How can I tell if the company who promises to publish
my book is a real publisher or just another vanity press publisher
trying to take my money? Do I really need an ISBN number?
Actually, the answer to both questions is pretty easy. If you submit
your manuscript to a “Publisher,” receive an acceptance
letter, a royalty contract and a promise of a check as a royalty advance
upon signing the contract, you are dealing with a publisher and are,
in truth, being published. Any deviation from the above will usually
mean that you are dealing with one of the many vanity presses that
should be avoided at all costs.
Ten years ago, one only had to avoid the full-page ads in the telephone
book that said, “Attn: Authors.” Take a look today; many
of them are still there. As friendly and tempting as these ads appear,
a manuscript submission to one of these places generally results in
a very nice “Your manuscript has been accepted for publication,” letter
along with a plan for how you were going to help pay for the publication
of your book. They say, this is how that say Edgar Allen Poe started.
These publishers were and still are, no more than scam artists who
specialize in taking peoples money and delivering very little, if anything,
in return.
Today, with the evolution of the Internet, these vanity press scam
artists are slicker and more creative in their con than ever. While
the full-page ad vanity presses are still present, many have taken
on new distinguished names like “subsidy press” or “cooperative
press” or “print-on-demand publisher”. The only difference
between all of these is the amount of money they take from you, the
author.
It’s sort of like the story of the difference between a Democrat
and a Republican. The Democrat raises your taxes a great deal because
he’s liberal. The Republican raises your taxes a little because
he’s conservative. The bottom line is that they both raise your
taxes. The same thing goes with these high-tech vanity presses. The
amount of money may vary but the result remains the same. You pay an
inflated price for the production of your book and the only sales are
the ones you make yourself.
The only thing that keeps most of these guys from going to jail is
a disclaimer buried deep within their contract stating that no promise
of sales is being made and very few people recover the money that
they invest; much less make any additional money. In short, any sales
that
are going to be made are going to be made by the author.
The final kick in the teeth in dealing with this type of publisher
is, after you finally figure out what is really going on and try
to take the book back and publish it somewhere else, you find that
you
have to start all over with your marketing efforts because your book
is registered in the name of the vanity publisher and the ISBN number
is not transferable. It is not owned by you and is not registered
in your name. You do not have all the rights to your book.
The most common tactic used by these modern day scam artists is to
tell you that they will “assign” or “sell” you
an ISBN number. They lead you to believe that your book is registered
in your name and reinforce this by telling you that “You retain
all the rights”. Unfortunately many of these companies are financed
by large companies with huge advertising budgets so they come across
as being quite legitimate. Some are even partially owned by large publishing
companies. They all claim thousands of customers but very few books
are sold by these companies other than to the authors and their friends
and family.
A good example of the deception practiced by these vanity presses
is that one of these companies recently announced it paid its one
millionth
dollar in royalty payments to authors. If you figure an average book
size of 256 pages and a royalty of $5.50 per book, their published
rate, it comes to 181,000 books sold. That doesn’t sound bad
by itself. The trick comes when you dig a little deeper into the old
press releases. In one the same company claims to have over 10,000
author/customers while in another the release proclaims over a million
and a half books sold. You do the math. It comes to eighteen copies
sold to the “general public” compared to one hundred and
thirty copies sold to the author. If that is what you have in mind… go
for it. If not, read on.
If you have not obtained your ISBN number (actually ten are the minimum)
from RR Bowker, you do not own it. Buying your own ISBN is the single
most important thing that you will do as an Independent Publisher.
So, for the answer to the second question, read on. The ISBN number
is what identifies you as the publisher. Once you have obtained you
ISBN numbers from RR Bowker, you are no longer a “self-publisher” you
are “A” publisher - an Independent Publisher. There is
no difference at that point between you and Random House except for
the fact that Random House publishes more titles than you (more than
most publishers for that matter). You assign one of these numbers to
your first book. Once you own the ISBN number, it remains the same
for the life of the book. You can change printers, distributors, wholesalers
or retailers. You can change whatever you want. The book remains yours.
If ten years from now, someone orders a copy of your book, you, as
the publisher, will get the order. If you don’t own the number,
the person who does, will get the order. Most of these vanity/subsidy
presses will not even be around ten years from now so the order for
that book will end up going unfulfilled.
If you haven’t gathered it in reading this, I’ll tell you
that these vanity presses are a pet peeve of mine. Over the last thirty
years, I have seen too many people mortgage their houses or run up
the totals on their credit cards in an attempt to have their dream
of being published fulfilled, only to be disappointed by some scam
artist. Creating an Independent Publishing company and publishing your
first book has never been easier or more economical. The main ingredient
for success remains the same. If you are willing to do your research
and put in a lot of personal effort, you can become successful.
If you have a question pertaining to the publishing production process, please
feel free to contact me at ron@rjcom.com.
