{"id":3653,"date":"2012-07-02T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"avoiding-self-publishing-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/avoiding-self-publishing-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Self-Publishing Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The recent class action lawsuit filed against Publish America is just one more reminder that Indie authors need to be careful about whom they do business with in the process of publishing their books.\u00a0 What follows is a list of red flags that may indicate caution is required if they pop up in your dealings with a so-called \u201cpublisher\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many so called self-publishing houses are what are referred to as “vanity publishers” because they offer to get the author\u2019s books in print for a fee.\u00a0 These often advertise that they “need” or are \u201cseeking\u201d new authors.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever tried dealing with a reputable publishing house you know that rejection is the normal order of things; they will put their imprint on and marketing efforts behind only those books that meet their standards.\u00a0 Vanity publishers accept anyone and charge unsuspecting authors to publish their work, often producing books that are poorly written, have not been edited, have awful covers, and are (for all intents and purposes) virtually worthless in the commercial book market.\u00a0 Worthless, to everyone except the vanity publisher, who makes thousands of dollars from the author.\u00a0 Beware of these signs:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Glad-handing and Flattery<\/strong>
    \nWhile having your ego stroked now and then can be a great self-esteem boost, when it\u2019s coming from a publisher you will want to be cautious. Unscrupulous publishers use your ego to manipulate you by buttering you up in order to gain your business. While your writing may indeed be great and you may deserve to be published, legitimate publishers won\u2019t bother with all the flattery.\u00a0 Excessive flattery is a red flag: avoid companies that try to compliment you into doing business with them.<\/li>\n
  2. They Seek You
    \n<\/strong>Rarely will legitimate publishers contact you with an e-mail or message through social networking saying that they are impressed with your work and want to publish your next book.\u00a0 The question here is, \u201cWhy is this publisher so desperate for new authors that they\u2019re soliciting them?\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. Guaranteed Success
    \n<\/strong>No one can guarantee that a book will be successful. You may have written a great book and it may well be popular, but making it successful takes a lot of hard work and determination. Legitimate publishers never promise that your book will be a best-seller or, indeed, will achieve any level of success.\u00a0 That cannot be guaranteed and anyone who does is looking to take your money.<\/li>\n
  4. Hollow Promises
    \n<\/strong>The old adage, \u201cIf it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.\u201d holds here. If the publishing house promises to get your book into every bookstore in the country, it\u2019s a blatant lie.\u00a0 They can make your book available<\/em> to every bookstore, but no one can guarantee that your book will be on the shelves of every bookstore, or any bookstore.\u00a0 The same holds of promises of getting your book onto the major best seller lists; to make these lists your book has to actually become a best seller.\u00a0 That depends more on the buying public than the publisher.<\/li>\n
  5. Smoke & Mirror Marketing Claims<\/strong>
    \nSimilarly, getting you to buy a \u201cmarketing package\u201d to get your book into Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble\u2019s web site, Smashwords, iTunes and the Ingrams book catalog (used by bookstores to order from publishers) may sound like a good deal.\u00a0 And it may be, depending on the price.\u00a0 You need to know that you can do these things yourself \u2013 FOR FREE.\u00a0 Paying someone else to do it for you makes sense if you want to get right back to writing, but paying a large amount for this service is a scam.\u00a0 Also be aware that print books produced through Amazon\u2019s Createspace printing service will not get into bookstores because Createspace does not allow unsold books to be returned.\u00a0 Lightning Source does allow returns, but there are fees attached for handling these returns and either storing or destroying the returned books that can mitigate any profits you had seen from bookstore sales. Choose a publisher that is recognized by bookstores as a quality dealer and conforms to their policies for book acceptance.Small publishers often offer to sell you packages that include editing, proofreading, sales, publicity, and shipping.\u00a0 These extra-cost options may not do much for you and are often things you could easily do yourself for little or no cost. \u00a0Marketing materials often include little more than a press release (which will end up in the editor\u2019s garbage can along with all other generic form letter\u00a0 press releases they receive daily) and a listing in a book catalog.\u00a0 You\u2019d be better off contacting local papers, libraries, book clubs, and bookstores on your own and penning your own personalized press release.\u00a0 Using Lightning Source as your printer automatically gets you into the catalog.<\/li>\n
  6. Unintelligible Contracts
    \n<\/strong>If you can\u2019t understand the contract any company is presenting to you, there is probably a reason. Never sign anything without understanding what it is you can expect from them and what they expect from you.\u00a0 You may need to get a lawyer to look it over \u2013 this is money well spent. \u00a0Watch for hidden fees.\u00a0 Be clear on who holds the copyright to your work, which rights are included,\u00a0 and for how long.\u00a0 And never be afraid to ask for a clear explanation of how much you will be paid and how payment will be made before signing anything.<\/li>\n
  7. Hedgy Editing<\/strong>
    \nAny proper publishing company will have editing services available.\u00a0 Not all are any good at it.\u00a0 Find out up front if the editing they offer is merely a spell-check\/proofread, copy editing, or a proper edit for content \u2013 especially if you\u2019re publishing fiction.\u00a0 Plot flow and characterization are very important and an editor who understands what it takes to get this right is an asset.\u00a0 If they cannot give you a straight answer \u2013 and references – hire an outside editor.<\/li>\n
  8. Dodgy Discounts
    \n<\/strong>To have any chance of getting a print book into bookstores, the book must be available at at least a 55% wholesale discount, and unsold copies must be returnable.\u00a0 If your \u201cpublisher\u201d does not offer these terms, you have no chance at all of getting into bookstores.\u00a0 If their primary discount is aimed at you \u2013 so you can sell copies of your book at signing and to local vendors \u2013 be wary; they will very likely be considering this to be the book\u2019s main sales channel.\u00a0 Offering you a discount is not the kiss of death, but be sure you know why they do it.<\/li>\n
  9. Dastardly Documentation Fees
    \n<\/strong>Most books will need an ISBN in order to be listed in book catalogs because book retailers use the ISBN to track inventory.\u00a0 If the book is also available in eBook format, a separate ISBN may be needed. All publishers will offer to obtain the ISBN for you, some will say it is a complex, expensive process and demand a high fee for it.\u00a0 It is not.\u00a0 You can go to the Bowkers web site<\/a> and obtain anywhere from one to one thousand ISBNs in just a few minutes.\u00a0 Bowkers is the official international clearing house for ISBNs.\u00a0 Other services may resell numbers, but Bowkers is the source.\u00a0 At the time of this writing a single ISBN sells for $125, a block of ten numbers for $250, 100 ISBNs for $575 and a block of one thousand numbers for a $1,000. You probably won\u2019t need a thousand ISBNs in your lifetime, but a busy publishing house will buy them in these blocks for a buck apiece<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 So if they tell you they need several hundred dollars to get you an ISBN, get it yourself. Copyrighting a book is more complicated, requiring a copy of the finished book, several forms and a $35 filing fee.\u00a0 In the USA, it is also quite unnecessary in most cases.\u00a0 As soon as your work hits print, your work is automatically copyrighted<\/a> for 70 years past the date of your death. Filing a claim of copyright infringement can get tricky, but that\u2019s a topic for another time.<\/li>\n
  10. Self-Publishing that is not Self-Publishing.
    \n<\/strong>Right now the self-publishing banner is a major rallying point for authors who are fed up with the high handed treatment received from the major publishing houses. Self-Publishing is hot, no doubt about it.\u00a0 And being hot, it attracts a lot of scammers who are after your money.\u00a0 But at what point does self-publishing turn into Indie Publishing and into Vanity Publishing? If you launched into a home improvement project by hiring a general contractor who hired all the needed tradesmen to do the work and your only contribution was concept design, could you then claim, \u201cI built it myself\u201d?\u00a0 If a publishing house acts as the general contractor and provides cover artist, editor, marketing as well as printing, can you claim to be \u201cself-published\u201d?\u00a0 Published certainly.\u00a0 Indie published probably, but not self-published.\u00a0 You can, and should, hire the tradesmen needed to be sure your work passes inspection for any area in which you lack expertise, but you need to be the general contractor if you want to claim being self-published. A publisher who gets your attention with the term “self-published” but proceeds to talk you into an expensive turnkey publishing package is misrepresenting the term.\u00a0 What else are they misrepresenting?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The forest of Publication Land is prowled by ravenous wolves.\u00a0 Be cautious in choosing those you will partner with in publishing your book.\u00a0 Do your homework.\u00a0 Use WRITER BEWARE<\/strong><\/em> \u00ae<\/strong><\/a> to find out if a company has complaints lodged against them.\u00a0 Ask for references: contact info for other authors who have used the service.\u00a0 And don\u2019t jump into the arms of the first stranger who strokes your ego.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The recent class action lawsuit filed against Publish America is just one more reminder that Indie authors need to be careful about whom they do business with in the process of publishing their books.  What follows is a list of red flags that may indicate caution is required if they pop up in your dealings … Continue reading “Avoiding Self-Publishing Scams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3,9],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing-2","tag-books","tag-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21598,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/21598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}