Author Solutions: new and shittier ways to screw writers

Yep, and now also available in Spanish!
Read the full story:
http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/author-solutions-steps-up-global-expansion-penguin-random-house-integration/#more-3575
Seems AS finds the US market saturated, so it moves to conquer “foreign” writers. Sad that Penguin is enjoying the scams. Says a lot about traditional publishing.
I am one of the victims. In earlier posts I already listed some of the complaints:

  1. Inflated costs for “marketing” that delivers nothing
  2. Promising to set up social media – zero value as you can do it all yourself (Facebook, e-mail, etc.)
  3. I was promised to be paid my royalties by electronic bank transfer but they only can send a stupid check in BP from the USA by snail mail to Beijing, so I can get at most 40% of the check’s value (they never heard about modern banking nor PayPal).
  4. I am more than suspicious my worldwide sales are under-reported

Recently I also discovered why my book promotion through their book stubs went nowhere: 90% of the codes were wrong, so people who got the “gift” were not impressed. No wonder I never received reaction.
Also, the way they set up Amazon sales was a blunder. You need to be a detective to figure out, yes, my book also exists as e-book. Print and e-book are not linked. And nothing I can do about that myself.
So, when they even now come back to me, trying to sell some more worthless marketing packages of all kinds: I tell them I don’t need them, they are 5 times too expensive and why should I promote sales if I do not get royalties anyway?
I now started writing other books and for sure I will never go back to any of the dozens of companies all under the same management: Author Solutions.