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Viewers have contacted us to tell us about LR Price Publications, who they say has been failing to stick to promises.

We spoke to John, from Hull, who had spent 20 years writing a book. He paid half the cost upfront and was expecting it to be published within a year. However, the company cited Force Majeure which resulted in long delays. John told us that when he did receive the book back, it came back incomplete. We also met Glenn, from Bishops Stortford, who also agreed a hybrid publishing deal and was told, 12 months after paying, that they were activating the Force Majeure clause. He has not received any copies of his work.

We contacted LR Price and it said that Mr Ellerker contacted LR Price Publications and requested that it published his book. Following appraisal and discussions LR Price agreed to publish his book with a release date in 2022 on the condition that the manuscript be sent to it in a single word document.

LR Price continues that unfortunately Mr Ellerker sent it the manuscript as a photographic scans, of individual chapters, which were separate PDF files. LR Price says that this meant the company had to employ OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in order convert his scanned images into a Word document and this then needed to be collated into a single manuscript file. Though LR Price says that the format increased the publishing time by 10 months and pushed publication from 2023 to 2024.

LR Price says that when it submitted the final proof to Mr Ellerker, he instructed LR Price not to publish the book and requested that changes be made to it. LR Price continues that whilst Mr Ellerker was not happy with the changes to the end of the book these were made by LR Price’s experienced editors in order to make the book more readable.

LR Price says that nonetheless it respected Mr Ellerker’s request not to publish the book and make further changes to it. LR price says it is committed to publishing Mr Ellerker’s book but as per the contract it does need his permission to do so. It says that if Mr Ellerker no longer wishes to publish his book with LR Price Publications, then it would be happy to release his rights without charge to him.

It continues that Glenn Bowers contacted LR Price Publications and requested it publish his children's book, which it agreed to do. It says that given the book Mr Bowers submitted had no illustrations and given that it is an extremely competitive market Mr Bowers was informed of the time it would take to publish the book and also informed it was vital that he not do anything that could dissuade distributors or retailers from taking the book.

LR Price says that Mr Bower’s book was progressing well and was due to be publishing at around the 12 month mark. However prior to the final proof being sent, the author posted on Facebook a comment that could have been seen by LR Price’s distributor and retailers as being a complaint, which would lead to them not stocking or selling the book. LR Price says that it requested Mr Bower remove the comment and for him to send his complaint to its complaints department, so that it could be investigated, whilst it continued progressing his book.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ asked LR Price to provide the Facebook comment but they did not provide it.

LR Price says it also invited Glenn Bowers to visit its offices to discuss any issues he had but he did not submit a complaint and declined to visit LR Price’s offices but instead posted negative comments on social media and sent uncomplimentary emails to members of staff.

Mr Bowers disputes this account and when the ´óÏó´«Ã½ asked for evidence of these messages LR Price didn’t provide it.

LR Price says it will not be publishing Mr Bower’s book and does not wish to work with him. LR Price went on to say that it will not be releasing his book rights to him and will sell them to recover some of the money it has spent working on his book.

You can watch the full VT here for 28 days /iplayer/episode/m0026335/the-one-show-18122024