Got this in the mail yesterday.  Fascinatingly, it was sent to Luther Siler— who, remember, isn’t a real person– at my actual physical address.  The number of organizations that can pair his name with my address are… limited.  And I am not happy with them.

This is page 3 of a three-page letter; I’m not going to bother reproducing the first two.  If you happen to get this in the mail, you should throw it the hell away.

Before we start, the first page is a fake check for $601.  Their “Ultimate Publishing Package” costs $1600, meaning that with their “discount” you’re only spending nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars of your money– before they make you a single dime, and as we’ll see it’s going to be more than that anyway.

Let’s walk through this “offer” bit by bit, shall we?

• 100 Printed Copies of Your Book.  This is the meat of the offer, because printed copies of books are expensive.  A thousand dollars divided by a hundred copies is only $10 each!  Except paperbacks generally cost $7-8 to buy, and… oh, wait, if you look at the description, this is assuming your book is only fifty pages long, and books longer than that will incur additional costs.  Skylights was about 450 pages; most genre novels nowadays are in the 300 range at least.  I’m guessing by the time the additional charges are added in for your $10, 50-page book, you’re only getting 20-25 of them if you don’t cough up more money.  Why am I assuming that the rest of their services wouldn’t cost money?  Because most of them don’t.  Note that there is no mention of shipping cost, which I have no doubt will be passed on to you. Continue on:
• Cover Design.  Okay, this can be expensive, I’ll admit.  But they include no examples of their work, and I’m guessing that it’s going to be shoddy based on the rest of the flyer.
• Interior Page Layout.  Not actually that hard, and takes an hour.
• ISBN Number with Bar Code.  If you’re buying ISBNs in small batches, they can be expensive– I spent $295 for a batch of 10.  Left out of this is that this organization is probably buying them in batches of 1000 or 10,000 at significantly lower cost– and that it lists them as your publisher, since they own the ISBN.  Bar code registration is, like, $15.
• Library of Congress Control Number.  Free.
• Publicity Kit.  Costs some money, but not much; note that no information about paper quality or color is given, and note that this shit is just mailed to you, probably charging you for shipping in the process.  I don’t know who the hell I might mail five hundred goddamn postcards to about my book, and the types of people who use this sort of service are not likely to be doing in-store signings where they might pass out bookmarks.
• One National Press Release.  Note that you write the press release, and that that’s all it is– just a press release, which compels no one to write about your shitty little book.  I looked up costs at PRWeb, and for one person buying one “Standard” press release is $159.  I am certain that their costs are substantially cheaper.
• Author Website (Plus One Year’s Hosting).  This is especially hilarious; they’ll set up a WordPress site for you!  Wow!  That’s free!  And a year of hosting at GoDaddy will run you next to nothing, especially since they’re probably registering an impossibly specific domain name that no one wants.  Note that they don’t promise a .com site; just a “custom URL.”
• Online Bookstore Set-up.  They’ll “list” your book on their site, pay you 80% of sales, and charge you $9.95 a month to maintain a fucking link.  So the minimum cost of this “Ultimate Publishing Package” just went from $999 to $1118.40, assuming your “book” is only fifty goddamn pages long.  This is pretty clearly a POD outfit, so there is literally nothing being stored in their “warehouse.”
• The Square (credit card reader system for smartphones.)  Is free! Go ahead, sign up for one here.
• Expert Consultation and Personal Project Manager.  They have a phone line; you can call a dude.  They have a curious definition of “unlimited basis,” too, since I’m pretty certain if I need my Personal Project Manager at three in the morning he ain’t gonna answer the phone.

Fuck these folks, and I seriously want to have a word with whoever sold them my address.  If you get mail from them, throw it away.  They’re assholes.