*Coworkers in the department were of similar age and place in life as me (recent college grads trying to get ahead and make a life for themselves)
*Casual work atmosphere

Cons

*Insane workload with too few employees.
*No training. The department was so understaffed my hiring group was thrown into the fray with little to no instruction.
*Low pay
*Mindless busy work for eight hours a day, and horrible clients (if I wanted to get yelled at by strangers for things I didn't do, I would have stayed in the restaurant industry)
*Extremely disorganized. So many departments throw clients back and forth to so many different people it's no wonder they get so upset by the time they reach you.
*Pretty soon this company will be completely run out of Cebu. After I quit, my position was sent overseas rather than filled in the states. The worst part is the company recently received a huge tax break from the state of Indiana for adding jobs to the community, and now they're outsourcing everything.
*The products they offer and the promises they give their customers, many of whom are retired men and women spending a huge chunk of their savings to write and publish their books, are junk. No one buys them. They get almost no royalties. The dishonest business this place conducts made me sick to my stomach.

Advice to Senior Management

No matter how much vacation you offer to your employees or how good the health insurance is, the horrible product you provide to your customers and the lack of guidance and support for employees is despicable. I know your first job out of college is never really supposed to be amazing, but working here was the worst six months of my life.

Pros

They offer a flexible schedule.

Cons

Pay and benefits are far below competitors

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more

Pros

It's cool to work with authors to get their works published. The company does occasionally have perks such as pizza lunches, but often that feels more like condescension than reward.

Cons

I was thrown in with no training. Everything I did, I picked up on the fly when I asked questions. As I spoke with more and more customers and took it up the ladder, I realized that the company did not have its customers' interests at heart.

The final blow was how they treat expansion. Make no mistake, Author Solutions is moving where the labor is cheap. Authors will soon be getting creative help from people who haven't heard of Alfred Hitchcock (true story). And the employees that get replaced? They get taken into a room and fired with no warning, no notice. The boxes to clear your desk are piled by the door, and these meetings include 10-20 people at a time. Worst business ever.

Advice to Senior Management

Show some respect for your employees! If not to make the ones who get let go feel better, than for the ones who have to stay while constantly looking over their shoulder and getting worried that every "meeting" they get asked into will be their last. What you're doing is wrong.

Pros

Working on the IT side of the operation, one of the benefits for ASI is that they do allow for periodic remote work and flexible hours. There are still some good folks left in IT, but they are leaving fast.

ASI stays fairly current with the technology they use.

They are open to using new software and technologies when they are free.

Cons

Excessive overtime.

Do not keep promises.

Poor annual raises (even w/ great reviews). Usually, no raises with promotions.

Upper management does not communicate effectively.

Much of the employment growth is in the Philippines or India.

Advice to Senior Management

Your overseas staff provide substandard quality and will ultimately destroy what is left of the brand's name.

Pros

Wages are good, especially if you hit your sales quota
Co-workers on same pay level easy to get along with
Generous sick-day allotment

Cons

Immediate supervisors only interested in how much you suck up, how much money you make, and whether you hit the other metrics
"Sink or Swim" training at entry
High sales quota ($50k/month)
Holiday "bonus" in 2009 was a gift cert to a local ham shop
Actually _using_ a sick-day is heavily frowned upon

Advice to Senior Management

Have a real holiday bonus this year
Lower the quotas to manageable levels.
Learn what your supervisors are actually saying to their underlings, you'd be surprised at the falsehoods they're saying.

Pros

The best reason to work for AuthorHouse is the type of work that one might do, if you are not in Sales or Customer Service. Jobs in production - Book & Cover design - are fun, creative jobs at the most basic level. It is also fulfilling to see a customer's book completed and to hear how they are enjoying it.

Cons

AuthorHouse's management is the worst. Their entire focus is the bottom line with very little care for their employees or their customers. They hire recent graduates from Indiana University for design jobs that pay, $10/hr, then expect constant over-time and for the employees, many of whom are NOT trained in book design, to carry heavy task lists and deal with the overwhelming expectations of customers without question. Middle Management at AuthorHouse is usually good, but Upper Management is out of touch with production or the realities of the processes they have installed. Most of the time it ends with customer dissatisfaction, unprofessional products, and shoddy workmanship. Not only that, they outsource to India to speed up work flow, though this does not, generally, prove efficient in the slightest (most of the work has to be redone). This is a dead-end job for most people in the production area at AuthorHouse itself, as most will either be let go when they become too expensive for AuthorHouse to maintain due to age and health insurance, or they will leave to find better work in the field. Sales is no better. Most of them don't know the product and the pressure is so great that turn around in Sales is insane. Don't go there if you want a long-term job.

Advice to Senior Management

Start looking to your work force and quality. Hire people who know what they're doing and actually pay them. Stop promoting A-Type personalities and start paying attention to what truly successful companies do ... like Google and some of the others on the "Nice" list here. You have a great idea, but you're stabbing yourself and everyone who works for you in the foot.

Pros

Senior Management is fanatical about communicating to all employees when huge changes are made to the structure. This is a frequent occurrence. Author Solutions is the leader in a dynamic and fast-growing industry, and one can't help but be excited about being a part of that.

Cons

Being such a dynamic, fast-growing company, Author Solutions doesn't have the time to recognize the achievements of low-level employees. Its compensation for these employees is much, much worse. It pays half to a third of what people outside of Bloomington would make in the same field, sick leave is minimal, and it offers Humana for health insurance - if you've ever had to ask Humana to cough up money, then the downside to that last one doesn't need to be explained. Finally, middle-management-level tasks are given to hourly employees without any increase in pay, or recognition of work. I thought this was just my department, but it's the way things work here.

Advice to Senior Management

Please, no more innovations or new products until the old products and infrastructure is solid.