A few authors have recently contacted me in regards to responses that they had received from their manuscript submissions. All in all they’d sent over 50 queries out to publishers, but finally did get some emails back which left them both encouraged, but also somewhat perplexed:

The responses usually went somewhat like this:

“Congratulations! We’ve accepted your manuscript for publishing! In a couple of months you will become one of the few writers in the world to become a published author!

“Please send us your signed contract…

Sounds great so far, right? The contract then kicks off with something along these lines…

“1. The Author grants and assigns to the Publisher during a period of three years from the date of the signing of this agreement by both parties thereto the exclusive right to produce, publish, sell or export, or cause to be produced, published sold or exported, the above work in book form in any language or languages, in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and the exclusive right to arrange for the publication of the above work in book form in all foreign countries.”

The above “boilerplate” agreement is generally understandable and acceptable to the author. It even sounds like a good deal, i.e., that the publisher wants to distribute the author’s work for a period of three years.

However, things often then move in a new and unexpected direction…

“While we are not confident that we could recoup publishing costs within the first year of publication, we do see a possibility of recouping our costs
within the next three years. Because of this, we feel that your work is
best suited for publication under our Partnership publishing arrangement.”

Or the publisher goes directly to the point (a proper metaphor, as the author feels they’re being stabbed in the heart):

“This is a brief overview of our main packages and our optional add-on packages. The full details of these packages as well as the publishing fees…”

Which then include various levels (and somewhat colorful names) of the publisher’s service packages–often three options, since marketing 101 tells us that most consumers choose the middle option. Something like this:

Pub-Lite, Level I, Bronze, Quartz, etc: $750
Pub-Strong, Level II, Silver, Ruby: $1,500
Pub-Max, Level III, Gold, Diamond: $2,500

There’s really no reason to analyze this further. The bottom line is that what was originally perceived by the author to be a traditional publisher turned out to in fact be a vanity press, where the author will need to pay some money up front to have their book published. And, as you can see above, they’ll also give up the rights to their book’s distribution.

Interestingly enough, the authors that contacted me where actually leaning towards going ahead and paying for these services for the simple reason that they were exhausted with the query process and now had a real way to get their books out the door. Publishing problem solved!

My advice? Please don’t do this–yet. There are often better options out there, so let’s do some digging first.

But I gotta hand it to these companies. These publishers obviously know what they’re doing–whether we like their tactics or not–and although it’s a sad fact that some vanity presses act this way and go too far in presenting themselves to be traditional publishers, it also highlights the responsibility that authors have to do their homework prior to shooting off query letters to a list of “book publishers” that they find on the Internet. Tell you what, start here–one of the most useful references is the Writers Market Series, and also the website Preditors and Editors. Or, if you hear about a possible publisher but are not sure about them, just Google them–it’s amazing what you might find by just typing in the name of the publisher (and maybe also include the word “scam”).

Publishing your book requires a thick skin for sure. Your manuscript may get rejected by several traditional publishing houses and you’ll finally decide to go the self-publishing route. But that doesn’t mean that you put off educating yourself about today’s publishing world right from the get-go–and the sooner you start the better off you’ll be in the long run.

So get started, or shoot me a note and let’s talk about it.

Until next time–keep publishing!

Henry

Henry Hutton
PublishandSell.com
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