IDG News Service —
The online publisher iUniverse has been battling IT problems of late. The difficulties may stem from its takeover last September by rival self-publisher AuthorHouse, the transfer of its operations from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Bloomington, Indiana, in April, and the relaunch of its Web site in mid-August.
But they are embarrassing for a print-on-demand publisher that acquires new customers, sells its books and reports its sale figures through its Web site. At this point, I should confess to a conflict of interest: I know about the problems because I have a back-in-print book published by iUniverse. This column could promote a few extra sales and put pressure on iUniverse to fix the glitches. But I can live with both those outcomes. And we're accustomed to conflicts of interest in Italy, where the prime minister is the country's richest man and owner of its biggest communications company.
My book "Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy" was first published by London publisher Constable in 1991. The book flopped in the U.K., sold well in Italy -- where some publishers are less than scrupulous about royalty payments -- and had never been published in the U.S. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, I assumed that the subject would be of renewed interest and paid to have the book republished by iUniverse in October 2002.
The experience has been fairly gratifying so far. The book seems to sell around half a dozen copies a month and I enjoy watching its progress: first on Amazon.com, where a leap of hundreds of thousands of places in the bestseller chart can correspond to sales of ... around half a dozen copies, and then on the iUniverse Web site.
I particularly enjoy iUniverse's "sales activity detail" feature, an irregularly updated account of unofficial sales figures. Unlike the official sales figures, which follow a set calendar, one doesn't know when the sales activity detail will be updated, so feels justified in logging on frequently to take a look. It's like buying a lottery ticket every time: you know you are unlikely to win big, but don't stop hoping.
So it was with some disappointment that I noticed recently that the sales activity detail was not being updated. It had been stuck for three months on the figure for April. Official sales figures did come through in May, but the deadline for reporting June sales came and went in August.
An e-mail inquiry submitted through the iUniverse Web site initially failed to elicit a response. In reply to a second query I was informed: "iUniverse's sales activity and royalty information is down right now. Our IT team is working rigorously to get this problem fixed." When I replied with a follow-up question, my e-mail bounced back. The author support representative used a no-reply e-mail address, so couldn't be troubled by e-mail dialogue.
