Q –

Dear Ms. Angela,

Thank you for taking the time to speak with my grandson regarding my nonpayment of my books (by Infinity Publishing). Growing up in Mississippi, I called Infinity Publishing a lot of times trying to get my money owed to me, but they never sent it. Each time I called they’d say someone will call you and we’ll send your money owed to you, but they never did. Can you please send me the Infinity Publishing and Fast Pencil address? Thank you in advance for doing so. My books are on the web, and I don’t receive any money from any of these online publishers. How can I get my books deleted from the websites?

-B

A –

We started warning authors about Infinity Publishing (later merged with Fast Pencil) as far back as 2017. We published another warning in 2020. After years of authors complaining about non-payment of royalties and more, Infinity Publishing/Fast Pencil finally decided to stop publishing books in late 2023. I’m sure all of the complaints posted about them online over the years contributed to their demise. HOWEVER, they are still doing business (a different type) under the name Opyrus.

Paying authors’ royalties isn’t that hard. When the customer, distributor, or retailer pays you, you put that money into a specific bank account to hold those funds. You then collect monthly reports from each payer, credit your authors’ accounts, and send them their payments. At BookLocker, we pay by the fifth business day of the month. It’s such an easy process that we often pay our authors early. For example, this month, we paid our authors’ royalties on the second business day of the month. Again, it is not a difficult process!

If, however, a publisher is spending their authors’ royalties on their own expenses, well, that would explain why they aren’t paying their authors, wouldn’t it?!

I recommend reporting them to their state’s attorney general. The online form is HERE. At least one author who contacted us was able to get his production files after threatening to do that. However, Infinity Publishing / Fast Pencil has been charging some authors for those, which is horrible because the authors already paid them to produce those files. You would think that, after what they’ve done to their authors, they’d simply send those files to each author for free. But, after all of the complaints I’ve read about them over the years, I’m not surprised by their most recent conduct.

The company could have also simply transferred their authors and files to another publisher to avoid all the problems they’re having now. In fact, they can still do that but I don’t think they will because, in my opinion, they took the easy way out, and figured out how to get even more money from their authors in the process.

Here is their address:

Fastpencil, Inc.
517 Boston Post Rd
Sudbury, MA 01776-7600

Since they no longer have the right to sell your books, I also recommend submitting a copyright infringement complaint to Amazon. Important advice on how to do that is HERE.