In the latest in her series of self-publishing blogs, editor Cressida Downing explores the warning signs you should look out for when considering signing with a self-publishing provider.
It used to be simple. If you wanted to get published, you approached agents and publishers. If a publisher asked you for money to publish your book, it was vanity publishing and a Very Bad Idea.
Vanity publishers (the traditional edition) would rave about how wonderful your work was, how they had to publish it, but they needed a contribution from you, just to cover their costs. That was the giveaway. If they needed to cover their costs up front, they had no incentive to actually sell the 100 or so copies they promised to print. They used to edit lightly if at all – and were more interested in selling you author copies than in selling your book elsewhere.
A traditional publisher was more likely to tell you what was wrong with your book, give you an editor to help you with that, and then give you an advance – a down payment on monies they were confident the book would earn.
Advances were typically paid in four tranches, one on signature of a contract, one on delivery of an edited and ready manuscript, the third on hardback publication and the final tranch on paperback publication. This could vary depending on what editions the publisher was planning to bring out.
Once self-publishing became easy and accessible, the vanity publishers had to up their game. In some ways it’s much more upfront than it used to be. A number of reputable options now require you to pay up front, so does vanity publishing still exist?
Rather than a simple division, publishing services now exist along a sliding scale – with traditional publishers at one end (they pay you, they do all the work bar the writing) and complete self-publishing at the other (you do all the work, you don’t pay anyone, you get all the reward – if there is any).
As explored in the last blog in this series, as a self-published author, you are taking on a variety of tasks that would be traditionally performed for you. Equally you can choose to outsource them, hiring freelancers or complete services to do the entire process. Everyone is trying to earn a living, so paying someone will almost always be more expensive than doing it yourself, but it’s still important to be wary of services that promise a lot but may not deliver.
Examine any contract very carefully before you sign, and check each element. You don’t need an ISBN for example, although it can be useful, and it only costs £126 for 10. A service that provides you with an ISBN should not be charging you more than about £15 for this within the package. (A self-publishing service will be buying ISBNs in bulk so will be paying less than this, but I’m allowing a small mark up for the convenience of only having to buy one ISBN).
Uploading your book onto Amazon is free, it just takes time. Don’t pay someone more than you think that time is worth.
If a package is offering ‘editing’, check what they mean by editing, and whether you’ll get a chance to look at their corrections before they release the book.
The best place to look out for the new vanity publishers is in the writing community. Google a service before you use it – try and find reviews from other authors, and if they’re offering to market your book – get them to provide exact details of what that will entail. Mick Rooney’s excellent site is still the best resource.
The surprising new villain of the piece can be the traditional publishers themselves. Penguin USA has teamed up with Book Country to offer ‘services’ to authors wishing to self-publish e-books. Not only do they heavily over-charge for the services they do provide, they also take an ongoing royalty cut.
Random House started by offering some frankly awful terms to genre authors for their new digital-only imprints – and had to backpedal significantly after author communities shouted their outrage all over the internet.
When paying for publishing, don’t rely on what sounds like an established name, ask them what they will be doing for you, and check the market rates. Don’t let the vanity publishers resurface!
If you found this article useful, you might want to take a look at:
A Series on Self-Publishing: What Does a Publisher Do that You're Going to Do Instead?
A Series on Self-Publishing: Dragging a Dinosaur Digital
A Series on Self-Publishing: The Bad Old Days of Book in a Bag
A Series on Self-Publishing: How Does Self-Publishing Actually Work & Is It For Me?
A Series on Self-Publishing: Suggested Steps For The Self-Published Author
This is fantastic information.
Nice article Cressida and very interesting. Thanks for posting.
:)
Thank you for this blog.
It's a warning to all would-be authors.
It appears that the would-be author is being exploited from every angle imaginable.
Vanity publishing is growing in my opinion. Famous publishers are guilty of sharp practises. There is a marked difference to being asked money for an editorial service, or being asked for money to be published.
Self-Publishing Statistics May 30th 2012
Despite some highly publicized successes, the average book from a POD service sells fewer than 200 copies--mostly to the authors and to "pocket" markets surrounding them--friends, family, local retailers who can be persuaded to place an order.
Respondents who’d had their work rejected by traditional publishing and then opted to self-publish it were among the lowest earners.
Rejection isn’t all bad though. 32% of the “Top Earners” tried and failed to get a traditional publishing deal before self-publishing, but now make a living from selling their work.
Self-publishing authors who went straight to publication without submitting their work to traditional publishers earned 2.5 times more than those who submitted it and got rejected.
29% of the Top Earners have an agent, compared to 10%. Having an agent was correlated with earnings more than three times higher than unrepresented respondents.
Respondents who paid professionals for services like story-editing, copyediting and proofreading earned on average 13% more than those who didn’t. Hiring a professional cover designer earned them on average 18% more. Yet, not all paid-for services translate into a significant increase in earnings. Self-publishers who hired professional e-book formatters only saw average earnings of 1% more.
The Top Earners group spent more time writing than they did marketing, and those in the group who spent the least time marketing were making the most money. Out of all respondents, those who spent the most time marketing earned the least.
Top Earners had almost four times as many reviews for their most recent book than authors outside of the group, and those books were earning those Top Earners six times as much revenue for those who reported the figures for their second most recent book, the Top Earners still had about the same amount of reviews but the revenue gap rose to fourteen times the income of other author’s second most recent books, which had been on the market for about 14 months.
Another factor that seemed to improve the earning power of a self-published author is to make a book trailer. Romance writers also did better than science-fiction, fantasy or literary fiction writers.
Yet, the most effective single tactic, submitting to popular reviewers on Amazon, was the least used. Authors who used this strategy received 25% more reviews than average, and more importantly, 32% more revenue for their latest release.