Balboa Press Reviews 

AWFUL experience. I am the author of Tuned In to Being. This company lacks integrity under the guise of love and light to simply financially benefit. My experience was a 16k scam and manipulation from their senior publishing consultant Brian Adamson. Do not trust this company with your hard work and pure energy.

The final product is great and even though there was a lot relative to getting permissions on quotes and images it was worth it. The only issue is communication from the contact person Lucas to the editting dept. was slow and many times inaccurate. It took almost two years to finally get this book done.

I was extremely pleased with every facet of the process of my book publishing experience with Balboa Press. From the first contact with my sales rep to receiving the printed books, I was guided by knowledgeable helpers at each step of the way. The entire process took a little over six weeks. It would have been much faster if I hadn't taken extra time to re-edit my manuscript. I was extremely pleased with the design of my book and the extra touches that made the printed version look very professional. I would recommend Balboa Press to anyone who is thinking of self-publishing. They are reasonably priced as well as helpful and efficient. They do make their money with their marketing services, so I would suggest that you weigh the cost vs. benefits.

I paid for a expensive marketing plan and I cannot get Kean Wilson to respond at all. He's the second marketing person assigned to me, no idea what happened to the first one but she didn't respond either. I call and email and nothing. They are very eager to sell their service but lack greatly in work product outlet and customer services. I won't use them again.

I worked with Balboa Press on my cookbook "For the Love of Shabbos" (Favorite Shabbat recipes from my home to yours.) Everyone I interacted with at Balboa was kind, courteous, and professional. They helped me bring my legacy project to life. Thank you!!

I do not recommend. The quality of the printed book is poor. I was also hoping for a better experience with the support.

I am really disappointed.

Balboa press is very good in the sales process, but very bad in customer experience. Here are some examples based on my experience using Balboa`s services.

A good salesperson would tell a potential client if Balboa’s services are really suitable for an author that writes and promotes her book in Spanish and that does live in America (I live in Colombia). A good publishing partner, in my case would have contemplated that doing all the publishing process in America is too costly and would have advise me not to continue with the sales process. Instead, I felt like I was just a “sale”.

Another thing that I experienced was that the support from Balboa throughout the process was not timely. I wrote a lot of mails practically begging for someone to answer my emails, taking into account that they rarely answered within the 48 hours which is the establish customer promise for replies.

They promised that I would publish and have all the marketing materials ready in a period of 3-4 months, and it took longer. The publishing was ready by the 4th month and all the marketing support material was ready two months later. It was a really slow process based on ineffective back and forth communications.

The cover design of my book was the art that I sent as reference for Balboa to use as a basis to design. They didn’t do any improvements on my design and sent me 99% of my original design.

I bought the services mainly because I thought that the press release made in America to Spanish speaking people would signify an important boost for my sales due to Balboa`s 500 media outlets. I’m not really sure that a press release written in English to promote a book written in Spanish is the most effective way to promote it. To date the results are dismal- 124 media outlets that opened the mailing, 0 have contacted me.

Regarding the reporting of sales status, to this date, close to a month post launch, I have not received any report on how many books have been sold.

My natural market is Colombia. As you know, many readers prefer to read a physical copy. Since my readers are mainly Colombian, this shipping cost from the US represents to them more than 50% of the cost of the book, making it not very attractive to purchase. Another reason why I should have been advised not to purchase Balboa’s services.

Conclusion, as I said I think that these services were not really suitable for an author like me, I would have expected from Balboa more care and understanding in advising me regarding the purchasing of the services.

Based on this terrible experience I request a full refund of what I paid

Balboa is timely, supportive and authoritative when working with authors. My experience with three books has been consistently of high quality and professional

Great people to work with. Efficient process.

Great quality work, good communication, affordable prices, great timeline!

The experience was pleasant with many guides and directions along the way.

All of the staff at Balboa have been committed to me and my book and have wanted to see it completed and published. This was very helpful to me in the writing process. Staff were so supportive and wonderful offering some great help in the publishing process. I am stoked by how wonderful the book cover turned out. The content editing as an extra was well worth paying for it has resulted in a beautifully written book. Thank you Balboa Press

You are annoying you take a couple of times to tell you to do something and you do it after I’ve asked you to do it after a couple of times and paying for what I needed was very difficult as well I had to remind you a few times that automatically charging my card wasn’t going to work but it you did it anyway

Balboa was a good experience for me. However, I’ve been around and had a very long list of questions to ask before I ever signed. Included was the question, “What have I not asked that surprises new authors the most?” I asked many, many questions and did my part to go over everything they sent with a fine tooth comb, never signing off on anything until I was satisfied.
I also had no need for the add ons such as marketing, paying 6200$ for someone to read it for audio versions, etc.
As for a new author, getting a basic book published and out into the world, it was great. And I was diligent.

The representative was courteous and made positive suggestions to publish and promote the book written by me.

The main issue is that the soft-copy version of my book is not listed on Amazon despite being on every other book seller's website. This problem has been open for about three weeks and seems to defy any resolution by Balboa. Also, two of my books arrived partially damaged. The packaging of the five books as shipped was poor to say the least.

Balboa Press were very helpful in assisting me in publishing my book. The process was effortless and there communication via phone or email was easy to follow. I did struggle sometimes with the promotion of different products. Overall it was a great experience with a high end product.

Overall, my experience this 2nd time was mostly positive. The fact that you pay for a contents review, then approve or disapprove changes from the first review and the manuscript isn't reviewed again for the changes/additions that might have been made; then you have to pay again to have your changes/additions reviewed and when they don't get it right a third time, you just let it go. It would be nice if the same editor did both reviews since they started it. My second reviewer created more changes in the way they wanted it and they were nothing close to what the first reviewer did. Then the design/layout person didn't follow the format the 2nd reviewer laid out and it had to be changed again. The good thing is I can re-release with someone else later on and for much cheaper. But I will say, they keep great track of the books sold and your royalties. They do a nice job, but you pay for everything you want done. I am happy with them overall and if I hadn't found another publisher who was local to my area, I would be using them again and dealing with the review issues myself. My coordinator, Nick, was great! He kept me apprised of every step of my book. Was thorough in his explanations. My marketing person was great as well.

Okay Folks this is my second review. I spoke with upper management I got an apology but they still rendered poor service. I still have not received copies of my books as of yet when we spoke they were 10 days behind mailing them, I'm past 15 days. The people that gave 5 stars who were your reps so people can request them because this is the most unprofessional, unorganized publisher. And they have the nerve to try to continue to get you to purchase add-on. SMH is there any publisher rights like the FCC for Broadcast who do we write to for publishers? if you know please share.

The interest of Balboa Press is to sell as many services as the author can buy and after that you are on your own. I went into the process of editing that took some time for different reasons. The first people assigned to my project had not interest in guiding me on the process. The last person VN was very helpful. When I finally finished my project, BP priced my book so high ($ 67) that it would be very difficult to sell. I asked about the reason for pricing a soft cover book so high, they responded because of the pictures... so it was reduced to $65.00. I tried to host an event at Barnes & Noble since they have the book and I was told that they can not host an event for a soft cover book priced so high and on top of that, its against their policy to bring one book soft cover to the store that has been priced so high. So Balboa Press killed my book before it came out.