Why You Should NEVER Have to Pay to Have Your Writing Published.
So you’ve been querying for months, years even. Your manuscript has undergone countless edits. It’s been rewritten and developed. Smoothed out and polished. And yet, you’re still receiving an onslaught of rejections. Although realistically this happens to almost all writers (the good writers and the bad) it can still be quite disheartening. It also mean that the prospect of having a publisher accept your manuscript, on the condition that you pay a small upfront fee can be very tempting. After all, they’re editing your book for you, typesetting, and marketing; all you have to do is sit back and relax, right? The truth is that what they’re actually doing is taking advantage of you as a writer.
Publishers who do this are known in the writing community as vanity publishers. They’re highly frowned upon, and although they aren’t technically doing anything illegal, they are basically scamming poor writers like you and me out of profit. But why is vanity publishing, or hybrid publishing as some of these publishers are now calling themselves, so bad. They’re probably not really going to be charging you a large fee, maybe $1,000 or less — just enough to cover editing, cover design, typesetting and the first print run. It doesn’t seem bad, does it? No, it is. It very much is that bad. But in order to understand why this is so bad, we first need to properly understand the other two, more acceptable models of publishing, and how they work. Traditional publishing and self-publishing.
The traditional publishing model can be hard, and somewhat tedious to get into. That is because whenever an author (especially an unestablished author) has signed a book to be traditionally published; the publisher is bearing a large amount of risk. They’re publishing the book free of charge. They’re paying for everything, including cover design, editing, typesetting, lunch if you ever meet up with them, and flights and accommodation if they ever want you to appear at a book signing. This can often cost upwards of $3,000. If your book doesn’t sell (and often it doesn’t), they lose money. Not you. But the flip side of this is that they take a large portion of the profit from the book you’ve worked very hard on. Usually 80% per sale. It seems like a fair trade. Stability and support in exchange for a small (or smaller) amount of income. If your book sells well, then you still get some profit, but not all of it.
Self-publishing is quite the opposite. This model of publishing can be a lot easier to get into, but it’s much more risky. You’re going to be paying for everything that would have been covered by the traditional model (yes this includes your own lunch). You’re going to be the one sending your novel out for reviews, making contacts and organizing a spot for your stall down in the market place. And if it goes downhill, you’re going to lose a lot of money. But the upside is that you’ll be making a lot more money off the sales. In fact, the only profit you won’t see is any commission that is taken from an online seller or a book distributer. And that’s only because you’re essentially paying them for their services or platform. Other then that, all the money goes to you. If your book does well, you do very well. You bear the risk; you get the profit.
So what’s wrong with vanity publishing then? When a vanity publisher signs a new author, they ask the author to pay for the cost (or part of the cost) of publishing. This means that the publisher is actually bearing none of the risk, because you’ve upfronted all their fees. Yet they’ll still take a cut of your profit. That means that if you sell zero copies of your book, they break even and you suffer financially. If your book sells one copy then they turn a profit, and you still suffer financially. You can kind of see where I’m going here. It’s a win, win for them. They can sign as many authors as they want, and still stay afloat. On top of that, they have no motivation to push your book on the marketing side either. Because it’s really no loss to them if your book doesn’t do well, and marketing takes time and resources. Often they skimp out on the editing, and do sketchy cover designs. You might have noticed earlier that I mentioned a vanity publisher will usually ask for $1,000, where as it costs a traditional publisher between $3,000 — $5,000 to get your novel in print. That wasn’t an inconsistency. It’s because vanity publishers will often do a rough job of shaping your book, a quick edit, a cheap cover design (probably from Fiver). A traditional publisher will often to a much better job of shaping your book because they really, really don’t want your book to just sit on a shelf in a warehouse gathering dust. Vanity publishers on the other hand, will only invest heavily into pushing your book if they see that’s its doing well. If it isn’t doing great, then it kind of isn’t their problem.
If you’re considering a vanity publisher because you can’t land a traditional contract, put the money you’re going to pay a vanity publisher into self publishing. There’s no shame in self-publishing. Many good writers do it. And if your issue is that you just can’t be bothered hiring an editor, getting a cover designed, learning to format and typeset, you just want your book up on that shelf, then pay someone to do all that for you. There are services out there which will get your book into a publishable state. You’ll pay them something similar to what you’re going to pay that vanity publisher anyway, but they won’t be asking you to hand over the rights to your work and they certainly won’t be taking a cut of your profits. That’s because you’re simply paying for a service.
People are becoming more and more aware of vanity publishers these days — and because of this vanity publishers are becoming more and more crafty in the way they going about things. So before I finish up, I just want to highlight some red flags. If you’re wondering weather or not the contract you just landed is a legit publisher, or if they’re just trying to scam you: the five points below should give you a clearer picture of what kind of publisher you’re dealing with.
1. Often vanity publishers will hide the way that they try to get an author to cover the costs of publishing. For example, they might tell you that you’ll be obligated to buy several copies of your book after it’s published, and that you’ll need to sell them on your own. Don’t fall for it. You shouldn’t have to pay, or buy anything when signing with a traditional publisher.
2. Ads. A traditional publisher’s inboxes are piled so high with submitted manuscripts that I wouldn’t be surprised if their email provider charged them for all the data they’re taking up. Even really small presses have their inboxes smashed on a daily basis. Therefore, a publisher will never advertise. If you see an advertisement from a publisher — they’re probably a vanity publisher.
3. Beware of hybrid publishers. In my opinion, hybrid publishers are just vanity publishers trying to step out of their now infamous reputation by wrapping themselves with a new brand and a new deal. Hybrid publishing is the same thing as vanity publishing. You just get to keep a little more of the royalties.
4. Is their website flooded with books and writers? Even the big publishers have to be careful about what writers they take on and what they publish. If they signed a writer and published a book every other day, then they’d probably be out of business, or heavily in debt before the books even make it to the shelves. Therefore, be wary if a publisher who is pumping out books and authors like there is no tomorrow.
5. When in doubt, contact the authors. I’ve actually done this. I landed a publishing contract with a publisher who wanted me to buy some of their books before they’d sign me. I was very wary, and contacted an author who’d had their book published with this publisher. Needless to say, she gave me the full rundown on what a terrible experience it was to work with these publishers.
Hopefully, this article has given you a little bit of insight as to what vanity publishing is, and why it’s so bad. Remember; if a publisher is asking you for any kind of money in return for signing you as an author, don’t accept. That’s all there is to it. Bye for now, not forever.
The Everyday Writer (D.J.J.Mizzi).
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