Autharium was established by Matt Bradbeer, Simon Maylott and Aaron Bell with the purpose of discovering great writers and publishing their work. Although essentially a delivery system for people wishing to self-publish (authors could use Autharium's online tools to upload, format, and edit their books), the company attempted to distance itself from similar operations such as CreateSpace, Smashwords and Lulu by implying that it "curates" rather than accepts everything sent to it. The company also claimed that its intention was to 'publish books from the very best authors.'
In 2013 Atharium received much negative publicity by ebook critics and authors for its 'author-unfriendly Terms and Conditions.' The issue was initially raised by the writer-oriented blog, Passive Voice, and taken up by other media and author-related websites. Autharium eventually modified its agreements with authors but ran into further image-related difficulties in 2014 when it attempted to whitewash its past by issuing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice against Passive Voice. The company's argument was that Passive Voice had incorporated five copyrighted paragraphs into its post. Passive Voice countered by arguing that the section, taken from Autharium's Terms and Conditions was used to illustrate its point, and that it was only five out of a total of 83 paragraphs in the article. Although Autharium succeeded in taking down the original blog post, the backlash further damaged the company's reputation and credibility within the ebook author community.
Autharium is believed to have ended its publishing operations either in late-2015 or early 2016.
[Sources: Jason Matthews. 'Autharium the British Smashwords? Nope.' How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks 2013 (sighted 9/06/2016); "Victoria Strauss. 'Publishing Terms at Autharium.' Writer Beware. 2013 (sighted 9/06/2013); and Tim Cushing. "Self-Pub Platform Autharium Issues Bogus DMCA Notice in Hopes of Whitewashing its Past.' Tech Dirt. 2014 (sighted 9/06/2016)].
