The Root of All Evil
by Gibran Tariq and Gregory S. Jones

About the Book Cover

We must confess that while we feel our book is essential reading, we do also admit that the cover is ’ugly’, and we feel an apology is in order because in addition to writing a book that will stand the test of time, it is also incumbent upon the author to create an eye-pleasing cover, and no doubt that was our intention. However, we were the victims of a nightmare relationship with our publisher who, we feel, deliberately failed to enhance the book’s graphics as we had requested.

Our entanglement with Xlibris was similar to the contract disputes many entertainers experience in the music industry, especially the early R & B pioneers who found themselves unmercifully taken advantage of by the corporate Goliath. In our case, what made the relationship with Xlibris so contentious is that they were incompetent and failed repeatedly to live up to the standard of excellence they boasted of in their brochure, and once we were under contract, the standard dropped even lower.

It was almost as if they did not want the information in the book to get out, and therefore took it upon themselves to sabotage the material in every way they could. Their unprofessional work caused us to miss our publication date three times as we had to repeatedly send the manuscript back for error corrections. The typos were so outrageous and the work so shoddy that we had to threaten to take them to court to get the corrections made and the book’s interior format redesigned.

Then there was the extended battle over the price of the book. Xlibris set a price that we did not agree with because we felt it was too high and since it wasn’t competitively priced, it would place us at a disadvantage in the market. We pleaded with them to lower the price, but they wouldn’t budge, and even the threat of a lawsuit wouldn’t intimidate them as the terms were laid out in the fine print of the contract. This being the case, we had no way to force them to lower the book’s price from $19.00 to $13.00. The caused much bad blood.

Finally, the incident with the cover. Although dissatisfied we still wanted to publish The Root Of All Evil since we had spent 5 years researching it, and consequently we authorized a final draft of the book despite some still uncorrected typos. We wanted to meet our third target date for the book’s release because we had people waiting on it. The cover was sent in with very specific instructions as to the enhancements we wanted added to the graphics, but Xlibris ignored our request and simply slapped the cover on the front of the book, doing nothing at all to enhance the quality of the artwork. We feel all this was deliberately done by Xlibris in an attempt to either hold up the release of this book or to prevent it altogether. The information is that compelling.

Again, we apologize for the unprofessional looking cover and wanted everyone to know how it came about, that is was beyond our control. Lastly, we ask that you do not judge this book by its cover or else you will miss one of the most important novels in African ’ American Literature.

Peace,
From the Authors