By Hillel Italie
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK — A major Internet custom press announced yesterday that it will soon stop offering free basic service and will instead charge a minimum of $200 to publish a book.
Xlibris, a Philadelphia company owned in part by Random House Inc., blamed the price change on competition and costs
Founded four years ago, Xlibris makes books to order and sells them over the Internet through such retail outlets as Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com. Since last February, Xlibris has published 2,000 titles, with some selling as many as 5,000 copies.
Xlibris had been charging a basic fee of $450 until Random House invested millions of dollars last spring. The Random House funding enabled Xlibris to let anyone — including writers rejected by Random House — publish a book for free.
But like many online companies, Xlibris has struggled and recently announced layoffs.
"People were throwing all this money into online publishing and talking about the revolution and the revolution didn't come,'' said Karen Jenkins Holt, managing editor of the industry newsletter Book Publishing Report.
The new fee becomes effective March 1. Current rates, which range from nothing to $1,200 for ``premium'' service, will apply to submissions postmarked before that date.
Under the new fee structure, premium service will cost $1,600.
"We've always had a very positive sense of Xlibris in terms of its relationships with writers,'' said Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union, which has 6,600 members nationwide. "If it's having problems, that's an unfortunate development.''
Random House is a subsidiary of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, which is reportedly unhappy with its investment in Barnesandnoble.com. The online retailer last week announced it was laying off 350 employees, or roughly 16 percent of its work force.
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