Writers are a sizeable audience for scammers. A study concluded that 80% of the population would like to see their name as author on a published book.  In their eagerness, writers often allow themselves to believe false claims without questioning the source. Here are just a few.

Make money reading books

For years and years, classified ads have offered to show you how to get paid to read books. When you sent in your money, all you got was a list of literary agents to contact. This must have been lucrative for the scammers, because I’ve received many thousands of letters from these scam victims offering to read books for me.

Get your manuscript professionally edited

While there are legitimate editors for hire, there are many scammers who promise to edit your manuscript into a salable text, but don’t. Some of these scammers even offered literary agents money for referring writers to them in their rejection letters. Unfortunately, some agents saw this as an easy source of revenue, and went along with it.

The newest scam—post your work online

Writers pay money to post their work on scammer’s websites, which supposedly get read by agents and editors. Trouble is, most legitimate agents and editors have little time for this. Or they check it out once, find sub-standard work, never to return. There are a number of additional reasons that this is a bad idea–for example, another writer could steal your material.

Don’t fall for these or other scams we’ve described in Writer, Beware!

Copyright 2007 by Barbara Doyen. All rights reserved.

A publishing professional discusses the negative ramifications of paying a vanity press that promises to publish your book and make you an author.

Unfortunately, there is a notion that book publishing is merely a matter of the writer’s choice. That there are instances when it is OK to pay one of those companies who spend big money to advertise their fake book publishing schemes in magazines and online websites targeting writers.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s a scam! It’s a scam! It’s a scam!

Get this straight: vanity publishing your book is a scam. Repeat it over and over until you get it firmly in mind. It is never, ever a good choice for book publishing. Anyone who says otherwise is misinformed or just plain ignorant.

Pretend publishing

Despite their claims, vanity publishing is not legitimate publishing. It is not self-publishing, either. I call it pretend publishing. They pretend to publish your book, and you get to pretend that you are a book author.

Empty promises

The contracts are completely unfair to the writer, making or implying promises that will never be kept. Even worse, once you’ve signed, they’ll try to sell you all sorts of additional add-on services to milk more money out of you. Because you aren’t aware of how book publishing really works, their sales talks sound reasonable, as they keep feeding your “vain” desire to get your book published and take advantage of your limited knowledge. They are clever at making their company sound like it is a real book publisher.

It is all one big, profitable scam.

You may or may not even get actual copies of a real book with your name on it. Or, the books they deliver may be so poorly-made and rife with errors that they can’t be used. Some writers get books full of blank pages. Even if you do get decent print copies of your book, you’ve paid many times more per copy than you would have, had you gone to a legitimate printer for the job.

No turning back

Once you’ve signed with them, your ability to do anything else with your text is over forever. Kiss your book goodbye. You will never be able to take your book away from this so-called publisher and have it self-published or trade-published elsewhere because they’ve got you contractually bound to them.

Future ramifications

You can’t use your vanity book as a stepping-stone to getting a real publisher interested in your next book. Publishing professionals know the score and consider you an amateur, because a professional author would know not to get involved with a vanity press. You look like a fool because a simple Google search would have revealed the truth about these fake publishing company frauds. You have embarrassed yourself and jeopardized your professional reputation, all in the mistaken belief that you were getting your book published.

Should you ever pay to print your own book?

There are times when it is a good business decision to pay to self-publish your book, which is entirely different from vanity publishing. Self-publishing, where you pay a printer to print, not publish, your book, can be a viable alternative to legitimate book publishing, where a real book company pays you to really publish your book. We’ll be discussing this further in our Self Publishing category.

Copyright 2007 by Barbara Doyen. All rights reserved.

Dear Reader:

My main purpose in writing here is to use my knowledge as an expert publishing professional to inform authors with the truth about publishing, dispelling troublesome publishing myths.

Today I want to warn would-be “published” writers of book publishing scams.

I hope my voice is loud and clear.

When I began in this business, writers had little means of informing themselves; now, information is readily available. Despite this, book publishing scam artists have managed to become more successful than ever before. They take full advantage of widespread confusion and lack of information, and they are aided and abetted by ignorant writers who seem to endorse them, but who lack a clear understanding of what vanity publishing really is.

This is most upsetting. Forgive me for feeling I must shout my message:

VANITY PUBLISHING IS A SCAM

Through my years as a literary agent, I’ve heard from thousands who have been victimized by these fake book publishing schemes, losing fortunes in the process, and getting little or nothing in return, sometimes not even a single copy of their printed book. I’ve seen many of their contracts, received many of their “published” books, heard many, many stories of how they were taken in by these scam artists.

I have not heard of one single instance where a writer received a profit from a vanity press. Nor have I ever heard from a writer who was ultimately pleased that they had engaged a vanity press as a means of book publishing.

Do not become one of their victims!

Copyright 2007 by Barbara Doyen. All rights reserved.