How to get a book deal without being scammed

How to get a book deal without being scammed is a hurdle for any writers. Publishers Are Not Exempt From Questionable Practices.

Keep These Warning Signs in Mind

Charges a fee to read your manuscript. You are providing the product for them to sell. Why should you have to pay to see if they are interested in your work?

Offers subsidy contracts (you pay them to have your book published) when they promote themselves as commercial publishers. Are POD (publish-on-demand) publishers, such as authorshouse, IUniverse, and Xlibris, legitimate publishers? Yes as long as the author realizes the costs and the limitations of POD publishing. Publish On Demand books are rarely stocked in bookstores.

Bait and Switch
There are some publishers who hide behind the mask of respectability and call themselves ‘traditional’ when in fact they are a vanity press. How can you tell? Look at their websites, if the focus is on recruiting writers rather than promoting the books they publish, it’s a huge red flag.

Other publishers ‘will accept’ your manuscript and then come back a few weeks later and say that their list for the next season is full but they would dearly love to publish your book. You just need to share the risk with them by giving them some money.

A new twist is to tell the author that their project has merit but the author will have to find an investor to sponsor their title. The publisher isn’t asking the author directly for any funds but many authors shell out the necessary dollars rather than try and find an ‘investor.’

Rebates
The publisher says that any fees you pay them will be completely refunded once your book reaches a certain sales level, usually in the thousands. Or that they will provide a comparable number of ‘free’ copies when the magic sales level has been reached.

A twist on rebates is that the publisher will match your monetary contribution in marketing efforts for your title. Publishers are supposed to market their own titles. The match most likely will not be in advertising dollars, review copies sent, or book tour expenses but the efforts of the in house staff. Efforts that probably won’t be focused specifically on your title.

Required purchase of copies
Requires the author to purchase a required number of copies before publication or to pre sell a required number of copies and turn the money over to the publisher before publication.

And there’s more:
Some publishers don’t charge the author to be published per se. But they make it up by requiring the author to pay for editing services, or to pay for the cover artwork. Or there may not be a charge for printing and binding but there is as set up fee. Or a marketing fee. Or a publicity and promotions fee.

The Publisher has any kind of financial or referral fee arrangement with editing services. Or the publisher pushes authors to engage specific editing services, or gives the author’s name to the editing service.

Asks the author to provide a list of people the book can be marketed to. This indicates they are not willing to spend the time or money necessary to promote the book to bookstores.

Some publishers offer contracts that are unfair. They obtain rights that should remain with the author of the work, such as motion picture rights, or serialization rights with magazines. If the publisher can’t effectively sell the rights, the author should retain them.

Publisher falsely implies bookstore placement. There are several print on demand publishers, one in particular, who on the surface claims that their titles are available in bookstores. In reality while you or I might think available means the books are sitting on the bookstore shelf, the publisher uses the word available to mean that the title is available to order.

Should you consider a new publishing company?

New publishing companies spring up all the time. There is nothing wrong about going with a new press and there can be advantages. The author gets more attention because there are fewer authors. The titles get more focus and marketing because the company is eager to be successful. The downside is that new presses sometimes are challenged to get their titles in bookstores. And as with any new business entity there is a higher failure rate with a new press than with an established publisher. New presses in their eagerness to get going can overextend their resources and contract more titles than they can manage. If the company fails, your royalties may not ever get paid, and your title may be tied up in the courts for a number of years. The rights to publish are considered an asset of the publishing company. Unless your contract states in the case of insolvency the rights to your title are returned to you, a court could decide they belong to the creditors of the bankrupt company.

How to get a book deal without getting scammed is possible for any author. Just keep these warning signs in mind.

Want to find out how you can avoid scams and still get your book published? You can receive a free report Perils and Pitfalls of Publishing for Writers just visit Free Report

About The Authors
Brian Hill and Dee Power have written several nonfiction books including The Publishing Primer: A Blueprint for an Author's Success and The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories From Authors and the Editors, Agents, and Booksellers Behind Them.