Xulon Press review: Horrible experience

My momma always said fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, shame on me. I used Xulon Press, not once but twice. I published my first book through them in 2018. I was drawn to them for their author development program. I do not regret that program as my coach was excellent. The publishing process was not great, but I had nothing to compare to. Fast forward to 2025, I used them again because they offered a returning author discount.

The communication with this company is horrendous. My book rep did not return phone calls or emails for days or sometime over a week. The whole process was delayed by terrible communication. I submitted my manuscript on Nov 26, 2025. But my rep did not submit it to the production team until Dec 8. In the meantime, I had tried to contact her many times. Virtually everything took longer than they said it would. If they said editing would be done in a month, it took 6-8 weeks.

I purchased the best seller package because the boasted great marketing with the best seller. They did not do one thing for marketing.

The staff are overall unhelpful. You are given literally one person to talk to. If you try to contact someone else, or issue a complaint, you are just referred back to your rep.

I probably shouldn't even get started on editing. In the best seller package you get an edit "review." Basically that means someone reads and recommends what type of edit you need. The actual edit is outrageously expensive when added on to the already high package cost. And the editing was AWFUL. I suspect it was done with AI, though they claim it wasn't. They gave absolutely no feedback about the content. Just a few grammatical suggestions that were wrong in several instances. I ended up hiring an independent to go over it again. The independent caught so many things that Xulon's editor did not.

I set a date for release and had it approved by my rep. However, every step of production took so long - primarily because of my rep's poor communication, that I had to delay the release by a full month.

This book was my heart and soul, my deceased son's story. Xulon stole much of the joy of publishing because of their awful, overpriced service.

I give it two stars only because I like the cover. But my husband drew it, so they really didn't have to do much.