Friday, January 25, 2008

iUniverse Dies,
Leatherface Lives
This sure does look like a bad horror movie.

iUniverse is dead. The doors will close on March 31, 2008.

I spent 6½ years at iUniverse from November 1999 through September 2006. I met some of the most amazing people there among my coworkers and am very pleased that many of them remain my closest friends. I also had the pleasure of working with some of the best as-of-yet undiscovered authors publishing today. So it was with great disappointment that I greeted the news that iUniverse would close its Lincoln, NE office.

I’m extremely proud of the work we did at the company and the many quality books we helped bring to the public. I’ve featured many of those books on this blog, titles like The Death of Milly Mahoney, Tom’s War and The Quest. I was proud to help get other titles like Cagney & Lacey… and Me, My Father’s Voice and Subterranean Towers out to the public.

What’s that you say, iUniverse isn’t dead? It’s just moving to Indiana?

Authorhouse and its parent company, AuthorSolutions, purchased iUniverse in September of 2007 and is moving the iUniverse operations to its headquarters in Bloomington, IN. The name and the logo may go to Indiana, but the heart and the soul, the employees that made iUniverse what it is will remain in Lincoln. The iUniverse in Indiana will be akin to a reanimated corpse in a George Romero film. Some iUniverse employees will be offered the opportunity to relocate to Indiana, but I don’t believe many will be willing or able to take advantage of the offer.

A few years back 1st Books Library changed its name to Authorhouse for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was to distance itself from a less-than-stellar reputation. It seems that original reputation was hard to shake. So now Authorhouse will go around dressed in the iUniverse name and logo. Kind of like Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Good luck with that. Good luck to authors who venture too close to that house.