Just to give you an idea of the kind of suffering you could be in for, let me provide you with a few of the hassles I have encountered with them. ..and all over just a few thousand books! You can take my experience for your contemplation.

I, and my supporters self published a book concerning Buddhist meditation and practice here in Thailand. The initial printing was 8,000 copies. 6,000 were distributed and sold throughout Asia in just a matter of months. After several fiends offered to sponsor the transportation cost to the States, I decided to find a distributor and let them be sent out via freighter. A company I had worked with earlier in the USA suggested Bookmasters. I contacted them, sent them a copy and, shortly, signed their contact.

Big mistake. Better choice of distributor if you were to choose to send your books out by carrier pigeon.

From the git-go I had a sense of that my project wasn’t getting adequate attention. For instance they failed to inform me that the books hadn’t arrived on schedule. In fact, unbeknownst to them they had gotten stuck in customs and would have stayed there indefinitely had I not followed up on it. The rep they assigned to me, moved to another department without providing the newly hired replacement with much information. The new rep came in with an assistant who knew even less but, nonetheless, she enjoyed assigning and delegating work to assist her in facilitating things.

Unfortunately when the ISBN was assigned to the book here in Thailand, a mix up was made resulting in an incorrect code on the back cover. Bookmaster’s, naturally, didn’t pick this up until it was brought to their attention by a sub-distributor. They, then, notified me that I need to correct the mistake with a new ISBN that could be pasted over the old one.

I bought a fresh ISBN and sent the new code to them to verify the accuracy and requested a quote to print the stickers and apply them over the old code. They came back with an absurd price (apparently because they pretty much had us).

I was able to contact a student in Cleveland (70 miles from Bookmastes) and asked him to do the stickering. He took two days off to help. Before sending him the stickers I wanted to confirm the new sticker was correct and that the font size, font, color, etc. was in the form that they wanted it. They e-mailed me back a copy which I gave to a friend who took it to the printer and had 2,000 stickers printed. After he picked up the job, he sent it on to the man in Cleveland via courier.

So you would think that, finally, after about 6 months, everything was ready to go. No way. Why! Because after everything was picked up, moved to Cleveland and returned completed, the new code turned out to be the same old code!!! All that to return to the exact same place.

The company claimed that the reps assistant sent a “copy”. It was not intended to be a facsimile. It could be argued, I suppose, that we should have checked the code with the authorized and accurate new code. But then who would suspect that they wouldn’t bother to send me a replica of what was needed? Who would be so distrustful that they would suspect that the copy sent would be the old, incorrect image when the new one was already with them and would take just about the same amount of time to forward as using the old one? Why would I request confirmation of exactly what they want if I wanted the old one recycled?

Needless to say, that was the last straw for I had lost all trust in them. I couldn’t even see that sending them even more money to redo things wouldn’t get bumbled as is their habit. So, if you want to go ahead and deal with an irresponsible, negligent organization who will attempt to suck money out of you from all directions…go right ahead. You were warned.

My experienced with Bookmasters could be summed up as a relationship with the untrained, ordering the less trained…with predictable results. All contract, no performance. If they spent a bit less time on writing iron-clad contracts, thinking up fees to levy, and a little more time on doing their job they would probably be around a lot longer.

Doing business this way under these new economic circumstances is perilous. Before you sign anything with them, consider that you could get involved just before they go bankrupt and the mess that would cause for you.

There will be more examples to add to this Blog after I sort through other peoples disasters with Bookmasters. Be forewarn. You will be dealing with people who are bent on exploiting your creative energies for the sake of keeping dozens of accounts and incompetent representative employed.

Ajahn Sumano Bhikkhu
Buddhist Monk—N.E. Thailand

Be forewarned, that even with the state of the art equipment the real, live people (supposedly) working for you must have enough mindfulness to make possible and smooth the process of getting one’s book into the marketplace.  This company may be able to print 1,000,000 books in 10 languages in under a minute and a half, store 1,000,000 books according to the color of the binding and the texture of the paper, send a book from Indiana to Iceland in under 6 hours, but the reality is that no one seems to be able to tie their own shoelaces.   High tech, integrated, blah, blah, blah…while totally incapable of using and evaluating thought forms (i.e. assess and consider situations using common sense).  This confirms the axiom that no matter how pretty and slick the car, if the driver is asleep it’s going to hit the wall.

Bookbusters corporate strategy of focusing primarily on the variety of charges they could get away billing customers might have worked during boom times, now this lack of commitment to intelligent service could mean your books are stacked up somewhere in their warehouse, while the courts are considering Chapter 11 or bankruptcy.  If my experience is any indication of the lack of respect and dedication required to facilitate distribution of a book, your relationship to do business with them is more than likely to mean a bumpy, frustrating ride.  Look behind the brochures and your will find a lightening- fast accounting department (billing), preset and fixed supervisors, and a comatose bevy of reps.  Contemplate this and you are likely to sleep a lot better. Stop, while you can.