Talk:Xlibris

Is It a Vanity Press?

Xlibris has been identified by some fairly serious sources as a vanity press. (For just one example, see [1]) Since Wikipedia is devoted to balanced presentation, I think that information should be included. I added it once already, but it was removed without comment. Is there a good argument against including it? Artemis-Arethusa 16:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

You have no citations or proof of you're quite frankly rediculous claim so if you piut it back without any evidence then i will be forced to recommend u to the moderatiors for temporarily block u from editting wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smith_Jones (talk • contribs).

I've reverted this user's removal of the vanity press information and added the source given by Artemis-Arethusa which does not exist according to Smith_Jones. AvB ÷ talk 17:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

"You have no citations or proof of you're quite frankly rediculous [sic] claim...." The claim is 100% correct and factual: Xlibris is a predatory vanity press and one of at least twenty other cloned predatory business that "Author Solutions LLC" spawned. I have the court documents to support this fact. Please see the blog WRITER BEWARE. Also consider reading http://www.theindependentpublishingmagazine.com/2015/01/author-solutions-writers-beware.html among many hundreds of articles about the abusive businesses. Desertphile (talk) 03:07, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes it is a vanity publishing company, google or bing vanity press & it will most definately pop-up — Preceding unsigned comment added by EgyptKEW9 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Xlibris is not only a vanity press, but a predatory vanity press. Their "parent company" was also a predatory vanity press which was sued out of business by their victims. Please check the WRITER BEWARE blog regarding Xlibris. Desertphile (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

It is a vanity press and what looks like a massive fraud, I'm not sure whether Wikipedia should carry articles that look like advertising for it. A better article here would cover the extent of why such vanity press places like this one are avoided by everyone who writes professionally and are only used by people who fall for such things albeit they only fall once. They learn their lesson the first time, thousands of dollars later. SoftwareThing (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion tag removed Feb 25, 2007

Xlibris is a top POD publisher. I removed the tag and added two independent sources, bringing up the total to three. If anyone still doubts it deserves an article in Wikipedia, please read (and insert sources from) the following comment by User:Ben W Bell on the Nov 2006 AfD page:

• Strong Keep actually seems quite notable. The fact that is listed that Piers Anthony is going to republish one of his most famous series with them should help assert notability. I also retrieved this article from www.printondemand.com, a very common and highly used resource for those who do POD. A Google News Search turns up many stories where they are at least mentioned in passing, including mentions in the New York Daily News, The Sunday Times, a more exacting one in Mail Tribune to mention a few. Seems highly notable and popular in the POD arena. The article should be reworked slightly to be less advertisementy, but the company deserves an article.

AvB ÷ talk 10:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Content removal

I've removed:

According to Xlibris's own figures, the average book printed by Xlibris sells only 150 copies, out of which 100 are sold to the authors themselves (meaning they have to pay twice for publication), while the remaining 50 copies are the only ones sold directly to the book-buying public.

I was concerned for two reasons: a) according to xLibris, they don't require you to purchase any copies of your book., and while multiple copies of the book are provided in some of the packages (which you pay for), most are a lot less than that number; and b) the source provided for this information, Aren’t the various publishing services like Author House and Xlibris just printing services? is written by and published on a competitor's website, and is used to who how their publishing services are cheaper than xLibris'. Thus it is clearly not a reliable source. - Bilby (talk) 15:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for pronunciation

I believe the inclusion of a pronunciation snippit could be considered appropriate here, takers? Thank you! :-) 12.129.115.14 (talk) 17:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Commentary? Testimonials?

I separated out the various "So-and-so has said this about XLibris" into a separate section. The fact that the testimonial section is larger than any other part of this... -Fuzzy (talk) 15:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Blacklisted Links Found on Xlibris

Cyberbot II has detected links on Xlibris which have been added to the blacklist, either globally or locally. Links tend to be blacklisted because they have a history of being spammed or are highly inappropriate for Wikipedia. The addition will be logged at one of these locations: local or global If you believe the specific link should be exempt from the blacklist, you may request that it is white-listed. Alternatively, you may request that the link is removed from or altered on the blacklist locally or globally. When requesting whitelisting, be sure to supply the link to be whitelisted and wrap the link in nowiki tags. Please do not remove the tag until the issue is resolved. You may set the invisible parameter to "true" whilst requests to white-list are being processed. Should you require any help with this process, please ask at the help desk.

Below is a list of links that were found on the main page:

• http://www.xlibris.com

  Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist

• http://www.xlibris.com/

  Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist

• http://www.xlibris.com/faq.aspx

  Triggered by \bxlibris\.com\b on the local blacklist

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From your friendly hard working bot.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 00:29, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Fraudulent Companies -- Wikipedia Delete

The company being discussed here is a fraud, I'm not sure what the Wiki rules are for discussing fraudulent companies, however the previous efforts to delete this entry seems to have been over-ruled. Xlibris is not a legitimate company, I'm not sure if we want Wikipedia carrying such articles as if they're legitimate. SoftwareThing (talk) 01:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@SoftwareThing: No matter their reputation, WP covers the likes of these topics as long as they are covered in high-quality, in-depth secondary sources. Otherwise, things like Ponzi scheme/Bernie Madoff, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, or even the Piltdown Man (for that matter) wouldn't even get accepted here in a million years.

By the way, this is a publisher whose page is governed by WP:NCORP, whose own regimen is already strict to begin with. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 15:15, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is a Predatory Vanity Press.

Xlibris is well known by some literary professionals to be a predatory vanity press that offers "packages" no legitimate press and/or publisher would. When writers contact me after being scammed by a vanity press, Xlibris is near the top of the list (with the other spawn of Author's Solution).

WRITER BEWARE blogs about people who have been scammed by Xlibris.

Based on the evidence and my opinion, the scammie nature of Xlibris should be noted in the main article. The writer can maintain a neutral POV by noting that there are many pages on the internet that note Xlibris is a scam.

I also think it helpful that people who have been taken by the scam would say so on Talk:Xlibris and I have asked a few of the victims to do so. Desertphile (talk) 20:10, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

References