Misinformation regarding book publishing is an issue that writers can’t afford to ignore. How can writers avoid being conned and ripped off by unscrupulous people and vanity publishing businesses?
These are a few of the many questions writers are grappling with as they navigate a dangerous publishing landscape that’s sadly full of publishing sharks.
Let’s start with some definitions because vanity publishing businesses and vanity marketing businesses will always tell you that they’re not vanity businesses.
They will claim they are hybrid publishers or co-publishers or partner publishers or providers of self-publishing services or author services.
The email scammers will falsely represent themselves as publishing industry professionals and marketing companies.
Vanity publishing, at its core, can be defined as a pay-to-play business deal that is a rip off. The author pays a vanity business TOO MUCH MONEY to publish or market their book.
The truth about their business model is very simple to discern if you ask the right questions.
Research independent (indie) publishing and learn how much money indie authors typically spend to publish and market their books.
Explore traditional publishing opportunities where authors don’t pay any money to publish their books. Traditionally published authors receive royalties from their publisher from book sales. The traditional publisher makes their money from selling books.
Vanity publishing is a perilous and dangerous publishing option for a long list of reasons.
Authors can get conned by smooth and sophisticated sales pitches because the AUTHOR is the vanity publisher’s CUSTOMER.
Vanity publishers actively pursue authors and want to publish their books, irrespective of the quality. If the author is prepared to pay enough money to publish their book and cover the vanity publisher’s costs plus profit margin, the vanity publisher will oblige and take their money with a smile on their face.
Con artists and scammers are known for being charming and sweet on first acquaintance. They’ll sweet talk you and tell you how amazing your book is while plotting how to empty your bank account.
Don’t mistakenly trust a fake friend who might be secretly getting paid a referral fee to recruit new customers for a vanity publisher. It’s not unheard of for vanity publishers to recruit their author victims as sales people because they operate their vanity publishing business like a multilevel marketing company.
Traditional publishers don’t pursue authors. Instead, traditional publishers typically have slush piles of proposals and manuscripts and can only publish a small fraction of the submissions they receive from authors. The larger publishers usually only accept hand picked book proposals from trusted literary agents.
That’s the key difference between a vanity publisher and a traditional publisher. When book sales are not the primary source of income for the publisher, the author is the customer of the vanity publishing business.
The author will be financially exploited by the vanity publisher.
The author is personally footing the bill and paying for everyone else’s wages at the vanity publishing business.
The author is being ripped off because they are not getting paid for the hard work they did in writing their book.
The vanity publisher has minimal care factor regarding book selling because they’ve already made their profit upfront from the author who has paid them too much money to publish their book.
It’s highly unlikely that a vanity published book could reach bestselling status. That’s a false dream they sell to con vulnerable authors into paying too much money to publish their book.
Queensland Department of Fair Trading has an information page warning authors about the dangers of vanity and predatory publishers. A quote from the webpage:
“Vanity and predatory publishing are unscrupulous arrangements where publishers and scammers encourage authors to publish their work for a fee, signing contracts not in their best interests.”
Link to website: https://www.qld.gov.au/community/fair-trading/consumer-rights-complaints-and-scams/buying-products-and-services/vanity-publishing
A Current Affair recently did an exposé on a publisher who has ripped off authors. A quote from the article:
“More than 100 children’s book authors and illustrators across the globe have united to expose an Adelaide publisher accused of leaving writers thousands of dollars out of pocket.”
Link to article: https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/a-current-affair/starfish-bay-publishing-authors-allege-unpaid-royalties-adelaide-20261001-p6127b.html
It is an indisputable fact that authors are financially harmed from vanity publishing. It’s a dangerous publishing path that should be avoided at all costs.
Queensland Publisher, Editor and Author ANNE HAMILTON has shared her experiences with authors who mistakenly believed they’d sell enough books to recoup the money they’d spent to vanity publish their books. Unfair vanity publishing contract terms have limited their ability to sell books at a competitive price point.
Some of the most tragic interactions for me as an author and a publisher have been in counselling desperate writers who’ve realised they’ve been caught in a vanity trap. They’ve scraped together money, made a risky sacrifice to pay for a publication package and, too late, it’s dawned on them they have no way of recouping even the tiniest percentage of the money they’ve ‘invested’. One of the most heartbreaking moments was talking to a woman who, in despair, said she was giving up writing because God had not protected her. She’d been scammed four times in a single year by a vanity publisher. She was so distraught I remained silent and didn’t remind her I’d warned her about that very publisher a year previously.
Another time I was asked by a bookstore manager to explain to an author the economic realities of bookselling. The author had a book that had been published by a vanity press and he had been persistent in approaching the bookstore to take it at 10% off the recommended retail price of $19.99. He didn’t have a clue that the standard bookstore discount is 45% and he thought the bookstore was trying to rip him off. He wanted to recoup his investment so he wanted at least $5 profit on each book that he’d bought from the vanity publisher for $12 each. The bookstore manager was getting nowhere trying to explain that the wholesale price of the book needed to be $11 or less or he couldn’t take any copies. The author on the other hand couldn’t understand why he was expected to make a loss on each book.
Getting him to understand that it wasn’t the bookstore manager who was trying to price-gouge, it was instead his publisher who was profiteering was incredibly difficult. In his mind, the vanity publisher had been so supportive, so cooperative, so helpful.
(It reminded me of another woman who refused to believe she’d been scammed. ‘No!’ she cried when she was told to ask for the print sales numbers before committing more money for an e-book version. ‘You don’t understand. He’s a friend. He sent me a Christmas card!’)
The author also wanted the bookstore to stock dozens of copies and pay upfront. I explained to him that the average author sells about a hundred copies, so expecting one bookstore to take several dozen is unrealistic.
Salvaging this kind of situation is almost impossible. It’s critical to understand the margins for each link in the supply chain before agreeing to pay any money. If you have to sell even 200 books to recoup your outlay, it’s probably too much. If you have to sell 500, it is definitely too much. Debut authors rarely achieve figures remotely like that, no matter how good their book is.
Christian Author, Speaker and Chaplain JENNY GLAZEBROOK shares her personal and heartbreaking story about being ripped off by a vanity publisher who wanted to “partner” with her to publish her book. When Jenny realised she’d been trapped in a terrible vanity publishing contractual arrangement, the vanity publisher told her she was “ungrateful” for requesting a rights reversion.
God had called me to write and be published. I knew it without a doubt. So, I sent my novel to a publisher recommended by Christian friends.
When I received a reply back from the publisher saying they published less than 2% of manuscripts submitted but that mine stood out far above the rest, I was overjoyed.
But when the letter and contract arrived, I read it and re-read it confused. They still spoke glowingly of my story, but they could not cover the full costs of publishing and so would like to partner with me to do it.
I was disappointed, but just having their name on my book would give me credibility … wouldn’t it? And the fact they had individualised a contract for me showed they believed in me and cared about me as an author.
I managed to scrabble the thousands of dollars together … after all, I’d soon get it back in sales, and I was helping the Christian company at the same time. It was all finally happening.
What exactly was happening?
- They didn’t edit – only had someone go through and add a few commas. (Of course, I thought this meant my book was good enough as it was).
- The book formatting was terrible and I ended up giving up asking them to change it because fixing one issue created another.
- The book cover options were limited and not what I’d dreamed, but I decided for the sake of being published to let another little part of my dream die.
- I was not given the service I was promised, I was not marketed as promised, and when I questioned it, I was told my book was never a seller anyway.
- I asked for my rights back (the publishing rights I’d assigned to them in my contract) and was told how ungrateful I was when they were just trying to give me a go. I was crushed, disillusioned, much poorer and doubting my calling.
In hindsight, I believe I may have been like Sarah. I’d received a promise, a calling from God, but I’d pushed ahead in my own way without waiting for the Lord to fulfil that promise in His way. Maybe deep down I didn’t trust Him to do it the way I wanted, so I felt that I had to take control myself. Or maybe I was just scammed.
Either way, like Sarah, I found the cost was not worth it. That first book will always be out there, that money will never be returned, the emotional anguish and discouragement placed a strain on my family when I should have been enjoying time with my newborn daughter, and it took me a long time to be confident I was hearing God’s voice again.
I thank God for the author and publisher who were kind enough to explain to me that my contract was not a typical royalty paying contract where the publisher believes in the book (a traditional publishing contract), but instead a contract to make sure I paid and handed my story over to the publisher at great cost to myself and none to them.
A contract of sale of a house is very different from a contract with a sales agent you are paying to help you sell your house. When we deceive people into thinking we have something we do not, we have lost something we can never get back. Our integrity.
May each of us never rush ahead of the Lord. May we trust Him enough to allow Him to do His work and make all things beautiful in His time. And may we always speak truth, life and love, because Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Education is key. Vulnerable writers who “don’t know what they don’t know” can make wise decisions if they’re educated and understand how the publishing industry works.
Below are the links to a list of posts on the dangers of vanity publishing plus information on self-publishing (independent publishing) from our blog archives.
VANITY PUBLISHING — A VERY BAD DEAL FOR AUTHORS – Narelle Atkins
Writers Life | Avoiding vanity publishers – Christine Dillon
Writers Life | Financial costs of self-publishing – Christine Dillon
Writers Life | Finding a team – Christine Dillon
Paths to Publishing | Vanity Publishing – Iola Goulton
Two Ways to Publish (and One Way Not to Publish) – Iola Goulton
Self Publishing 101 – Christine Dillon
Six Myths Non-Writers Believe – Iola Goulton
Is My Manuscript Publishable? – Iola Goulton
Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing – Christine Dillon
