Draft:Publishing.com
Submission declined on 25 June 2025 by Theroadislong (talk).
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| Founded | 2019 |
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| Website | publishing |
Publishing.com (formerly PublishingLife)[1] is a company founded by twins Christian and Rasmus Mikkelsen (born 1995 or 1996)[2] which sells a course about earning passive income through commissioning and self-publishing books. Critics have argued that their course leads to the proliferation of misinformation, and a Federal Trade Commission investigation was initiated based on customer complaints.
Course
[edit]The course, which has gone by the names Audiobook Impact Academy, Publishing Life, and AI Publishing Academy, purports to allow its users to earn passive income through commissioning and publishing books.[3] In the original model, users would be given a trending topic from Amazon platforms Kindle and Audible, who would then commission a ghostwriter and a narrator to produce an audiobook.[3] In April 2024, Publishing.com launched Publishing.ai, a proprietary generative AI program used to create outlines which would then be sent to the ghostwriter.[2][3] After publishing the books, users could collect passive income, assisted by a network of other users who would give favorable reviews to further increase the popularity of the books.[2]
History
[edit]
The Mikkelsen twins self-published books on topics including ketogenic diets and sex, prompted by Christian's success from self-publishing How to Be a 4.0 Student in College, Like Me. They then used Google Translate to publish foreign language editions on Amazon. In April 2018, the pair were banned from Amazon, prompting them to found create a course on self-publishing.[2][4]
In January 2025, Business Insider revealed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had investigated the company. In complaints to the FTC, customers alleged that the company used high pressure sales tactics and obscured the cost of self-publishing. The FTC hired an expert witness, which two former FTC officials said would be unusual if the FTC did not see the investigation as viable.[5][1]
Reception
[edit]
Video essayist Dan Olson argued that the original model of Publishing.com required paying a ghostwriter an extremely low wage and produced books containing significant amounts of misinformation.[2][3][6] Vox writer Constance Grady argued that the Mikkelsen twins were "small-time operators working one level of a very big grift industry" and that Amazon incentivized the quick creation of low-cost books.[2]
A January 2024 survey of 1,119 users found that they had an average income of $1,801 per month.[5] According to Atlas Obscura writer Andrew Coletti, the users were "the primary targets of a money-making scheme, with readers just collateral damage".[3]
References
[edit]- ^ a b James, David (2025-01-15). "Side Hustle AI Book Company Under Federal Investigation: Report". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2025-05-27.
- ^ a b c d e f g Grady, Constance (2024-04-16). "Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here's how they get made". Vox. Retrieved 2025-05-27.
- ^ a b c d e Coletti, Andrew (2023-09-07). "Would You Trust AI to Help You Forage?". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2025-05-27.
- ^ Hagerman, Eric (September 2023). "How the Mikkelsen Twins Built a $50 Million-a-Year Business Around 1 Product". Inc.com. Archived from the original on 2025-02-12. Retrieved 2025-05-27.
- ^ a b Newsham, Jack; Long, Katherine (January 13, 2025). "The feds opened an investigation into a side-hustle company helping pump out AI-generated books, records reveal". Business Insider. Retrieved 2025-06-03.
- ^ Folding Ideas (2022-09-27). Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins. Retrieved 2025-06-26 – via YouTube.
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