Lulu Marketplace

Outskirts Press calls itself "the fastest-growing full-service publishing provider." It published over 5,000 books in 2009. Some of those books, and the press releases and web pages that promote them, are filled with stupid and silly errors. Outskirts is also inept (and dishonest) when it promotes itself -- with factual errors, mistakes in grammar, spelling and arithmetic, and deliberate distortion. Although Outskirts uses such buzzwords as "self-publishing" and "print-on-demand," it's really a vanity publisher that makes most of its money by selling services and trinkets to naïve authors — not by selling books to readers. The books are often ugly, unedited and overpriced. They sell poorly, and are seldom reviewed. This book was written to make potential customers of Outskirts Press and other vanity publishers aware of the trouble that likely awaits them, and to let vanity publishers know that their lies and failures will be noticed and publicized. It's also a very funny book.