Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Pay to play publisher 2 Moon Press, located in Olivet, Michigan, closed abruptly last month, after having been purchased earlier in 2013 by one of its employees. It leaves a litany of sadly familiar complaints in its wake.

According to local news coverage,

…the [Marshall police] department has received about 25 complaints about 2 Moon Press since May 8. It is currently looking into authors’ claims of unpaid royalties, unfulfilled book orders and breaches of contracts, and is also investigating the current owner’s allegations of fraudulent activity against the former owner, Don Semora.

In return, Semora says that he is “proceeding with legal action against both [the current owner Melinda] Lundy and 2 Moon Press.” He has denied Lundy’s and authors’ allegations.

Established in 2009, 2 Moon Press–which, possibly exaggerating a tad, billed itself as “Michigan’s largest and most trusted book publisher”–charged thousands of dollars to publish. Its website is no longer extant, but examples of its prose stylings can be seen here–an immediate red flag for anyone with a decent grasp of grammar. As of April 2012, it claimed to be working with 283 authors, but per Amazon, it has published only around 215 books to date.

The Marshall Police Department is asking 2 Moon Press authors to contact them at 269-781-2596.