Greetings to all authors and readers.
Today, I want to address something that I have repeatedly seen among the authors here that both worries and concerns me.
First, let me introduce myself. My name is K.R. Fraser, and I am an author. I am also the owner and CEO of Dragonrock Press. We are a small, independent publishing company, and we only represent a small number of clients at any given time. Now, that being said, this is my concern:
I have seen many authors talk about how they paid a publishing company to publish their work. STOP DOING THIS! No legitimate publishing company charges the author to publish them. A legitimate publishing company pays for all the fees of publishing up front, pays the author an advance, and signs a contract that includes what royalties the author makes off their published work. The way a publishing company is paid back for this is through the sales of that work.
Let's say your advance is $5000. You would not see another penny after that until your book sold that amount worth and the company got back their money. Then you begin receiving royalties off every book sold after that.
The people who are paying a so-called Publishing company to have their books published are getting ripped off. These types of Presses are called Vanity Presses, and they are often not even legitimate Presses. Some take all the rights to your work so you can never get it published anywhere else, and you never see a penny from them in royalties. Others don't register your work in copyright. Still others claim the credit for your work. If you are lucky enough to get one that does not do any of the above, and actually publishes your work for you, they are still charging you far more than it costs to actually publish a written work.
And before you ask... yes, traditional publishing companies do get a certain amount over and above the money they forwarded you when they publish you, but not in the amounts you are seeing by Vanity Presses. They also do not rip off people the way these Vanity Presses do. In other words, you get more BANG for your buck! They do more for you, represent you and help you protect your work, and they help with some of the advertising because you are their investment and they want you to succeed. Vanity Presses do none of this.
If you are a new author looking to publish your work, there are several things you need to do to protect yourself and your work:
1) ALWAYS do your research!
2) Copyright with the US Copyright office as a US citizen, or if overseas, follow the practices your country has for copyright protection. This ensures that no one can steal your work.
3) Ask questions - as many as you can think of!
4) If you get rejection letters - frame them! Most companies do not bother to send them because of the immense numbers of submissions they receive every day. If you actually received a rejection letter back, it means they can see worth in your writing, but you may not be ready yet, or not the right fit. Remember, Stephen King received 72 rejections before his first work was published.
5) If you decide to self-publish, then just do it! Don't look for other people to do all the steps for you. That is the cesspool where you will find all the scam-artists. Instead, ask other authors who are already established as self-published for legitimate references to the real people in the industry.
There are cover artists, editors (multiple different kinds of editors. We'll cover that later), agents, and even small Presses like ours that are legitimate and know how to do their jobs. These are the people you want to work with, and they know their way around the industry. Many of us will also gladly answer any questions you have concerning the Industry.
We are all tired of seeing people who worked so hard to get that first book done ending up in some kind of either a legal battle to try to recover their work, giving up because they lost so much money, or not gaining the kind of success they hoped for because of something like this. The way some of these scam artists get you is they pose as a legitimate Press and let you submit your work to them, and then rake you over the coals. The only way this stops is if we as a community work together to share the knowledge every incoming author needs to protect themselves from this kind of fraud.
I'd much rather hear success stories on here than one more that ended in losses. Good luck to you.