Vanity Press How to Dodge Scams Self-Publishing Companies to Avoid

Vanity Press How to Dodge Scams Self-Publishing Companies to Avoid Vanity Press Scams and Self Publishing Companies to Avoid The awful news for authors out there today is that there are plenty vanity press scams and self-publishing companies to avoidunless you want your money stolen, that isIf you are a self-published author, publishing your book today has never been easier. With a quick Google search, you’ll come across dozens of self-publishing companies offering publishing services for authors.But, how do you know if the company isn’t just another vanity press scam?Before making any decisions, you want to check out all your options carefully. If not, you could find yourself the victim of a self-publishing scam, forking thousands of bucks over to a shady publishing company with nothing to show for it.In this post, you’ll learn how to recognize the self-publishing scams when they cold call youand the companies you can really trust to get your book published!Here’s what we’ll cover in this post on self-publishing scams:Why authors fall for vanity press scamsEarly warning signs of self-publishing scamsYour self-publishing optionsTaking down the scammersRed flag list: Self-publishing companies to avoidWriters beware and watchdog groupsEducate yourself in self-publishingAre you ready to self-publish your book?NOTE: If youre ready for a system and method to actually succeed in the self-publishing industry (not to mention keep ALL the money you earn), check out our VIP Self-Publishing Program. Learn more about it hereAs with any lucrative industry, there are a wide range of self-publishing scams in business for one reason: To take your money.A Vanity press publisher charges sky-high prices for author services that includes editing, formatting, cover design, and marketing.But, all of this is outsourced to the lowest bidder and in the end, the author is left with a poor quality book and no way to market it.â€Å"You get what you pay for† doesn’t equate when it comes to vanity press and the publishing scams they represent. You do pay top dolla r, often tens of thousands, and what you get back for your investment lacks anything of value.So, how can you avoid these self-publishing scams?Let’s take a look.Why Authors Fall for Vanity Press ScamsThere could be many reasons why someone would sign up with a scammy publishing company that wants you to pay big money up front.There is no shortage of scams out there when it comes to self-publishing. The biggest reason authors fall into these scams is becausewell, they dont know what they should know to avoid being scammed in the first place.The fact that you have to pay a publisher to get your book published is warning sign enough: The lies are on the wall. Most authors who fall into this trap are not published authors yet.You are either thinking of writing a book, youve started writing it, or you’re done and can’t wait to get it out there.So, when a publisher comes along offering to get their â€Å"just finished† manuscript into the hands of thousands of readers and sell millions of books worldwide, I would grab at it, too. Who wouldn’t want that?As a first time author, you are most likely not going to write a book that sells thousands of copies. And if you do, it will not be through a company that you just paid $5,000-$10 to for this to happen.Most soon-to-be-published self-publishers fall into the lap of predatory publishers because they need help.For someone who wants to become a successful author, your passion to publish is so strong that it overrides the sudden impulse to take the first offer on the table.Here are several reasons why you might fall for the vanity press trap:You are desperate for the know-how of book publishing.The publishing process is too complex.You are scared of â€Å"not publishing† and want it done right now.You are not tech-savvy and would rather pay someone to overcome the hurdles.Your friends keep asking you â€Å"When is your book coming out?†You know nothing about book marketing and need to hire the experts. Guess what: Vanity publishers don’t know much about it either and youll have to market no matter the avenue of publishing you choose.You watched a video of a self-published author who just signed a 6-figure deal with a large publisherand you think that is what usually happens.Before you make any hasty decisions, stop and breathe. If you need help with publishing your book [and everyone does] there is a right way and†¦The other way that steals all your hard-earned dollars.My hope is that you read this post before signing anything. If you can know the danger signs to watch for, you’ll pull yourself back from making a decision that costs you thousands of dollars, not to mention the heavy burden of regret later.Early Warning Signs: The Lies of Vanity PressVanity presses are generally a bad idea all around, but well cover some specific ways they can scam you and why theyre often on the list of self-publishing companies to avoid.How Vanity Press Publishers Scam YouIt is actually easy to spot a predatory publisher. I only hope you get to this post before they get to you. Here are the 5 big signs you are at risk of being scammed.#1 - The company asks for publishing fees. This should be enough right here. Although Hybrid Publishers require authors to pay for all the publishing services upfront, they usually split the fees later.A vanity press publisher will charge thousands for a publishing package. You are told that the book sales will be recouped later through book saleswhich almost never happen. Don’t listen to the so-called â€Å"reviews and testimonials† on the websites. These are rigged, of course.#2 - â€Å"We will publish your book for you on Amazon.† Let me be clear about this: Publishing on Amazon is super easy, even if you have limited tech skills. Not to mention Amazon has an excellent support system in place. The response time to inquiries is less than 24 hours and they are very detail ed when it comes to responses.A vanity publisher will make this sound more complicated than it really is. They will â€Å"take care of everything† and upload the book for you. What this also means is you lose control over making any future changes to the book. The only person that should be uploading the book to Amazon is YOU under your own account.#3 - Charges for A Reading Fee. Never. This just isn’t done. A traditional publishing house never asks for this. If you are told by the sales rep they will read your book for a certain fee, red flag this. The â€Å"reading fee† scam is less common today, but just in case you do run up against a company that tries this old scam.With a real publisher, nobody makes money until the book is selling. Actually, this practice has fallen the wayside these days and it would be rare to come across. But there is always someone willing to try†¦#4 - The publisher will buy you an ISBN [because they are so hard to get]. You ca n buy an ISBN through Bowker.com if you reside within the USA. The cost is $125.00. In the U.K. you go through Nielson. In Canada ISBNs are free through ISBN Canada. If you buy this through IngramSpark they offer a slight discount. Again, this is just another ploy to make you think it is a difficult process that is better off left to the â€Å"professionals.†#5 - â€Å"We will take care of all the marketing, because we know how difficult it is.† Yes, marketing is difficult, especially for authors. But a vanity press company won’t market the book to sell, they will do the bare minimum required so it appears as if the book is being placed in the proper channels.My advice: Grab a book on marketing for authors or enroll in a course. Learn it. You can even outsource it out so that you do Sell More Books. But in the end nobody is better at marketing their own book than the author.#6 - Excessive use of flattery. The first time I spoke to a vanity press sales rep I re member the praise she gave me for my book. I felt as if I had written a book that was going to sell thousands of copies in the first week.The rep was quoting passages from the book and referencing everything from the first page. Mind you, I later realized, everything she was quoting was from the first few pages. So did she read it? Of course not.#7- A sales rep calls you several hours after you sign up to their newsletter with a sales pitch. I tested one of these sites by enquiring about their services, and I downloaded a freebie. The next day I received a call from my â€Å"Publishing consultant† ready to help me fulfill my dreams as an author. Wow. The sales pitch was impressive, but if you already knew the situation, it was a total scam. You can smell it.But, for a new author excited to be part of the publishing journey, listening to someone else tell you how excited they are to publish your boom is a very tempting catch. In the end, they don’t care about your book or you. Whether it is Author Solutions or another of the dozens of publishing scammers out there, they get your money and keep milking it with constant upsells.#8 - Make â€Å"over the mountain promises† to get you endorsed by Hollywood. It is not unusual for these companies to tell you that your book has a shot of being featured in Oprah’s book club, or that they will send your manuscript to one of their agents in Hollywood for review.I can promise you one thing- Your book will never see the inside of a movie studio. Not unless you are a well-established author who has already proven themselves, and even then, it will not be through a vanity press company that you get there.#9 - Promises to get your book into barnes and noble and other bookstores. In this case what happens is, they put your book into a large catalogue where bookstores and libraries can order it. But realistically, you’ll be hard pressed to sell a single book in any bookstore if you publish t hrough a vanity press company. Libraries and bookstores won’t even consider it in most cases.#10 - Insists you sign a contract handing over exclusivity. If this final dose doesn’t make you run the other way, I don’t know what will. By any and all means, as a self-published author, you do not sign over your material rights to anyone. This gives the vanity publisher the right to further exploit your work and profit from all sales. The author, in this case, gets a lower end percentage.Now that you’ve seen the red flags, you are well-informed to make a decision if you come across what appears to be a shady publisher. You don’t need to sign anything or pay huge amounts of money for the publisher to â€Å"publish you to Amazon† or set you up with a movie deal.Now, let’s take a look atYour Self-Publishing OptionsWe are not living in the 1990s anymore. Back then, choices to self-publish were limited. You either paid a company- like a vanity press- a lot of money. Or, you went on your own and hired a printing company to run off tons of copies that were not cheap.Today, you will see that you have many good choices these days that make it easier for you to get your book published.#1 - Self-Publishing CoursesThere are quite a few reputable self-publishing courses out there. You buy the course, and work through the modules to write and ultimately publish your own book.There are costs to publish your book, including creating it, cover design, editing, and launching your book. You still have to pay for these services, but at least you get to choose who is working on your book.It is up to each individual author to outsource his or her own book. Publishing courses provide the content you need to get it all done, but you do all the work and take on additional costs outside the cost of the course.You have to pay for the basics that any author pays for: A good cover design, hiring an editor and formatting, and maybe a budget for marketing services such as book promo sites or a media package.But many new authors are weary about self-publishing and think uploading to Amazon- or other publishing companies- is a complex ordeal. It isn’t. I have been coaching authors for years and, nowadays, the system is built in that all you have to do is plug your book info into the Kindle Direct Publishing Bookshelf and away you go. The cost for actually self-publishing your book is O.The production cost for the average book is about $1500. If you pay $1000-3000 for a course + $1500 for the book production, you are still under $5,000. If you continue to write more books, you’ve already paid for the course that usually gives you access for a lifetime.Taking a self-publishing course is the best option we think. You learn how to do so much of the process yourself, and can rinse and repeat for future books. You still pay for everything but, who you decide to hire is up to you and the creative decisions are all you rs.#2 - KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing]The KDP platform is Amazons book publishing platform. Publishing a book is so much easier now than it ever used to be, especially with Amazon self-publishing.You no longer need to go through painstaking efforts to land a book deal which locks you into unrealistic deadlines and cuts you out of most of the earnings. You don’T have to sign up and fork over thousands to a vanity press company.You can now have complete control of your book – and its revenues – by publishing directly through Amazon self-publishing.Setting up your KDP account is easy, and should be the first step you complete.Here’s how to set up your Kindle Direct Publishing account:Go to https://kdp.amazon.com and register with either your Amazon account or with your email address.Next, click â€Å"Update† in your account information and fill in your tax information. It’s important to note that you need to complete your tax information BEFOR E you can publish your first book. So don’t skip this step!Once your tax information is complete, click â€Å"Finished† and return to the main page.Your profile is complete!#3 - Print On DemandIf you are a new author reading this, with the print on demand services offered by Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingramspark, you can order your own author copies and pay print costs plus shipping to your location. Buy your own ISBN, copyright your book, and own what you create.To start printing your own books with IngramSpark, visit their website and set up an account. Do the same with Amazons’ Kindle Direct Publishing platform. Do it yourself. It’s not the difficult process many would have you believe, and there is lots of support on these sites ready to help you right away.How much is the cost to print a book?It depends on the book size but, for a book that is 30k in length with little to no photos or graphs and text only, expect to pay less than $4 per copy. The average scammy publisher will charge new authors $15-20 dollars per copy.But for them, they print the books at the same cost as an author who sets this up through KDP or IngramSpark.In fact, many vanity press publishers use IngramSpark for the print-on-demand service only just to sell the books back to the author at 5x the print cost.#4 - Vanity Press PublisherVanity press publishing, also called subsidy publishing, differs from selfpublishing in that the author assumes all the risk and pays the publisher for everything.The editing, formatting, cover design, and even marketing the book are paid for by the author through the various packages offered when an author signs up.But, there is a trap here: The costs are more than you initially pay for, and they don’t tell you this until later when you’re mired deeper into the project. Once invested, most authors are compelled to publish the book no matter the costs.The emotional investment is what these companies prey on. Kn owing how you feel about your book, they are ready to help you do anything to get it to marketand that means offering more expensive services.By the time you are done and the book is published, potentially you have just spent $10k. With close to 0 book sales.Vanity publishers make money, not from selling books for you, but from the author buying their own books back from the publisher. It is a scam where the author always loses.#5 - Traditional PublishersThis is not a self-publishing route but, if you want to take the traditional path, you can begin by querying your manuscript with agents. Keep in mind, you may not see your book in print for a couple of year due to the lengthy process of first finding an agent, and then having them submit it to publishers to buy.What is a traditional publisher?â€Å"A traditional book publishing company buys the rights to an authors manuscript. Buying rights from the author is how book publishers have traditionally acquired books. The advance is d educted by the book publisher from any royalties the author receives from the sale of the book.†That’s right, they pay you an advance for the book. You don’t pay them anything. It depends on the publisher’s contract but they will pay for [some] marketing.The editing, cover design and formatting is taken care of by the publisher [in most cases].There are a lot of nightmare stories of authors signing on with traditional publishers, but that usually equates to the publisher not trying hard enough to sell any books. In this case the author may end the contract and, after that, many authors take up with self-publishing and find better success. After all, why not be in charge of building your own book business?#6 - Hybrid PublishersA hybrid publisher is what you will find between a traditional publisher [pay nothing upfront but get paid an advance] or a vanity press publisher [pay for everything upfront and keep all royalties.The hybrid publishers model is simp le: An author pays for everything upfront but gets a bigger cut of the royalties after book sales, upwards of 50%. The initial cost means that the author assumes all the financial risk in order to get the book to market.One other difference between traditional and hybrid publishing is, the hybrid has to pay the author a higher percentage of royalties than a traditional publishing house.In order for a company to be called a hybrid publisher, there are 9 criteria set out by the IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) that must be adhered to:In order to not be classified as a vanity press, ALL book submissions must be reviewed. This means if your book does not meet the criteria, it should be rejected. A vanity press doesn’t care. Anything and anybody will do.Hybrid publishers must clearly define a vision to follow for their company.Must report reputable sales on all titles they publish.Authors who sign with hybrid publishers must be paid a higher royalty than that of stan dard traditional publisher rates.The quality of the production- cover design, editing and formatting- must meet industry standards.The publisher must publish as its own defined imprint and request its own ISBNs.Manage all distribution services for the works.Hybrid publisher must manage the rights of the works they publish as well as any subsequent rights acquired.Hybrid publishers must meet the standards and best practices set out by the publishing industry.Butthe vanity press publishers are bad seeds. Lately they are disguising their services as â€Å"hybrid publishers† but still operate with the same scammy tactics.Take caution here that, while a hybrid publisher might look legit on the surface, there is a possibility you could get ripped off if you are not 100% sure.Taking Down the ScammersAs a coach and self-publishing authority, I have worked with at least a dozen authors who’ve come away from a vanity press publisher broke, not just financially, but emotionally a s well.Like most authors, they just wanted to fulfill a dream and publish a book. But as soon as you sign up with a self-publishing scam company, your dreams are ripped apart and so is your bank account. By the time the not-yet-published author realizes it, they are invested by thousands of dollars and bound by a contract.Over the years several class-action suits have been launched against scammy publishers for bad business practice. The worst of these publishers is Author Solutions, a company with a bad rap and a long history of complaints targeted against it by authors who have been exploited.This company boasts on its website â€Å"300,000 authors published.† I would be hard-pressed to believe this and to go a step further, the percentage of those authors who would use Author Solution service again?Chances are if you have been down this road, you realized before you were half way there that you’d taken a bad path.Author Solutions is at the top of the chain of seedy publishing houses promising to get your book to market because the world needs to hear your story. And for a publishing package upwards of $5999 it could all be done for you. Well, initially you are led to believe.Author Solutions is the parent company of several subsidiaries that operate, not only in the US but now have an International reach as they have set up in countries worldwide.How do they make their money?It isn’t from helping authors to sell books.The authors usually end up selling nothing. Instead, they are made to buy the books they want from the publishers at a high cost just so they can have their own copies to sell or giveaway.Recently, several companies have been shut down in class action lawsuits, and this is still continuing today, with authors taking a stand and fighting back against the book publishing thieves.Fortunately, authors are better educated these days on the publishing options available. Vanity publishers are disappearing. But do return â€Å"we aring different clothing†, disguised as the next best company to get you that bestselling book.Red Flag List: Self-Publishing Companies to AvoidI have compiled a list of publishing companies you should avoid at all costs. This is not a complete list but includes names of the major companies flagged by Writer Beware and Alliance of Independent Authors.For a very thorough listing, I would recommend you check with the Alliance of Independent Authors. ALLi stays up-to-date on the scammy reports, warnings and lawsuits taken against bad publishers.Here are some self-publishing companies that have made the list of those to watch out for:Author SolutionsAuthorHouse UKArchway Publishing [Simon and Schuster]LifeRich Publishing [Reader’s Digest]iUniversePalibrio [for the Spanish-speaking community]Dorrance publishingChristian faith publishingWestbow pressBalboa press [a Division of Hay House]Newman Springs PublishingPartridge PublishingTate PublishingTrafford PublishingXlibris [UK , AU, and NZ]Outskirts PressDog ear publishingWriters Beware and Watchdog GroupsRemember: Always do your homework. To make sure if you are buying into a legit business you should check in with these sites listed below.Writer Bewareâ€Å"Shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news, and commentary. Writer Beware is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.†Preditors and EditorsProviding up-to-date action against possible publishing scammers.ALLi [Alliance of Independent Authors] / Watchdog Postsâ€Å"Each month on the ALLi blog, the excellent Watchdog John Doppler explores key issues regarding the provision of self-publishing services around the world.†The Independent Publishing Magazine / Publishing Service IndexA detailed breakdown of self-publishing companies and their ranking based on service and reliability.Educate Yourself in S elf-PublishingPublishing scams will always be around as long as authors are paying for their services.How do you, as an author, avoid falling into this trap?The self-publishing arena is like a vast oasis of information and a never-ending learning process. Vanity press publishers are banking on you having no idea what to do, which is why you might consider turning to a publishing company in the first place.Our advice at Self Publishing School is this: Educate yourself on how to publish a book. You’d be surprised the things you actually don’t have to pay for.Take control of your self-publishing career today.Are you ready to self-publish your book?Enroll in an online self-publishing courseYou can check out this list of best self-publishing courses. I highly recommend joining an online self-publishing course for achieving all your publishing goals.You will learn how to write and market your book your way and all of it within your control. You won’t have to give up a nything or sign your book rights over to a publisher that will exploit your creativity.