AuthorHouse, formerly known as 1stBooks, is a self-publishing

Self-publishing

Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...

 company based in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. AuthorHouse uses print on demand

Print on demand

Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...

 business model and technology.

History

Originally called 1stBooks, the company was founded in Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....

, USA, in January 1997. Its first e-book

E-book

An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...

 appeared in June of that year. In January 1999, it started using print on demand

Print on demand

Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...

 technology to produce paper books. AuthorHouse's website states the company has published 60,000 books by 40,000 authors. The company opened an office in Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 in May 2004. In December 2005, AuthorHouse was 'nominated' by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce for the Small Business of the Year Award. In October 2006, AuthorHouse won the Silver Award in Business excellence from BKD.

The California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 based hedge fund

Hedge fund

A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...

 Bertram Capital purchased AuthorHouse in 2007 from Gazelle TechVentures, who had owned AuthorHouse since 2002. Later that year, Bertram established Author Solutions

Author Solutions

Author Solutions, Inc. is the parent company of the self-publishing companies/imprints AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Xlibris, and Wordclay. These publishers include the largest and second largest print-on-demand book publishers in the United States...

 and acquired one of AuthorHouse's competitors - iUniverse

IUniverse

iUniverse, founded in October 1999, is a self-publishing company, co-located with AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Publishers Weekly notes iUniverse has partnerships with The Writers' Club and the Writer's Digest .-History:iUniverse initially focused on business-to-consumer print-on-demand...

 - before relocating iUniverse's operations to Indiana in early 2008.

Brandewyne lawsuit

In August 2006, a U.S. Court ordered AuthorHouse to pay $240,000 in punitive damage as well as $230,000 in actual damage to romance author Rebecca Brandewyne and her parents for publishing a book by her ex-husband that was 'harmful' and libelous of them. AuthorHouse was also ordered to pay $20,000 each to Ms Brandewyne's parents for the damage. Although the court acknowledged that AuthorHouse employed a business model that placed a degree of responsibility for the content of works upon the authors, in this case they found that AuthorHouse had failed to act when it was informed that the book may include libelous content.