Publishing Scams, and the Questions That Expose Them

Paying for work is not the same as being defrauded

A great deal of advice on this subject says that a real publisher never asks an author for money, and stops there. That is true of traditional publishing and useless everywhere else, because it would make every editor, cover designer and formatter in the industry a fraud.

The useful line is different. It is about what you are buying and what you are giving up.

A legitimate paid service sells you defined work at a stated price. You know what you get, when, and for how much. You keep your copyright, you keep your royalties, you keep your rights, and you can walk away afterward and take your book with you. That is a transaction, and it is exactly what happens when you hire a freelance editor.

A vanity operation sells you the feeling of being published. The fee is large and bundled so that individual items cannot be priced. The company takes rights, or royalties, or both. The contract runs for years. And the thing you are really buying, which is distribution, promotion and the credibility of a publisher's name, is the thing that never arrives.

So the question is not whether money changes hands. It is whether you can see exactly what the money buys, and whether you still own your book at the end.

The vanity press, dressed as a publisher

The classic operation presents itself as a selective publisher and behaves as a sales business, and the tell is that its revenue comes from authors rather than readers.

The pattern is consistent. You submit, and you are accepted quickly and enthusiastically, often within days, sometimes with praise that does not quote a single specific thing from your manuscript. Then the acceptance turns out to require an investment: a package running from a few thousand dollars to well over twenty, covering editing, design, printing and marketing, itemized vaguely if at all.

Then come the calls. Publishing has no reason to be urgent, so urgency is a sales technique. Discounts that expire, slots that are filling, a print run that must be committed to this week. A real publisher is not going to lose money if you take a fortnight to read a contract.

The promises escalate as the price does. Bookstore placement, which almost never materializes beyond a returnable listing nobody orders from. Film industry exposure. Book fair representation, which usually means your cover on a shared table at a trade event no reader attends. Then, once the book exists and has sold in the low double figures, the upsells begin: marketing packages, second editions, awards submissions.

The economics tell the whole story. A publisher who makes money when your book sells will read carefully and reject most submissions, because their money is at risk. A company that makes money when you sign will accept almost everything, because yours is.

The agent who charges you

Literary agents are paid a commission on what they sell, customarily fifteen percent, and nothing before that. That single fact is enough to identify most fraudulent agents in one question.

The variants are all the same idea. A reading fee to consider your manuscript. An evaluation or assessment fee. A submission or handling fee. A retainer. Or, more subtly, a free assessment which concludes that your promising manuscript needs professional editing, from a company the agent happens to recommend and quietly owns a share of.

That last one is the most effective, because it feels like a positive outcome. Someone in the industry read your work and thought it had potential. The referral is the product, and no work is ever sold to a publisher, because selling was never the plan.

Two checks settle it. Ask what they have sold recently, to which publishers, and verify it independently through deal listings or the publishers' own catalogues. And check the public complaint archives, of which Writer Beware is the best known, before you send anything to anybody. Our guide to finding a literary agent covers what legitimate representation looks like in detail.

The follow-up call about a book you already published

This one targets authors who have already self-published, and it is now the most common approach we hear about.

Some months after your book goes live, you get a call or an email from someone who says they represent a publisher, a distributor, a marketing agency or a film production company. They have read your book. They are enthusiastic about it. They mention your title and your cover, which makes it feel personal and researched, though all of it came from your public listing.

There is an opportunity: a film option, a foreign rights deal, a bookstore distribution program, a slot at a major book fair. It requires a fee. Sometimes it is presented as a refundable deposit, or a share of costs, or a registration payment for a program.

There is no opportunity. Film options do not require the author to pay. Foreign rights are bought, not sold to you. And no legitimate approach in publishing has ever begun with a cold call demanding money to proceed.

Two structural facts make this fraud work, and knowing them defuses it. Your listing is public, so knowing your title proves nothing. And in real publishing, money flows toward the author. Any deal in which you pay to be selected is not a deal.

Rights grabs hiding in ordinary contracts

The most expensive damage is usually done by companies that are not frauds at all, through contract terms that are simply bad and that an unrepresented author signs without understanding.

Look for four things. First, what rights are being taken, and whether the word is exclusive. A grant of all rights in all formats and all territories in all languages is very different from a licence to publish a paperback in North America. Second, the term. Rights granted for the full duration of copyright, which is your life plus seventy years, are effectively gone forever, and a fixed term with a renewal option is the reasonable alternative. Third, reversion: what has to happen for you to get your rights back, and whether the out of print threshold is realistic in a print-on-demand world, where a book is technically never out of print. Fourth, who owns the ISBN and is named as publisher of record, because that determines who controls the listing if you leave.

Then check the money. Are royalties calculated on list price or on net receipts, and net of what? Our guide to how book royalties work explains why that phrase matters more than the percentage attached to it.

If a contract cannot be changed, that is itself information. Every real publishing contract is negotiated. A take it or leave it document aimed at people who will not read it closely is telling you what kind of company wrote it.

Seven questions that end the conversation

You do not need to become an expert. You need seven questions, asked by email so the answers are in writing.

• What exactly do I get, itemized, with a price against each item?
• What rights am I granting, in what formats and territories, and for how long?
• Who owns the ISBN, and who is named as the publisher of record?
• What percentage of net sales do I receive, and net of what specifically?
• How do I end this agreement, and what happens to my book when I do?
• Can I speak to three authors you published in the last two years?
• Which parts of this contract are negotiable?

Evasion on any of these is the answer. So is a phone call offered in place of a written reply, because the purpose of the call is to prevent a record. A company confident in its terms will answer all seven in a paragraph each, because they answer them every week.

Then do two minutes of independent checking. Search the company name with the word complaints. Look at the recent titles on their own site and check their sales ranks, which are public. Search the public complaint archives. If three authors are unavailable to speak to, ask why a company with hundreds of clients cannot find three happy ones.

Our own answers to those questions

It would be hollow to publish that list without answering it, so here are our answers.

You get itemized work at a fixed price, quoted before anything begins, and you can buy one stage without buying the rest. You grant us no rights at all: you keep your copyright, in every format and territory, permanently. You own your ISBN and you are the publisher of record unless you specifically ask otherwise. You keep one hundred percent of your royalties, paid directly to you by the retailers, because we do not sit between you and your money. You can end the arrangement at any point and take your files with you. Yes, we will introduce you to authors we have worked with. And the contract is short enough to read in ten minutes, which is the real test.

We are also not the right choice for everyone, and we will say so. If your book is a good fit for a traditional house, querying agents is a better use of your year than paying us. If you have the time and inclination to manage production yourself, our free guides and tools will get you there without spending anything.

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