THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
I've done a lot of research into the publishing industry whilst writing my novels. Publishers, literary agents and other authors have all received my scrutiny.
One particular kind of publisher has come to my notice - the anyone can do this, let's start a publishing company type.
These people simply set up a website, promote themselves on social media and try to get themselves noticed on sites like MSWL. They have about as much idea about publishing as I have of carrying out complex brain surgery.
So how do they do it? The answer is, they get you to sign away your rights and download your work to Kindle, Createspace, Smashwords etc.
So what does the author get out of this?
Advance on future royalties? - You've got to be joking!
Editing? - Probably a quick run through spell check.
Interior formatting? Yes, but not difficult using a template from Createspace.
Cover design? - Yes. Something cheap and cheerful. Either home made or bought from an on-line cover designer for about $50
.
ISBN? Yes, if they've got any sense. ISBN's are cheap if bought in bulk. However one publisher I've come across is too much of a cheapskate to do that and simply uses the free ones provided by Amazon.
Publicity? Yes. If you can call promoting your work on Twitter and Facebook publicity.
Lots of book sales? Well.....No. Using tools like Sales Rank Express I've tracked book sales for each of these 'Publishers' over a long period of time. The results are abysmal!
Lots of money then? Goes hand in hand with book sales. The 'Publisher' receives 70% of the sale price if published as a Kindle e-book. They give the author 40-50% and keep the rest. They don't even worry about sales of print editions which, if they priced a book at £6.99, would result in a receipt of just 49 pence from Createspace. This is probably why they set a price on print editions way above the price most of us would expect to pay.
Quite frankly, these kind of publishers need to be avoided at all costs. They don't do anything for an author that they couldn't do for themselves.
I
One particular kind of publisher has come to my notice - the anyone can do this, let's start a publishing company type.
These people simply set up a website, promote themselves on social media and try to get themselves noticed on sites like MSWL. They have about as much idea about publishing as I have of carrying out complex brain surgery.
So how do they do it? The answer is, they get you to sign away your rights and download your work to Kindle, Createspace, Smashwords etc.
So what does the author get out of this?
Advance on future royalties? - You've got to be joking!
Editing? - Probably a quick run through spell check.
Interior formatting? Yes, but not difficult using a template from Createspace.
Cover design? - Yes. Something cheap and cheerful. Either home made or bought from an on-line cover designer for about $50
.
ISBN? Yes, if they've got any sense. ISBN's are cheap if bought in bulk. However one publisher I've come across is too much of a cheapskate to do that and simply uses the free ones provided by Amazon.
Publicity? Yes. If you can call promoting your work on Twitter and Facebook publicity.
Lots of book sales? Well.....No. Using tools like Sales Rank Express I've tracked book sales for each of these 'Publishers' over a long period of time. The results are abysmal!
Lots of money then? Goes hand in hand with book sales. The 'Publisher' receives 70% of the sale price if published as a Kindle e-book. They give the author 40-50% and keep the rest. They don't even worry about sales of print editions which, if they priced a book at £6.99, would result in a receipt of just 49 pence from Createspace. This is probably why they set a price on print editions way above the price most of us would expect to pay.
Quite frankly, these kind of publishers need to be avoided at all costs. They don't do anything for an author that they couldn't do for themselves.
I
Comments
Post a Comment