Q –

My wife is an author of (two books). We have been with Stratton Press for about four years. We read what you said about their “F” rating. We haven’t been able to get ahold of them for four months. Do you have anything you can do to get the copies we paid to print these books for their warehouse and the manuscripts? Or any recommendations ? We would appreciate any help we can get!

---

A –

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice. If you require legal advice, please consult with an attorney. That said…

Unfortunately, no. You are probably out of luck all the way around.Here is a screenshot shot I just took of Stratton Press’s Facebook page. Based on this, and other complaints online, you’re not the only ones. Notice these were posted within the past week:

You can try having an attorney contact them for your wife’s files but it would probably be less expensive in the long-run to start all over with publishing the books. Also, you can report them to their state’s attorney general’s office. And, if they have broken the terms of your wife’s contract, she should contact them immediately to terminate the contract. She can then contact Amazon, and ask the retailer to remove her books.

And, if you do republish, I recommend changing the titles of her books so people won’t get confused, and try to buy copies that Stratton Press may still be selling.

Sometimes, these firms get into financial trouble and, instead of doing the right thing, and alerting their customers, they simply stop operations with no warning (or they keep sucking in new customers, but start ignoring their existing ones). They stop responding to emails and phone calls, stop paying royalties, stop shipping out books, etc., etc. They simply…disappear. With their customers’ money, of course.

Check out the info. about Stratton Press at the sites below:

BBB.org

Author Christopher D. Schmitz (and, read the comments underneath his article)

Mercy Pilkington

Nerdy Shique Universe

Victoria Strauss

RELATED

• COMPLAINTS About Stratton Press and Their Pathetic Sales Tactics
• MORE Complaints about Balboa Press!
• Complaints About Amazon’s CreateSpace (now named KDP Print) – Part V
• And, MORE Complaints About Lulu Press!
• MORE COMPLAINTS about AuthorHouse!
• COMPLAINTS about Outskirts Press / OutskirtsPress.com
• MORE COMPLAINTS about Fast Pencil / Infinity Publishing. And, now they have a website called Opyrus!
• COMPLAINTS about Dreamspinner Press
• Complaints About Amazon’s CreateSpace (now named KDP Print) – Part V
• “How can I find out which publishers are imprints of Author Solutions? They took me for $15,000.00!”

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING A BOOK?

Angela is not only the publisher of WritersWeekly.com. She is President & CEO of BookLocker.com,
a self-publishing services company that has been in business since 1998. Ask her anything.

ASK ANGELA!

90+ DAYS OF PROMOTING YOUR BOOK ONLINE: Your Book's Daily Marketing Plan by Angela Hoy and Richard Hoy

Promoting your book online should be considered at least a part-time job. Highly successful authors spend more time promoting a book than they do writing it - a lot more.

We know what you're thinking. You're an author, not a marketer. Not to worry! We have more than a decade of successful online book selling experience under our belts and we're going to teach you how to promote your book effectively online...and almost all of our techniques are FREE!

Online book promotion is not only simple but, if you have a step-by-step, day-to-day marketing plan (this book!), it can also be a very artistic endeavor, which makes it fun for creative folks like you!

Yes, online book promoting can be EASY and FUN! Let us show you how, from Day 1 through Day 90...and beyond!