Marked-up prices for low-quality editing and designingĮditors and designers are essential to a book’s success - and some companies and individuals will exploit this fact to take money out of your pocket. However, if you don’t have your guard up, it is easy to fall for predators who simply want to overcharge for their services - many of which are tasks you could accomplish on your own. In fact, it’s advisable to get editing and designing services from reliable professionals to make sure your book is of top quality. Though self-publishing, by definition, means that you’re doing it yourself, there are companies out there who can give you a hand. Grossly overpriced self-publishing services Take this quick quiz to see if you're dealing with a legit publishing company.ģ. Agents work on commission, meaning the only time you pay them is when they’ve successfully helped sell your book to a publisher. Even if they help you polish your manuscript before submitting it to publishers, it should not come with a charge. Secondly, your agent should never ask you to pay for anything. If you belong to the 99% of authors who’ve yet to achieve major success, the only way to get an agent to represent you and your book is to send them a query letter. If a literary agent unsolicitedly contacts you to offer you a book deal with a publisher, or asks you to pay a reading fee, your spidey-sense should be tingling pretty hard.įirstly, literary agents won’t ever contact you directly - unless you’re already a wildly successful author (and even then, most reputable agents would avoid poaching you from your current representation). 'Literary agents' promising book dealsĪnother kind of scam you might be dealing with is an agent scam. Sometimes vanity presses pose as hybrid publishers, so head to our post on hybrid publishing to understand that model better. If you want to work with reliable publishers, browse our catalog of independent presses, all of which have been thoroughly vetted. To understand why publishing with a vanity press is a terrible idea, head on over to the next post in this guide, which discusses the dangers of “paying to publish”. New vanity presses seem to set up shop each month - and with no “bad press” associated with their names, they’re able to convince many authors to pay for their services. These days, it isn’t enough to simply learn the names of unreliable publishers. In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, they started targeting desperate authors with a “publishing package” that cost exactly the same amount as that received by American citizens in their federal stimulus check. A well-known cluster of scammers is the Filipino network previously associated with Authors Solution and now operates separately. Some scammers even masquerade under the name of Big Five imprints. Some massively prolific vanity presses you may wish to avoid include: So nine out of ten times, if a publisher asks you to pay to be published, it is a vanity press. In fact, when acquiring your book, they will pay you an advance. No legitimate traditional publisher would ask you to foot the bill. Who wouldn’t love it if a publisher offers to reprint one of your self-published titles or publish your next book, right? You might even be happy to pay some fees to get the ball rolling on the production process.īut that would be a big mistake. Vanity presses pretending to be traditional publishers
To help you protect your work, your bank account, and your dignity, here are the types of shady companies and book publishers you should avoid: 1. Unfortunately, there are plenty of unreliable companies out there looking to make a quick buck by exploiting those dreams. Becoming a published author is a dream shared by almost every writer.
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