Publishing.com Review: The FTC Settlement and What the Course Cost

Last reviewed by Robert Prime — August 2026

If you search “publishing.com review”, a good share of page one was written by people who earn a commission when you click through to a different money-making programme. ScamRisk, which ranks on that first page, tells readers its site is “free to use because we may earn a commission when you use a service listed on our site”, and its Publishing.com page closes with a button reading “WATCH MY #1 RECOMMENDATION” pointing at the author’s preferred business model. They disclose it, which is more than some do. It still means a large share of what you can read about this company was written by someone with a financial interest in where you go next.

We have no such stake. We run no affiliate programme, we take no payment from any course, and we sell nothing that competes at the prices discussed below.

We do sell a £197 course ourselves, so treat that as the bias it is — which is why every figure here is sourced to a document you can open, and why there is a section on when a free option beats anything we sell.

What follows is what the US Federal Trade Commission alleged, what the settlement requires, what the programme cost, and what you can buy today. Every claim about the regulatory action comes from the FTC’s own filings, linked throughout: the April 2026 press release, the July 2026 press release, and the case docket for matter 242-3055, where the complaint and final order can be downloaded as PDFs.

Is Publishing.com still open? The short version

On 6 August 2026 we loaded publishing.com and found a single page. It reads: “Publishing.com is no longer accepting new student enrollments or course purchases.” A box below tells existing students that “If you purchased a Publishing.com course prior to June 2025, your course access remains available”, linking to a student portal at aia.publishing.com that loaded when we tried it.

The marketing site has gone with it. The same morning we requested publishing.com/press, /about-us, /our-story, /blog, /program and /software; every one returned a 404.

Separately, on 1 July 2026 the FTC issued a final Decision and Order requiring Publishing.com, LLC and its two co-founders to pay $1,500,000 (about £1.11m at 0.742 USD/GBP on 5 August 2026 — conversions throughout are indicative) and permanently restraining them from making earnings claims they cannot substantiate.

Both things are true of the same summer. Whether one caused the other, no public record we found establishes, and we are not going to imply it; the dates are set out in the timeline below.

In a hurry? If you bought and want your money back, skip to can buyers get their money back. If you are weighing up a different course and want the test, skip to how to vet any publishing course in ten minutes.

What did the FTC allege?

The case is In the Matter of Publishing.com, LLC, a limited liability company, f/k/a PublishingLife.com, LLC, Christian Mikkelsen, individually and as an officer of Publishing.com, LLC, and Rasmus Mikkelsen, individually and as an officer of Publishing.com, LLC. FTC Matter/File Number 242-3055, Docket Number C-4836.

It is an administrative proceeding rather than a court case. The Commission, “having reason to believe” the respondents violated the FTC Act, issued a complaint; the respondents settled it. No judge has ruled on any of the allegations below.

The complaint sets out three counts.

Count I — False or Unsubstantiated Earnings Claims. The FTC alleges the respondents represented “that purchasers of Respondents’ programs and services would earn or were likely to earn a substantial income”, and that those representations “are false or misleading, or were not substantiated at the time the representations were made”.

The complaint quotes the advertising directly. From a promotional email attributed to Christian Mikkelsen in May 2024: “[Y]ou can copy the EXACT system hundreds of my students use to make $1k to $3k a month in passive income” — roughly £740 to £2,230 a month. From another the same month: “A.I. Publishing Academy is designed to give you everything you need to succeed in making $1k to $3k a month while only working 1 hour a day.” From a “Free Training” video advertisement: “One upload away from, say, leaving your 9 to 5 job forever.”

It also quotes consumer complaints the FTC received. One from April 2025 states the writer “experienced significant financial losses, including over $49,000 in advertising expenses alone” — about £36,350 — “which were never properly disclosed as necessary to achieve the results shown in the company’s marketing materials”.

Count II — Misrepresentations Regarding Refunds. The complaint alleges that from at least May 2024 the respondents’ emails promised: “P.S. A.I. Publishing Academy is backed by our 12 month simple refund guarantee (no questions asked). If you’re not happy, you can get a full refund for up to 12 months from joining!” It gives a second example from the same emails: “[w]e also offer a 12 month 100% money back guarantee (no questions asked).” Both appear in paragraph 17 as separate quotations; Count II summarises the claim as “12-month 100% Money Back Guarantee,” “risk free,” and “no questions asked.”

The FTC alleges the operative terms were different and were buried in the Terms of Service. Those terms, according to the complaint, gave a three business day right of rescission, after which “the company reserves the right on whether or not to issue a refund”. Between October 2024 and March 2025, buyers past the three-day window had to “complete, produce, and publish a book at least 25,000 words in length” or an audiobook of at least two hours to be considered for a refund. For the Publishing Accelerator add-on, the alleged conditions were a completed six-month membership, at least six coaching calls, ten workshop sessions, and use of the company’s AI software to create a book outline.

Two consumers, the complaint says, were told they would have to give the company 5% of the revenue from books they published in order to qualify. The FTC notes that this “requirement to share 5% of revenue prior to obtaining a refund has not been disclosed in any advertising material, nor does it appear in Respondents’ Terms of Service.”

Count III — False or Misleading Testimonials and Endorsements. The complaint alleges the respondents featured over 200 video testimonials and, until at least December 2024, “failed to disclose that some of these testimonialists were employees of the company or had a material connection to company employees”. It alleges the company ran a testimonial contest with a $10,000 (about £7,400) grand prize, offered free one-to-one coaching in exchange for five-star Trustpilot reviews, and “at times… even conditioned refunds on consumers providing positive testimonials.”

Does the settlement mean Publishing.com was found guilty?

No, and this is the single most misread part of the story.

The FTC’s Decision and Order records that the Consent Agreement includes “statements by Respondents that they neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint, except as specifically stated in this Decision and Order, and that only for purposes of this action, they admit the facts necessary to establish jurisdiction.”

So: no court found that Publishing.com or the Mikkelsens broke the law, the respondents did not concede that they had, and they agreed to pay $1.5m and to be bound by conduct rules for 20 years without conceding the allegations. Companies settle with federal regulators for many reasons, including that fighting one is slower and more expensive than settling, whatever the merits. A consent order is a negotiated end to a dispute, and this article does not describe it as a finding of fraud.

The order does give the allegations some legal weight in one narrow situation. Provision VII states that the facts alleged in the complaint “will be taken as true, without further proof, in any subsequent civil litigation by or on behalf of the Commission to enforce its rights to any payment pursuant to this Order, such as a nondischargeability complaint in any bankruptcy case.” That is a stipulation about collecting the money, not a judgment on the conduct.

Thousands of people bought these programmes and a settlement about advertising does not mean each of them had a bad experience. The FTC’s complaint does not allege that the course contained no teaching or that the software failed to work, and one of the consumer complaints the FTC itself quotes, from January 2025, contains the line “I took the initiative to write my own book, which I am proud of.” The complaint also records a remedial step: from after December 2024 the company “began noting that ‘[t]his individual is a current or former employee of Publishing.com’ on certain testimonials.”

Timeline: from launch to final order

Who are the Mikkelsen twins, and what was the course called?

Christian Mikkelsen is described in the complaint as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, holding a 50% interest in the company. Rasmus Mikkelsen is described as co-founder and Chief Product Officer, holding a 25% interest. They are twins, which is where the “Mikkelsen twins” shorthand comes from, and both were named as individual respondents rather than only the company.

Third-party pages use several names for the same programme, and some use names the FTC does not. Here is the chain as the complaint records it.

The FTC names “Audio Income Academy” and “Audiobook Impact Academy”. Many review pages call it “Audiobook Income Academy”, a blend of the two that appears nowhere in the complaint. If you are trying to match a line on an old credit card statement, work from the FTC’s list.

How much did Publishing.com cost, and can you still buy it?

The April 2026 press release describes AIA as a course “which can cost up to $1,995”; the complaint says the respondents “have typically charged $1,995”. Those are the FTC’s figures for the period its complaint covers. Today the answer to “what does Publishing.com cost” is that nothing is for sale.

One loose end is worth reporting properly, because other write-ups have guessed at it. The closure notice does not say when sales stopped; it says who keeps access, for purchases made “prior to June 2025”. The Internet Archive shows the marketing operation running well past that date: the homepage was captured selling the programme on 20 April, 13 May and 21 May 2026, and a Publishing.com blog article carrying the full site navigation and a “Watch Free Training” call to action was captured on 7 June 2026. The archive then has no page capture of the site until our own check on 6 August, by which point the closure page had replaced it. (Two non-page requests — a tracking script in June and an analytics call in July that returned a 404 — are the only other entries in that window.) The switch therefore happened somewhere between 7 June and 6 August 2026. Public records do not narrow it further, and nothing we found connects it to the order issued on 1 July.

For fairness, the archived site made its own claim about customer satisfaction: the April 2026 capture advertises “4.7/5 Stars in 2,000+ reviews”, and the FTC complaint records the company touting “thousands of positive reviews averaging 4.6/5 stars” on Trustpilot. The complaint’s allegation is that some of those reviews were incentivised, including through free one-to-one coaching offered in exchange for five stars.

Has Publishing.com responded to the FTC?

We could find no published response. We checked publishing.com, where the only live page is the closure notice and it makes no reference to the FTC; the company’s former press, about, our-story and blog pages, all of which now 404; and we searched for any statement from the company or from Christian or Rasmus Mikkelsen without finding one.

The only position formally on record is the one in the FTC’s own paperwork: that the respondents neither admit nor deny the allegations.

We recheck this page at the start of each month, and whenever the FTC’s refund-programmes list changes. If the company or either Mikkelsen publishes a response, it will be linked here at the next check and the date stamp above will move.

Can buyers get their money back?

In the US. The FTC’s letters to commenters, dated 1 July 2026, state that the order “would include $1.5 million in monetary relief that the Commission can use to provide refunds to injured consumers”, and add: “We consider the facts and circumstances of each matter to assess how to feasibly and equitably distribute funds available for consumer redress.” Provision VIII requires the respondents to hand over customer information “to enable the Commission to efficiently administer consumer redress”, and records that they represent they have already provided it.

None of that guarantees an individual payment. When we searched the FTC’s active refund programmes page this month, no Publishing.com programme was listed. The order also contemplates that “direct redress to consumers is wholly or partially impracticable”, in which case remaining money may go to other relief or to the US Treasury. If you bought, watch ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds and treat anyone who contacts you offering to recover your money for a fee as a second problem rather than a solution — the FTC does not charge for refunds.

In the UK. UK buyers of a US course have two card routes, and the deadlines differ sharply. Citizens Advice states that if you paid by credit card or buy now, pay later you can claim under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act “as long as you paid more than £100 and no more than £30,000”. The Financial Ombudsman Service says of the alternative route that “you usually have around 120 days to raise a chargeback about goods or services”, which puts almost every Publishing.com purchase outside it. Section 75 carries no equivalent 120-day cut-off in the Ombudsman’s guidance, so an older purchase is worth raising with your credit card provider even if a chargeback is long gone. Check the current position on the Citizens Advice consumer pages before you call your bank, and keep your purchase records either way.

What the order bans from now on

The final order runs for 20 years from issuance — longer if the government later files a complaint alleging a violation of it — and takes effect on the date the FTC publishes it as a final order. Read as a list of what a federal regulator considers unacceptable in this market, it doubles as a free vetting checklist for any course you are considering.

The April 2026 press release adds that once a consent order is final it “carries the force of law with respect to future actions”, and that each violation “may result in a civil penalty of up to $53,088” — about £39,400. Each respondent also has to file a sworn compliance report a year after issuance.

How to vet any publishing course in ten minutes

Turn the order into questions. If a course fails three or more of these, walk away, whoever is selling it.

Apply it to us, since we are selling something too. Our own course publishes no income figures at all, because we have no typicality data and will not invent any. It is £197 at the launch price and £347 as standard, both shown on the page. The refund term sits on the sales page rather than in a terms document, in these words: “Fourteen-day refund if you’ve completed less than one module.” After that there are no refunds and you keep lifetime access, which is also stated there. We earn nothing from any product mentioned in this article. If we ever fail one of those rows, hold us to it.

When a free or cheap option beats a paid course

Most people searching for a publishing course do not need a course. They need to know whether their manuscript is ready and what the next specific step is, and £1,500 is an expensive way to find out.

If you are choosing between the free options and any paid course, ours included, start free. ALLi is a non-profit membership body whose advice team has nothing to upsell you, and at £89 a year it is among the cheapest independent second opinions available to a new author. For what each stage of publishing should cost before anyone quotes you a package price, our guide to self-publishing costs in the UK breaks it down line by line.

Before buying any course at all, run your manuscript through our free KDP readiness audit. It takes about a minute, costs nothing, and for a lot of people it answers the question the course was going to answer.

What this case is worth to you

The mechanism the FTC objected to is ordinary, which is what makes the order useful. A headline income figure with no typicality data behind it; a guarantee in the advertisement whose conditions live somewhere the buyer will not read; testimonials from people with undisclosed connections to the seller. That pattern runs through author services generally, and now there is a federal document describing precisely why each part of it is a problem — free to download, and directly usable against the next offer that lands in your inbox.

Be equally careful about who explains it to you. The pages ranking for this query are largely run by people whose business is sending you to a different opportunity. They disclose it, and they are not inventing the FTC action. But they have every incentive to present a settlement as a verdict, and none at all to tell you that for most readers the honest answer is a free email course and £89 a year.

Related guides

• Self-publishing costs in the UK — what each stage actually costs, with real figures
• Self-publishing packages in the UK — how to read a bundled offer and spot the padding
• Book marketing in the UK: the complete guide — what works after publication
• How to market a self-published book in the UK — the practical sequence, from launch to month three
• Market research for indie authors — testing demand before you write

Frequently asked questions

Did the FTC shut Publishing.com down?

No. The FTC’s order required Publishing.com, LLC and its two co-founders to pay $1,500,000 (about £1.11m) and barred them from making unsubstantiated earnings claims, but it did not order the business closed or wound up. The company’s own site now says it is “no longer accepting new student enrollments or course purchases”, and archive records place the switch between 7 June and early August 2026. No published source we found explains why, or links it to the FTC action.

Is Publishing.com a scam?

No court or regulator has ruled that Publishing.com is a scam, and this article does not use the word. What exists on the record is an FTC complaint alleging deceptive acts in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, and a consent order under which the respondents paid $1.5 million while formally stating they “neither admit nor deny” the allegations. Nothing in that process is a judicial finding. Read the complaint in matter 242-3055 and reach your own view.

Can I still get into a course I already paid for?

Probably, if you bought before June 2025. The closure notice states that “if you purchased a Publishing.com course prior to June 2025, your course access remains available” and links to a student portal at aia.publishing.com, which loaded normally when we tested it for this article. The page gives no support email or contact route, so keep your receipts, order confirmations and any refund correspondence — you will need them for a card claim or a future FTC redress process.

How will I know if a Publishing.com refund programme opens?

Watch the FTC’s own refund page at ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds, which lists every active FTC-administered refund programme; Publishing.com was not on it at the time of writing. The FTC never charges a fee to process a refund and never asks for payment to release one, so any approach asking you to pay to recover your money is not from the FTC. We check that list monthly and will update this article when it changes.

What happens to the $1.5 million?

Under Provision VII of the order, money paid to the Commission “may be deposited into a fund administered by the Commission or its designee to be used for relief, including consumer redress”. If the Commission decides that direct redress is “wholly or partially impracticable”, or money is left over, it may apply the remainder to other relief reasonably related to the practices alleged, and anything unused goes to the US Treasury. The respondents have no right to challenge how that is done.

Does the order stop the Mikkelsens selling courses in future?

It does not ban them from selling, but it constrains how. Both were named individually, so the order follows them personally for 20 years and applies to any product or service they promote, not just publishing courses: no earnings claim without written substantiation that the earnings are typical for similar consumers, refund terms disclosed clearly before payment, and endorsers’ material connections disclosed. Each respondent must file a sworn compliance report a year after issuance, and the FTC says each violation of a final order may draw a civil penalty of up to $53,088.

What should I check before buying any publishing course?

Ask three questions before you pay. First, what income figures does the seller publish, and will they send you the evidence that those figures are typical? Second, where do the refund conditions live — on the sales page above the payment button, or in the terms and conditions? Third, who is telling you it is good, and are they paid if you buy? A course that answers all three cleanly may still be wrong for you, but the ones that cannot answer them are the ones the FTC’s order was written about.