It's time to dump on pathetic Outskirts Press, again



(left-click image to enlarge)

Outskirts Press is the inept and dishonest pay-to-publish company that I love to hate. Outskirts does so many things so badly, that it is a frequent target of this blog.

Outskirts -- like most of its competitors -- sells few books, so it must make its money by selling high-profit services and trinkets to its author-customers.

Every author needs a press release to announce books, and Outskirts is eager to provide an "original, unique press release for your book" for $219. Sadly, most Outskirts releases are absolutely dreadful, apparently hacked together by a not-very-bright robot supervised by a not-very-bright mammal.

"Original, unique" is blatant bullshit. There is little original or unique in an Outskirts Press release.

A Google search for the phrase "author's most recent book to date"  shows over 300,000 links -- in Outskirts book announcements.

• The phrase is bad English (if the book is "most recent," then "to date" is superfluous -- a publisher should know this).
• It's also inaccurate. A quick check of online info shows that the vast majority of "most recent book to date"  books are first books by their authors.

(left-click image to enlarge)

I wasn't surprised to find two errors (bad grammar and a typo) in two successive paragraphs on the Outskirts web page that describes its press release service. If the company's "professionals" can't even produce proper paragraphs for their own company, the chance of them producing a decent book for you is pretty close to ZERO.

Stay away from Outskirts Press.